What’s in a book’s name? Would William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” by any other name seem as sad and ironic? Probably not.
Book titles give a clue or even give away the main event, and many times just flat out name the character who drives the story. The Great Gatsby. Jane Eyre. Moby Dick. But successful titles also grab a book browser by conveying in very few words the story’s tone and genre.
Murder on the Orient Express, murder mystery, more game of Clue than scary stuff
Love in the Time of Cholera, says it all (one of my favorite book titles)
Gone with the Wind, swept up in a romantic epic
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, fantasy fun
I prefer one- to two-word titles for my novels, like a flash on a marquee. Short titles somehow feel stronger, an anchor holding the cover down, rather than several words strung out with some words that are weaker than others. As a reader, a short title can hit me between the eyes, Dark Places, Gone Girl, but sometimes a lengthier title beckons me to dive into the story. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And opposites always attract me. We Begin at the End.
You can’t copyright a book title, and it’s been a while since there was something new under the sun. Ghost Light, a 2021 Alaska murder mystery by Stan Jones and me, is also the title of a handbook on theater, a dark novel about the decadence of man, a period romance, a paranormal romance, a terrorism thriller. I thought my title, The Frayer, for a suspense novel with a villain who unravels, “frays” people’s lives was pretty darn original. But when I looked up the title, I found an older book, a sci-fi adventure, already owned that clever moniker.
Are you one of those readers who in the back of your mind is always looking for the sentence that reveals the meaning of the title? And if the actual words of the title aren’t stated anywhere in the book, you’re frustrated? Me, too. As a writer, I strive for titles that have double meanings, and I struggle for where in the story that revelation should occur. Is it manipulative to put it at the end like the payoff after the reader has invested in the first twenty chapters? Is putting it in too early risking that it won’t stick in the reader’s memory until the end or that it kills some of the suspense by answering the reader’s inquiring mind too soon? In my forthcoming novel, Paper Targets I reveal the meaning of the title early on in the book, because the placement feels right in the flow of this story that moves back and forth in time.
I have not, so far, written a memoir, but I have pondered how to identify my life in three words or less. Reinvented Womanis a possibility, but, again, not an original in the vast sea of literary titles.
The purpose of a memoir title or any book title is a lot like an inscription on a tombstone. The point is “Remember me.”