Okay, you’ve written at least 50,000 words. It was a true slog, but you made it. Now you just have a handful more, but somehow they’re the hardest ones you’ve written yet! What the hell?
There’s a lot riding on a title, and there’s a lot to think about while you’re considering it. Don’t get caught with something less than perfect because you didn’t know or plumb forgot.
The Hallmarks of Good Titles
What characteristics can you find again and again in bestselling titles? There are many, but these are the three we find to be most common and useful when choosing a title for your book:
Brevity
There’s only so much room on a novel's cover, and you want your title to be easily read from across a room. Not only that, you want people to remember it. Both of these things mean you should probably consider a title of six words or less. There are great longer titles. But If you’re really in love with one that’s longer, it better have a big impact and be easily remembered to balance out the shortcoming in length.
Expression
A great title shows a lot of personality. It should capture your genre, your narrative, and your authorial voice all in one go. It’s a lot to ask of a snippet of text! The ultimate key to expressing through a title is by avoiding flatness. Bring in color or controversy. More on this in the next section.
Easily Remembered
It’s simple. In order for people to buy your book, they have to remember it exists! Brevity and expression will help with this, but there are many other ways to aid in this. Consider a modification of an already popular phrase or play with repetition. You could even make it feel awkward intentionally to build suspense.
The Shortcuts to Meaningful Titles
Look, thinking up the perfect title can take a really long time, and sometimes you just need to send off a query like yesterday. These quick tips can get you on your feet for working titles, but these tips will probably also apply to more than half of your bookshelf right now.
Characters
You took a lot of time and care naming your characters. Or maybe you didn’t. Either way, they’re an integral part of your story. Making their name or a nickname part of your title just makes sense. And it’s likely to be different from many others.
Setting
For a lot of books, where they take place is particularly important. If you’ve taken a lot of time to set up beautiful world building, it’s natural to want to celebrate that in your title. And anyway, it can give a sneak preview of the tone and content of your novel in a great way.
Imagery
Is there an image in your novel you especially want readers to take notice of? Or maybe you have another literary device that you’d love to highlight for your readers. Lit teachers are always making big claims about authorial intent with little to back it up, but you can make a choice in your title that removes all doubt.
Dialogue
I don’t know about you, but sometimes my characters run amok a little more than I planned on. It can get tiring, but then occasionally they have a way of saying something I’d never considered before that totally encapsulates the story. If this is you, you should totally steal it for your book title! You’re the one in charge, after all. Well, mostly.
What to Avoid in a Title
We’ve given you things to do. Here are some things not to do. Please!
Title Generators
These are a really fun idea if you’re looking for a writing prompt or have a low-stakes short story you want to throw up online for the lolz, but it’s not the right choice for a novel. Either you’re not going to get something that works at all or you’re going to get a generic suggestion that doesn’t really help you. Random title generators are great for sourcing new title structures when you’re feeling zapped for ideas, though. Think “The _____ of the ____” or “A ____ in _____ ______.”
Duplicates
When you’re trying to sell a novel online, it’s more important than ever to make sure your novel’s title is totally unique. You don’t want to be competing against a bestseller’s algorithm. So, get to googling. You can have titles with some similar pieces, but there must be something fundamentally distinctive about your title compared to others.
Complex Spellings
This harkens back to how people have to remember the title of your book. If your title includes something they have to google the definition of, it’s going to be harder to get them on board. If it’s something that they can’t spell, they can’t google it to buy it. Keep it to a 6th grade reading level.
Vaguery
Not only does a vague title avoid all expression, it can make your novel hard for readers to find as well! This doesn’t just apply to titles like The One Where They Die at the End but also overly simplistic titles like The Red Panda. If someone tries to google your book, they’re going to have to sift through a lot of results before they find you. Even one more distinctive word can make a huge difference, like The Coat of the Red Panda.
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