Titles That Work

The Oxford Unabridged Dic­tio­nary says the word “title” is “Of mul­ti­ple ori­gins. Part­ly a bor­row­ing from French. French title. Orig­i­nal­ly clas­si­cal Latin tit­u­lus.” 

A title is a key part of any piece of writ­ing, the hand­shake, if you will, by which you are intro­duced to a book. Whether you go beyond the hand­shake is anoth­er mat­ter, but the title can, I think, make or break a book. Sure­ly it can make a difference.

Would we respond to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats­by if he had used one of the oth­er titles he con­sid­ered, High Bounc­ing Lover? I kid you not. 

Appar­ent­ly, one of my favorite books, The Sun Also Ris­es, had Hem­ing­way pon­der­ing Fies­ta as a title. 

Pride and Prej­u­dice. Austen con­sid­ered First Impres­sions. 

When writ­ers set about a new project, I think it’s com­mon that they have what is called a “work­ing title.”  If there is a new baby in the house, you don’t want to just call it “Baby.” 

In my own work, there have been many title changes. 

The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle had the work­ing title Sea­hawk, the name of the ship on which the sto­ry takes place. 

Noth­ing but the Truth was called Dis­cov­ery, the legal term for evidence. 

Even Pop­py had a dif­fer­ent title, because my hero­ine, in first drafts, had a dif­fer­ent name, Pip. 

My New­bery book, Crispin, was called No Name. 

A recent book, Gold Rush Girl, was called Rot­ten Row. 

On the oth­er hand, Rag­weed & Pop­py, anoth­er recent book, had that title right from the start. 

In the course of its pub­lish­ing his­to­ry, my Shadrach’s Cross­ing became, in paper­back, Smuggler’s Island. 

Snail Tale, first pub­lished in 1972, became in 2004 (with some rewrit­ing) The End of the Begin­ning. 

And count­less peo­ple who have great­ly enjoyed my Wolf Rid­er have asked, “But what does the title mean?” It means it was a good book with a bad title. 

Even now I am work­ing on a new book which has been called Loy­al­ty from its incep­tion. Of late, I’m think­ing that’s not right. Do I have anoth­er title?  Not yet. But before I write “The End,” after the last word, it will have, before the first word, a title.