Me - Good at Titles? Think Again.

I've been doing a lot of talks recently, and if the subject of titles has come up, people have kindly said that I have great titles and am obviously brilliant at them.

Well...

Yes, all my titles (except one) are made up by me and I'm pleased to hear they hit the right buttons. But if anyone thinks I've found it easy to come up with those titles, they're utterly wrong. Apart from Adultery for Beginners, all my titles pitched up after the book was bought and edited - in other words, they took ages to develop. Here's my process...

1. Look at other titles in the same area. With Adultery for Beginners, I had in mind Carol Clewlow's book A Woman's Guide to Adultery, which I thought was a brilliant title. I wanted something like that, though obviously my own. I played around with text book ideas, substituting adultery for maths, geography, whatever.

2. Find a phrase or bit of dialogue in the book that seems to say it all. Oliver tells Anna as he's seducing her that "Nice girls do." The book is about nice girl Anna going off the rails, so it sort of fits. They do, and she does.

3. Write a list (it may be a very long list) of words you associate with the book: place names, character names, adjectives, verbs, nouns... I knew what became Kissing Mr Wrong was about Lu's hunt for a mythical perfect man, so I was playing around with ideas about perfection and Mr Right. Then I turned it upside down - the book was really about her mistaken idea of who Mr Right was, and how she actually needed Mr Wrong.

4. Do the above, and then if you get stuck, ask around. Book No 4 obviously needed an Italian theme, preferably mentioning Rome. I had the longest list of words but still couldn't find a title. At one point I collared a bunch of my son's friends and had an impromptu eight person title brainstorming session. In the end, my lovely friend Nancy came up with A Single to Go, which needed just a bit of tweaking to become A Single to Rome.

5. And the one that got away? I called Book No 3 Another Man's Wife, after Becca the main character describes herself as such. My editor liked it, but sales and marketing didn't. They wanted Another Woman's Husband. I still prefer my version.

So, do I think I'm good at titles? No, not in a million years. I wish I was; it would save so much angst. I'm writing book no 6 at the moment and have absolutely no idea what the title is going to be.

How to Find the Perfect Title 2

So, how do you work out YOUR perfect title?

1) Look at other books in your genre that are currently published.

You're looking for patterns, for example, lots of one word titles or titles which contain place names. Are there puns or plays on words? Slightly risque?

I was picking out titles recently to do a class exercise and realised that a lot of women's fiction titles contain either women's names or place names.

2) List 'special' words.

There are some words that have more power than others. Lucky. Secret. Desire. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is one of my favourite titles ever (it's a good book, too), and all those nouns are special words.

3) What is the central theme, or themes of your book?

Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley knows he is talented, but no one seems to recognise his abilities and he is poor and friendless, hence The Talented Mr Ripley. Lu, the main character in my new book, is searching for Mr Right and makes lists of the characteristics of the perfect man. I played around with lots of ideas about Looking for Mr Right or Knowing Mr Perfect, before I realised that the book is about falling for someone who is off the list at which point the title was obvious: Kissing Mr Wrong. It's what the book is about.

4) Brainstorm

Armed with your lists of words and themes and an idea of the sort of title you're looking for, brainstorm. Do mind maps. Ask friends. I struggled with A Single to Rome. I knew it had to have an Italian theme - ciao, Rome, Romeo, ice cream, bella, amore were all on my list of words. A friend suggested A Single to Go, and it sparked off A Single to Rome. Believe it or not, I only realised there was a double meaning ages later when everyone kept saying what a clever title it was - Natalie's single and goes to Rome on a one way (single) ticket.

5) Check

Having come up with a brilliant title (or several brilliant titles) check them on Amazon. Ideally no one else will have had your title before, but the chances are it will have already been used. There is no copyright in titles. You can call your book The Da Vinci Code if you want. What will land you in trouble is if you appear to be 'passing off' your book for Dan Brown's, perhaps featuring a similar cover or contents.

6) Try it out

Ask around and see what people think of your title. Another Woman's Husband was originally called Another Man's Wife, but sales and marketing thought readers might get confused as to the contents of the book (I know - I didn't think it made sense either) so it became AWH. Recently I saw a book called The Faithless Wife. I prefer A Faithless Wife as a title, because it feels more inclusive, less condemnatory but that's my personal preference. What do you think?

Come to the launch party for Kissing Mr Wrong, 6.30pm on 20th May at Waterstones, Milsom Street, Bath. All welcome, but please ring 01225 448515 to let them have an idea of numbers.

How to Find the Perfect Title 1

And another thing I can't believe is that I haven't blogged about titles before. What an omission. So here goes - what makes a perfect title...

1) Easy to say.

Who wants to look stupid when ordering or discussing a book?

2) Easy to spell.

If someone is searching on Amazon or Google and they get the spelling wrong, then the search engines won't find them.

3) Uncommon words

My name, Sarah Duncan, is fairly common. If someone does a Google search for me, my website does come up first, but there are lots of other Sarah Duncans around, as well as "...said Sarah. Duncan, on the other hand..." If your title has lots of common words then it's going to be harder to find on search engines.

4) Strong nouns

If I say "the book about the tractors", I bet most of you will know the book I mean. In fact, Penguin used that line to advertise Marina Lewycka's next book. (And I don't know how you pronounce her surname either.)

5) Fits in with the genre

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society doesn't sound like it's a thriller or teenage vampire book. In Cold Blood doesn't say romance. Titles need to match the genre.

6) Has some originality or quirkiness

Would Captain Corelli's Mandolin have done as well as The Italian with the Guitar?

More on finding the perfect title tomorrow...

Come to the launch party for Kissing Mr Wrong, 6.30pm on 20th May at Waterstones, Milsom Street, Bath. All welcome, but please ring 01225 448515 to let them have an idea of numbers.

Working Titles

Coming up with titles is so difficult.  Adultery for Beginners is the only book that picked up its final title early on in the writing process.  Since then it's usually the final stage in the process of writing and involves me suggesting long lists of titles to my editor, and her sweetly commenting that she thinks I'm not quite there yet.  

So the books are actually written using a working title.  It's ended up that I use something that makes me laugh and feel positive about the book whenever I see the title:  

Nice Girls Do was written as A Single Girl's Guide to Hedging and Ditching.

Another Woman's Husband was The Sex Life of Hamsters

A Single to Rome was Thirty Eight Bonks

Kissing Mr Wrong was Sexgod and Love Bunny

At the moment the new book is under a file marked Questbook, but I really think that's going to have to change.