Saturday, January 26: Mississippi Mud
TITLE TALE
by John M. Floyd
Let me ask all you crime-fiction readers a question: What first attracts you to a story or a novel, if you know nothing about it beforehand? Its author? Its length? Its cover (or, if it’s a short piece, its illustration)? The fact that, when you flip through the pages, it has a lot of dialogue?
Any of those are valid reasons. Or you might be one of those people who just pick a novel at random, or start with the first story in a collection or an anthology simply because it’s the first story. But I would guess that most of you would say, “None of the above.” I bet you would say instead that the thing that first draws you to a story or a book is . . . its title.
Publishers all seem to agree on the importance of a title. It’s sort of like the opening paragraph — it better be interesting, or at least grab your attention. Otherwise, the novel with that title might never be selected off the store’s shelf, or the short story never chosen out of a lineup in a magazine or book. And for a writer, it’s important on a personal level: It’s the thing that most represents your story to the rest of the world, the one thing readers will always mention when talking about it to others.
But what makes a good title? Here are a few rules of thumb:
(1) Titles should, when possible, be memorable: Gone With the Wind, The High and the Mighty, Watership Down, “The Tin Star”, From Here to Eternity, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
(2) Titles should “fit” the story: The Caine Mutiny, “A Rose for Emily”, The Amityville Horror, Raise the Titanic, The Firm, Love Story, The Graduate.
(3) Titles should be pronounceable: Robert Ludlum’s The Wolfsschanze Covenant, was changed (thank God) to The Holcroft Covenant.
(4) Titles can be a play on words: Burglars Can Be Choosers, Florence of Arabia, Live and Let Die, A Hearse of a Different Color, Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man.
(5) Titles can point to a hidden meaning, later revealed: The Green Mile, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, Cool Hand Luke, Dances With Wolves, The Shipping News.
(6) Titles can be a trademark for a certain author, or series: Janet Evanovich (numbers), Sue Grafton (ABC’s), John Sandford (the word “prey”), John D. MacDonald (colors), James Michener (one-word titles), Robert Ludlum (three-word titles), James Patterson (nursery rhymes).
(7) Titles can be people’s names: Carrie, Forrest Gump, Hondo, Goldfinger, Rebecca, Lolita, Shane, Delores Claiborne, Doctor Zhivago.
(8) Titles can be place names: Cold Mountain, Jurassic Park, Lonesome Dove, Mystic River, Peyton Place, Cannery Row, Plum Island, Cimarron.
(9) Titles can be possessives: Sophie’s Choice, Prizzi’s Honor, Portnoy’s Complaint, Charlotte’s Web, Angela’s Ashes, “Schindler’s List”, The Optimist’s Daughter.
(10) If long titles, they should have a “rhythm”: The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, “The Sins of Rachel Cade”, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.”
(11) Titles can be an “ing” phrase: “Romancing the Stone”, “Finding Nemo”, Waiting to Exhale, “Riding the Bullet”, Pleading Guilty, “Educating Rita”, “Raising Arizona.”
(12) Titles can be popular expressions: Gone for Good, “The Usual Suspects”, “Something’s Gotta Give”, “An Officer and a Gentleman”, Good As Gold, “The Whole Nine Yards.”
(13) Titles can come from existing works, like the Bible or Shakespeare: “The Grapes of Wrath, The Sound and the Fury, The Dogs of War, Lie Down With Lions, “All That Glitters.”
(14) Finally, if appropriate, titles can be simple: Jaws, Shogun, The Stand, Airport, Roots, Deliverance, The Searchers, Centennial, The Godfather.
More info than you needed, right? But for us authors who procrastinate — who sometimes finish writing a story or novel before we’ve come up with a name for it — pointers like this might at least trigger an idea or two.
By the way . . . here are some titles by the great Ed Hoch, whose passing last week saddened a legion of writers and readers:
“The Kindergarten Witch”
“Copywrong”
“The Perfect Time for the Perfect Crime”
“The Spy and the Nile Mermaid”
“Loaves and Fishes”
“Now You See It”
“A Busload of Bats”
“The Theft of the Banker’s Ashtray”
“Finding Joe Finch”
“The Gypsy’s Paw”
“Murder Offstage”
“One Bag of Coconuts”
“The Problem of the Tin Goose”
“Vulture in the Mist”
That’s the way the Master did it.
John, a great post, thank you! I always feel that a good title is hard to find 😉 Your ‘rules of thumb’ should help!
Many thanks — If any of these do serve as a memory-jogger or a source of inspiration to you, I’ll be very pleased.
One thing I didn’t mention: titles can sometimes be unintentionally misleading. I’ve forgotten the author’s name, but I remember that someone wrote a novel several years ago called The Secret Lovers. The problem was, it wasn’t a romance, it was a story of espionage, where the spies were the secret lovers (because they “loved secrets”). I heard that romance readers who bought the book were of course dissatisfied, and thriller readers who might have enjoyed the book didn’t know about it because it was usually shelved in the romance section.
I think my favorite title ever was one I saw at a library book sale a few months ago: It was “Apocalypse Pretty Soon.” Wish I had come up with that one myself.
“Apocalypse Pretty Soon.” That is cute. But it doesn’t have a nice rhythm to it.
Speaking of misleading titles (although it must have been intentional in this case): *The postman always rings twice*?
Kai, I think you’re right on both counts.
Other personal favorites: Back to the Future, Tell No One, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Double Indemnity, The Gods Must Be Crazy, The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker, The Scoreless Thai.
Oh, this is fun! I didn’t know we could name favorites 😉
Here are some of mine: I, the Jury; A Murder Is Announced; Clutch of Constables; Gone Girl;
and, best of all:
The Gutting of Couffignal.
As an avid reader many things enter my mind when perusing the bookshelves, included all those you mentioned. I distinctly remember cruising through titles of the mystery section in my favourite used bookstore when I came across a Needlecraft Mystery Series by Monica Ferris. Here are a few of the titles that captured my attention: A Stitch in Time, A Murderous Yarn, Sins and Needles, Knit One, Kill Two, and Hanging by a Thread. Needless (oops, almost missed that last ‘s’) to say, I didn’t add them to my choice of reading material on that particular trip and subsequently have no opinion as to their content.
I have since come upon series by Laura Childs called the Tea Shop Mysteries some of which include: The English Breakfast Murder, Jasmine Moon Murder, and Death by Darjeeling. I’m wondering if one titled Suffocating on Souchong is brewing
I’ve always loved titles with double-meanings, and in Mysteries titles that actually are clues to the mystery! Some of the latter are “Beyond The Grave” by Muller and Pronzini, “The Ultimate Clue” by Boucher and “C is for Corpse” by Sue Grafton. And her father Chip Grafton began a series of mysteries with a title progression from an obscure nursery rhyme, (I think it started with “The Rat Began To Gnaw The Rope.”) And there’s a book about book titles called “All We Need Now Is A Title!” Fun post, John! Thanks!
Edgar-winner Charles Ardai once had a story about a murder in a nudist colony published in AHMM. The title:
“The Naked and the Dead”
And that’s the fuggin’ truth.
I too love those double meanings. I also really like it when the title is meaningless at first and then it suddenly (Whoa!) makes sense. I still remember the satisfaction I felt when, halfway through the movie, the title “Rain Man” was explained. For me, it made an already good story even better.
I\’m very fond of ironic titles, e.g. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT or THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.
John I got annother one for you. Check out the anthology “Spies and More Spies” edited by Robert Arthur(Random House, 1967) where Arthur includes his own story “Call For Help” (as by “John West”) first published in 1938 under Arthur’s own name with the title “Distress Call.” Two different titles, each meaning something later on. Keep in mind the important phone call early in the story…