Hunting for the Perfect Title

I’ve written before about titles. They are, like, way important. More important than I would have thought.

It makes sense, though. Whenever I rattle around a bookstore and browse, I’m not pulling each and every book off the shelf to read the back and see if it sounds interesting. I’m running my finger along the spine quickly dismissing titles that don’t sound interesting. If my finger reaches “Pretty Pansy and Her Pouty Puppies” then it’s going to slide on by. That title does not interest me. I don’t care of the series is highly acclaimed, everyone loves it, or anything else. Pretty Pansy is not my thing.

On the other hand, if I see “Descent into the Tomb of Ancient Evil” I’m probably going to pause and at least slide it out to look at the cover. Because I’m a big fan of tombs of ancient evil.

My debut novel, coming out this August (can you tell I’m a bit excited?) is, of course Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom. That is an awesome title. You read that title and you have a very good idea of what the book is about, the tone of the book, what ages it was written for, and that my favorite color is green. Confession time: it wasn’t my original title. The entire time I was writing the book, the entire time I was polishing the book, and the entire time Awesome Agent was selling the book it was known as, simple, “Dr. Fell.”

Excellent Editor decided that wasn’t enough and slapped “…and the Playground of Doom” to the end of the title. And even though I originally hated the addition, I now thank the Heavens for the change. Because nobody knows who Dr. Fell is. Nobody can get any idea of what the book is about from the title. Fingers would have slid by the spine of my book, blissfully ignorant of how totally awesome it is. Now many of those fingers will stop, pull out my book, and–God willing–purchase a copy.

Book 2 (due out August, 2017! Remind yourself now to pre-order it next year!) has long needed a title. I didn’t have one while writing it. I didn’t have one while polishing it. I didn’t have one last month when I was dealing with all 95 of Excellent Editor’s notes. We had always been referring to it by a single word, which for the purposes of this post I shall pretend was Avocados. I have always known that Avocados is too vague a title, and that it needs more. When I submitted Avocados to Excellent Editor, I assumed Excellent Editor would come up with a much better title. After all, Excellent Editor came up with Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom! Of course Excellent Editor will have a title!

Excellent Editor did not have a title.

And so I did rewrites on what we were still temporarily calling Avocados.

Time pressed on, Excellent Editor warned that we needed a title soon because they are already discussing cover art (for a book coming out in 18 months). I held a brainstorming session with my daughter, who has read Avocados. I wrote them all down and sent them on. The list contained elements like:

• The Avocados of Doom
• The Tastiest Avocados
• When Avocados Attack
• To Be an Avocado or Not To Be an Avocado
• The Killer Avocados From Atlantis

You get the idea.

I didn’t love any of them, but hoped one of them would spark a flame of title genius from Excellent Editor.

No such luck.

I did some more thinking. Went for a run. Had some ideas. Sent another list.

• The Avocados That Ate Manhattan
• Death, Taxes, and Avocados
• The People Who Eat Avocados
• The Pits (get it? avocados have pits)
• The One Strange Girl Who Didn’t Like Avocados

Didn’t really like any of them either. Then I got an inspiration. Maybe we’re spending too much time focusing on avocados. Maybe the title should reference something else. New list.

• The Winged Lemur
• Lemurs of Doom
• The Winged
• The Lemurs of Philadelphia
• Bedtime For Lemurs

While none of them jumped out at me, I liked the concept of untying the title from avocados. Finally, I thought, we were on the right path.

Then I get an email from Excellent Editor.

“David. Got your new list of title suggestions. Also got your new new list of title suggestions. I’ve shared everything with everybody, and it looks like we’re going to go with Avocados. With a fun subtitle, like ‘Eat them!’ or ‘Great for Guacamole!’ More to come.”

So Avocados it (probably) is. Though not Avocados, because that’s a fake name I made up for this blog post. But it is the one-word title we’ve been using all along as a temporary title. I actually think it’s a good title, and I’m very relieved that the ‘finding a title’ task is complete.

As soon as I get the official word that the title is locked, I’ll share. Heck, I might share all of the suggestions, as well. So you can see the entire process play out on screen.

Won’t that be fun?