Have you ever picked up a book based on the title alone and avoided others? I do it all the time. Book titles sell books, good and bad. But how do you choose a title for your novel in the first place and what makes a good title? Well, that’s not easy to answer.
Titles offer the key to interpreting a novel. There are character and character driven novel titles, genre and place titles or novel titles intentionally setting out to be different, and those taken from other literature. Umberto Eco in his Reflections on The Name of the Rose mentions titles that show most respect to readers are those that confine themselves to the name of the protagonist. Eco wished to title his first novel from the main character, Adso of Melk, but instead chose words that could have numerous interpretations. A book serves as a device by which a reader may arrive at an alternative meaning than which the author intended. Eco illustrates this extrapolation perfectly in his Prelude to a Palimpsest, in Naming the Rose: Essays on Eco’s The Name of the Rose, in which he himself inadvertently invented an idea from an interpretation of a book that wasn’t in the original text.
As it is near impossible not to interpret a novel through a title, which does not use the protagonist’s name alone, a title is best used to provide an indication of genre and intrigue into the type of story the reader may expect. The Da Vinci Code for example I think is a brilliant title because it makes the reader want to know the answer to the title. Pillars of the Earth is another good title, which suggests the book contains some important wisdom. Intrigue attracts. A book title is good if it has done its job before the book is even opened.
Whether a title is good or bad can be subjective which means there is much contradictory advice. There are some great books with awful titles and terrible books with awesome titles. I have read about agents and publishers selecting titles to sell books that instantly turned me from reading more. There are some ‘best selling’ books I still haven’t read because I didn’t like the title. Books that have been made into ‘block-buster’ feature films with the same title I haven’t watched. Book titles of course do have an impact on a novels success but are only one part of the book selling machinery.
When selecting a title for your own book it is a good idea to start with one that best describes your synopsis, even before you start writing. An early working title will give you focus and can always change as the story develops, giving you time to arrive at a title you are happy with. My novel The Traitor Who Wore the King’s Crown started out with the title Heaven’s Earthwork, but changed as the novel changed to fit within the expected genre. I write more about why I chose some of my titles in my Post, ‘Why I Wrote’.
There are so many generic novel titles out there that could be applied to any book. Just as your story is best written in a way only you could tell, your title should be unique to the story.
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