The Importance of Titles

One of the hardest parts of writing a book is choosing a title. Last week I mentioned my current work-in-progress using the title Burned Out, but I had actually changed it by then. As I got farther into the book, I realized that the title wasn’t appropriate since my protagonist was only burned out for the first third of the story. It is now titled Agamiing after the fictional village where most of it takes place. That may sound like a strange title, but many women’s fiction novels are named after their settings.

I usually consider several options and choose a working title before I start writing. That working title often becomes the final one, but not always.

My first middle-grade historical novel went through several title changes. My protagonist is a half-Japanese girl living in California when Pearl Harbor occurs, and it follows her as she is temporarily confined at the Tanforan racetrack before moving to more permanent quarters at the Topaz War Relocation Center in the Utah desert. My initial title was “Topaz” since that camp takes up more pages than any other location in the book, but I wondered if that was too dull. As I mentioned above, fictional settings are often used in women’s fiction titles, but they are less frequent in children’s novels. Besides, Topaz was a real place and there are many books written about it.

Then I tried “Topaz Blue,” trying to capture the mood of the camp, but I wondered if that was too obstruse or too depressing for my young audience. By the time the book was published, the title had changed to Desert Jewels. Its meaning is explained by one of the teachers in the camp, who calls the children precious jewels and compares them to the topaz found in the desert.

Then there is the middle-grade book that I have coming out in October, which tells the story of a girl whose father takes a job as an assistant lighthouse keeper and moves his family to a remote island. I named the fictional island “Lonely Rock” and used that as the working title for the book. Although it fits the island, it’s a boring title for a book, and I am looking for a better one before the book is published.

My latest thought is to use “Surviving the Storm.” It isn’t one long storm, as in a disaster story, but there are storms in both the book and the protagonist’s heart. The picture at the head of this post is a mockup of a possible cover, using a negative image of a photo I took in 2021 of Portland Head Light in Maine. Although that lighthouse isn’t identical to the one described in the book, it’s close enough and is the best of my own photographs for the purpose. I still have a little time to decide, though, so both the title and the cover could change before publication.

But I’d love to know what you think of them both.

Creative Titles under Siege

I’ve been doing research for the book after the one I’m currently working on, and I’m fascinated by the creativity that went into the titles of the articles published as reminiscences on the subject, most of which were published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Here are some examples:

• “A Girl’s Experience in the Siege of Vicksburg” (Lucy McRae Bell)
• “A Child at the Siege of Vicksburg” (William W. Lord, Jr.)
• “A Woman’s Experiences During the Siege of Vicksburg” (Lida Lord Reed)
• “A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg” (Dora Richards Miller)

At least the Miller article is subtitled “Under Fire from the Gunboats.” Slightly more creative is Vicksburg, A City Under Siege: Diary of Emma Balfour, but it still contains many of the same elements.

The best-known eyewitness account of civilian life in Vicksburg during the siege does have a more unique title. Mary Ann Webster Loughborough’s book is called My Cave Life in Vicksburg. Even that, however, was published with the subtitle “A Woman’s Account of the Siege of Vicksburg in 1863.”

No wonder I’m having so much trouble coming up with a title. All the good ones are taken.

Obviously, there’s some sarcasm there. Still, some of the best descriptive words are “siege” and “cave life,” and both have been used, especially when you factor in more recent children’s books such as Lucy’s Cave and Under Siege.

Fortunately, I have plenty of time before I have to come up with a title, and inspiration will probably strike before then.

It was easy to come up with titles a century ago.

But I’d rather be creative.