It’s All In The Title

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

I’m writing a new book at the moment, a chess-based one about disassociation in children. It’s all going well, except for the fact that all the different elements of my real, non-writing life, seem to conspire daily to prevent me from doing any work. That said, I should have this handwritten first draft finished in the next month or so. By which time I’ll have written around 900 A5 pages. When I eventually come round to editing it, I’ll have a nightmare job cutting it down in size - the original idea was to write a 250 page novel.

Where should I go next?

But there’s another problem approaching. The same one I had with The Tale of the Birds. The same one I’ve had with loads of my short stories. What am I going to call it? The main character is a girl, so I’m tempted to put “Queen” in the title, but that’s been done before, probably many times.

Titles are difficult, and they never seem to come easily. I have loads of works in progress, including this chess one, and precious few of them have even a working title. And titles are so important.

In the end, the reason I went with The Tale of the Birds was because it fitted in with the general saga feel I wanted to create, and also because the sequence in the novel that the title refers to is important, shining a spotlight on Rurik’s (the main character) soul as well as his deeds.  

So I’m wondering - does anyone have a formula for thinking of good, potentially successful titles for stories? Any and all comments would be greatly appreciated.

Tags: chess, novel, the Tale of the Birds, titles
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