I've picked out books before simply because of the title.

A website was recently doing a 3 for 2 on books, and I found 5 I wanted. As I could get another for free I browsed through the list and "How The Dead Live" by Will Self, stood out to me. I hadn't read any of his previous work, and bought it on the title alone.

I quite enjoyed it too, even if he does have a tendancy to use half a dozen lenghty words when one shorter word would suffice.

I have to admit that I often struggle to think of titles. When I do come up with one, it's something I've just glanced at.

I did have an idea to write a series of short stories all with similar naming formats to them.

The whatever of Hector P Jones
The blahdeblah of Percy B Grimes

It's just that I had these ideas for stories, and found the names kind of fitted them. My greatest enemy, time, has since got in the way of developing this to any level though.

just a thought...

it's said that first impressions last. a title is most of the time the first thing that you see when you look at a book or poem and so on.....
Well i say that a title does.... matter,
to a point,
the cover can also make or break a book for me,
imagen a book with no title, no name.....
it becomes the book with no name,
so it has a name....Mmmmmm

swy, back to the point,
i say :: no! and yes....

come to think about it i think it depends on what kind of write'n it is.
most fantacy and fiction the name wont matter....

and there my train of thought derails and @#$%s off a cliff.
swy i have got to go back to work!
i'll try and post again tomorrow!!

~_~ Sleepy Utako....Armitag3

One quote I read said that a good title was the title of a good book. True but unhelpfull. In my reseach into technique I did come across one good article on titles.

In it they had a list of famous titles. The link was that they all used unusual, or even unique verb/noun combination.

A few examples.

Grapes of Wrath
A Moveable Feast
The Naked and the Dead. (I think. Mailer's book)

One interesting thing it also mentioned was that one author of very high estem, (May have been Hemmingway but don't hold me to it.)Came up with some quite appaling provisional titles. Ah well, maybe that means there's hope for all of us.

Darryl

Titles are extremely important and I would divide poetry from novels and stories.

In poetry, the title should avoid giving the whole story away beforehand. For instance Ellie wrote a great poem about a fisherman, and she called it ‘Meditation’ as it had a reference to him looking like a Buddha. If she had called the poem ‘Fisherman’ then there would be less for the reader to think about, and it would have been less involving as a result.

A title of a Novel should..
1 attract the sort of people, who would enjoy reading it,
2 capture the essence of the story yet still leave the reader wondering what it is about,

and finally

3 suggest it has something new to say.

That is quite a tall order!

Andrew

Andrew

I dont disagree with you but using your rules would you say that

Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone

is a good or bad title or doesnt it matter anymore what she calls them or indeed puts between the covers?

Hmmm. I seem to be harking back to a creative writing tutor I didn't really hit it off with a lot at the moment, but one exercise she did enjoy was making us open the dictionary and pick a word at random. This word then has to be the one word title of a short story. Almost without fail, people then made the title as tenuous as possible to the piece in question (for example, if you got landed with "shoe" you probably wouldn't be writing about a shoe, but that might be somebody's surname/nickname...)
The more I write the more I find that titles keep changing on me, because I still get this feeling that they permeate the piece, and dictate it's atmosphere somehow. Then again, I'm also paying less attention to the titles of things I read... so I think I'd say titles are more important for the author than they can be for the reader.
Great titles. "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and "Mao II".
Terrible titles? "Whistling for the Elephants" - Sandy, what were you thinking???

Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone.. as
a title.. attracts people who would like to read it, gives the essence of the story, yet doesnt give the game away, ie one asks, what sort of Stone is it?

However in America, the book is entitled 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'.. They thought the word philosopher was to off putting for the American market. So they obviously were attuned to point 1 on the list of 3, in the above comments.

Andrew

andrew

perhaps I have picked a bad example but suppose it had just been called

The Philosophers Stone

with no mention of Harry Potter would it have had the same appeal

I guess the title was changed in the states as Philosophers stone was too high brow

David,

Well she would be an idiot to leave out Harry Potter, and she isn't an idiot.

But joking aside .. I think the other point to think about here are search engines like Google.

If there are already Philosopher's Stones or Sorcerer's Stones (like the Disney one etc) then how is one going to make ones work stand out and unique?

One reason of many for changing an early title from The Quantum Stone to the Icera Stone, was to get better targetting on the web. There are just too many quantums around and people might get fed up trying to find one from many.

A

A

so know you have moved on to a title does not nec. reflect the work but is determined perhaps by what stands out when a websearch is done.

If we take JK's titles after the first she could just have called them Harry Potter 2 or Harry Potter again etc.

I doubt she is an idiot but never having read one of he rbooks I cant comment on her literary ability despite she used to live about 5 miles away form me ( drat missed out there didint I)

david

David

Harry Potter 2, would not tell you anything about the story, whereas Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone does. The title also has to fit the genre. Harry Potter 2, sounds like Rambo 2, and would be out of genre.

In the same way, 'the Quantum Stone', sounded too science fiction, and maybe not attract the right market sector, whereas 'the Icera Stone' sounds more kinda pagan. Icera - Ice era and Iceni ..and other words by association. That was the thinking.

Titles are certainly an interesting area, and must surely affect success or otherwise, but of course content is the most important. But the phrase 'Great body pity about the face!' springs to mind, and when we think of someone name we think of their face.

To take the analogy further, the body and the soul are what is under the jacket cover, but the title is the name and the face.

Andrew

Andrew
I see what you mean about faces and names - but there's also that awful awful analogy "you don't look at the mantle piece when you're poking the fire".... When people are telling me about books that they think I should read they will try to remember the title but don't always succeed - they do however give me a synopsis of the plot, or a particular part that stood out for them, or a feeling they got while they were reading it. I've even heard people doing this in book shops ("I don't know what it's called but it's about....")
As for the philospohers stone - that spoiled the plot a bit for me. I much preferred the other four titles because none of them gave the game away quite as much as that did. So in that respect I'd say it was extremely important not to say too much in a title (unless you want to take a Brechtian approach that is....)
I think "The Icera Stone" works very well as a title - it certainly drew me in, but it doesn't say too much. I think JK Rowling did spill the beans a bit with "Philosopher's Stone" though

A

I am sorry I dont really agree about Harry Potter, I was not enticed to read the first one perhaps put off by the hype but I dont think so and I am of the opinion having not read any of them that the tiltle of the last offering only means something if you have read the previous volumes.

In the same way the title only means something if you read the book or poem if it doesn't entice you through the door in the first place then the titlt is not worth jack....

Films are different peopel will watch a film for a variety of reasons many purely becaus eof a particular actor taking part or because they have seen the first and wish to watch the sequel equally that can work to a sequels dettrement even though the sequel may be better.

also films have cult status regardless of teh quality of the film or script.

Because of the media and the power of adevrtising a well known author or director ha sthe opportunity to expand their title and pre sell it if they wish on numeros so calle dchat shows.

as for your Icera - Ice era and Iceni one may if one has an interest pick the book up and then read the synopsis but equally one may be put of by the titile and fail then to read a book which may have been extremely enjoyable.

With Novels I tend to read the synopsis and make a judgement which is reinforced by the author i.e if I have read there stuf before and enjoyed it although that doesnt always rule.

I can also be put off by the cover

a sfor poetry I read the first few lines and if they seem to be going somewhere I'll carry on if not I will often put them aside.

This is not to sya your view of course is wrong but just different form mine

Thank goodness for personal views otehrwise we writers would have nothing to write about

take care

david

I have to say that I am initially attracted by the cover, the title, and whether or not I like the author. I like a mysterious ambiguous title and picked up Across the Nightingale Floor for both the lovely cover art and the title, but didn't buy it as the blurb describing the use of the nightingales beneath the floating floor as a warning system to detect a footfall above was just too horrific, and I like to enjoy my reading, not be tormented and upset.

One reason of many for changing an early title from The Quantum Stone to the Icera Stone, was to get better targetting on the web. There are just too many quantums around and people might get fed up trying to find one from many.

In contrast, one of my own stories, entitled "Half Life" was given that name specifically for the confusion it would generate with the ludicrously popular (though admittedly good) PC game of the same name.

<Added>

I am sorry I dont really agree about Harry Potter

Neither do I, I took one ook at it and decided from the tacky cover that it was a children's book. I stand firmly by my decision never to read any of them, and after being forced to watch the first movie, I was proved utterly correct.

But Harry Potter is in a league of its own. Disney movies I can watch, appreciate, laugh and sing along to, Harry Potter put me top sleep.