Tips on Creating an Interesting
Title
by Mary Arnold
When it comes to creating titles, I know of no other writer who
does it so well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did. Even Agatha
Christie, the Queen of Mystery, never produced a title as
intriguing as those of Doyle. Christies titles usually leaned
towards describing the setting of the novel: Murder on the
Orient Express, Death on the Nile, A Caribbean Mystery, Death
in the Air, and They Came To Baghdad, for example.
Doyles titles for his short stories and novels leap off the
page and demand to be noticed, and thus, read. Titles such as
'The Five Orange Pips,' 'The Man with the Twisted Lip,' 'The
Adventure of the Engineers Thumb,' 'The Musgrave Ritual,' and
'The Adventure of the Dancing Men' grab ones attention
immediately and inspires intrique and puzzlement. What does he
mean by 'Dancing Men' anyway? What happened to the 'Engineers
Thumb'? And how did the man get a 'Twisted Lip?'
When thinking on a title for your short story or novel, you
want it to be eye-catching but also to tell something about
your story or novel. Speaking from my own experience, titles
that say nothing about the story or novel leaves one rather
disgruntled. I think, 'Why did the writer use that title? Its
totally unrelated to the story!'
While some titles are obviously better than others, I've only
come across one writer who has made me feel irritated over her
choice of titles: Carol Higgins Clark. Some of these titles are
Twanged, Fleeced, Iced, Decked, Burned and Popped. While these
titles have a certain cuteness to them, they tell next to
nothing about the novels and leave me feeling a little
affronted.
To sum up, choose a title that will pique interest, that has a
clue to whats hidden inside, and pass up any cutesy
titles.
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Mary Arnold is an author on Writing.Com/ which is a site for Fiction
Writing.
Her writing portfolio may be viewed at Writing.com/authors/
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