Names & Titles.
Everyone and everything has one. It’s how society identifies individual products persons and things.
Some titles might be different for the same object or person. For instance Nana, Grandma, Grandmother/ Papa, Pops. Grandpa Grandfather.
When it comes to our individual names, our parents took great care to select one that they felt would best represent their hopes and dreams for you. Some might be family names, others might be sentimental and others might have a meeting that’s known only to your family.
This goes for companies as well the name of the company might reflect the owner’s personal name it might reflect the type of business they provide. Or it might make you guess, which could possibly hinder your business.
As a writer you need to step back and look at your writing is a business. And the first major task is to come up with a good title. Because the title is going to be what catches your reader’s attention. It will play an important factor in the graphics of your cover and also in the search-ability in the bookstore and on the websites.
Of course we’re assuming you’ve written a good book, with interesting characters. The names of your characters should be easy to relate with or at least have a good meaning that you can explain to the reader.
For some authors coming up with a good title is one of the hardest parts of the book. They spend hours agonizing over a few words that mean so much. Your title can be something obvious, something catchy that’s going with the current trends of popular books. You might relate the title to an activity that happens in the book or even a spoken line between the characters of your story. But just like every other aspect of your work you need to give your title careful consideration.
There have been some really wacky titles out there. Wacky enough that they have caught on and held the attention of the reader’s. This has been a great tool in helping push those books up in the rankings. They make the reader wonder before they’ve even opened the first page what your book is going to be about. Remember, catching a reader’s attention and interest is crucial.
No I’m not saying you need to title your book wacky or anything outrageous, but I do believe we need to keep the title short, pronounceable and, if possible, memorable. I think if you’re going to go wacky you need to go way out there and titles that are wacky can get away with being long and preposterous.
Personally, my books tend to relate to the action within the book or specifically spoken line. Often I know the title of the book before I’ve even written it, thanks to a very thorough outline. But each writer is different in their process of picking a title. And unlike our children who we name for life; if we find our title doesn’t suit the direction of our book, we can easily change it down the line.
Go wacky, go sentimental, go scientific, but give it careful consideration.
Pen In Hand, Words on Page 