Defining a book with a title

The title of a book mat­ters for many rea­sons. A good title induces a read­er to con­sid­er the book. A good title can say a great deal about what kind of nov­el the book is, its style, even, at times, the kind of book it is, for exam­ple, a romance, a mys­tery, and his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. Back in Vic­to­ri­an times, titles even had sub­ti­tles, which pro­vid­ed even more infor­ma­tion. In my spoof of such tales years ago, I wrote a book titled: Emi­ly Upham’s Revenge, or How Dead­wood Dick Saved the Banker’s Daugh­ter: A Mass­a­chu­setts Adven­ture. It was, among oth­er things, Paul O. Zelin­sky’s first illus­trat­ed book.

Not always not­ed how­ev­er, is that a title can help the author define what his/her book is about. Indeed, in the course of writ­ing, the title of a book can, and often does change a great deal. The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle, was first called, The Sea­hawk. Noth­ing But the Truth, was called, Dis­cov­ery, a legal term.

My cur­rent project had a par­tic­u­lar title right from the begin­ning. But as I strug­gled with a key part of it, I real­ized that was lead­ing me astray, that orig­i­nal title. I changed it, and things fell into place.

I won’t tell you what it is because I have yet to share it with my edi­tor. Maybe he won’t like it. But I do.