Guest Post: Martin Willoughby on "Creating a Book Title"

Aloha,

I’m passing the Buick to an English blogger friend, Martin Willoughby, over at From Sand to Glass.

Martin, whose Friday Fun posts are *hilarious,* is celebrating the release of his first book, Tempers Fugit.
The lanai is all yours, Martin :)

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Creating A Title For Your Book

The process of creating a book title is a pain in the neck, though some people have a lower opinion of it. But there are ways round the problem and some secrets I can share...providing you promise not to tell anyone else.

Secret Number 1: Steal someone else’s. As long as the title you use is relevant to your own, you can use any title someone else has used, though I don’t recommend it. What you can do is use that title as the starting point for your own search for a title. Take, for instance, a famous book such as Great Expectations. If your book is about a person with TB trying to achieve his life’s goal before he dies, you could change it to Great Expectorations.

Secret Number 2: Brainstorm. Get a piece of paper and write down any title that’s even remotely relevant, however idiotic it may seem at the time. When I came to re-title A Stitch In Time I went through various ideas based on film titles starting with The Good, The Bad and The One With the Pet Robot through to 2381: A Space Oddity and various other embarrassing titles in between. It was only when I got together with a friend that we came with Tempers Fugit. The inspiration for that title came from Terry Pratchett’s book Carpe Jugulum, which is based in the Latin Carpe Diem (seize the day). As it’s about vampires, the title is very apt indeed. My novel Tempers Fugit is based on the Latin Tempus Fugit (time flies) to become Tempers Flying.

Secret Number 3: Use an important phrase from the book. What does your main character repeat often? How does the book end? Where is it set? Write a comprehensive list, then start discarding the ones that you hate. Pass them around friends and relatives and see which one makes the biggest impact. Then ignore them all and plump for the one you like. Back to Terry Pratchett here and his first book, The Colour of Magic. In the novel magic does have a colour, but there is also a link to the film The Colour Of Money, thereby reusing a well known phrase but changing it to suit the book.

Secret Number 4: Use the main characters name and add what he’s going to face. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. You could do the same for the world you’ve created, such as Dune or use the theme of the story, as with Fat by Rob Grant.

Secret Number 5: Get weird. Salmon Fishing the Yemen, A History Of Tractors in the Ukraine, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and so on and so forth.

Secret Number 6: (This entry has been censored by the Publishing Industry as it reveals our innermost secrets. The author has been placed under protective custody in Area 51...which doesn’t exist so forget we mentioned it)

In short, get creative. Pay as much attention to the title as you do to the story, as it’s the first thing that people will see, at least until you become famous and can have your name as the selling point.

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MartinWilloughby is an author of some repute and a legend in his own lunchtime. When not writing he fixes computers, raises teenage children and acts in an amateur theatre group where he’s always cast as the baddy. He’s won many awards in his lifetime, including an Oscar for best actor which he received from his mother as a Christmas present many years ago. Tempers Fugit is his first book, his second, Apollo The Thirteenth, will be released later this year to even more fanfare and approval. You can stalk him on twitter or via his blog, From Sand to Glass.

 

 

 

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In other news, (I've always wanted to say that:) Sarah's Reviews is offering a giveaway of three books by the wonderful C. Lee McKenzie.


For full details, click on any - or all - of the links below.

 

The Princess of Las Pulgas

 

Sliding On The Edge

 

Alligators Overhead