Titles. They're, you know, important.
Katie Castle
Main Idea: Like everything else we write, a title is a bunch of words that are arbitrary, random, largely meaningless, and yet still striving to sound as indispensable as the opening notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (now there is a possible title for the somebody’s something school of thought). (P 13)
Main Idea: Coming up with titles for pieces of writing is frustrating, yet annoyingly important.
The author approaches the issue with wit, making it an easy and intriguing read. For me, the main draw of this article is the reliability. Struggling with titles for a piece of writing, particularly a novel, is something I come across pretty often in my life, from a reader’s point of view, and a writer. Those two points of view are discussed in the article, which I liked, as it showed a variety of opinions from a variety of POVs. If I am looking for a new book to read (a frequent event) I do look at the cover design and the title. I hate books with unnecessarily lengthy titles, or books whose cover designs feature models, posing as the main character. I may like the actual book, but it irks me to have a random stranger, who looks nothing like how I picture the character glaring at me. This ties in with what the author says about the aspect of marketing. If the title does not catch the browsers eye, or is lengthy and boring, or does not roll off the tonged, the book may be overlooked, and not pursued, and not purchased, all because of the title. Titles of books are important, for the reason mentioned above, and for the fact that the title is what gives the world the main idea of the novel, be it good or bad. Martin also mentioned common ‘formulas’ in modern titles. I decided to see if I could find at least one example of each on my bookshelves. The first he mentioned was ‘number+noun+of+noun, as in One Hundred Years of Solitude. I found: The Favours and Fortunes of Katie Castle, which I purchased for obvious reasons. The second formula Martin calls attention to is someone’s something, which I too had noticed a lot of. The only one I had is a book called Kusheil’s Dart. The article was written well and reminded me that I like finding other people who share the same opinion as me, and the more different the person, the better.