I’m so thrilled to welcome author Gail Sattler to the blog today! Gail is a wonderful author with LOTS of books under her belt. 🙂 Her post today is a bunch of fun, too–all about the process of coming up with a title for your book.
Speaking of books, congrats to the winners of Anne Mateer’s books from last week’s blog! Kara, you won a copy of Anne’s first book, Wings of a Dream. Rebekah M., you won the drawing for Anne’s second book, At Every Turn. Please email me at melissa [at] melissatagg [dot] com with your mailing address.
Thanks again for being here today, Gail!
Do pigs and parrots fly?
As a writer, besides being asked about how I keep coming up with new stories, I’m often asked about titles. It’s very hard to summarize the theme of a book in a few words, how do I do it? For me, it’s kind of like when you’re deciding which movie to go see, but in reverse.
I’d pick up the newspaper and go to the entertainment section and start reading the blurbs—those 2-3 sentence summaries of all the movies—until something grabs me. Hopefully what grabs me will also grab my husband, but that’s another post.
It’s only a few sentences, and they had better be short sentences, otherwise the blurb is too long to hold anyone’s interest. With that in mind, those “quick” 2-3 sentences are harder to put together than they look. It often takes hours before I can get them right, and you can’t summarize and tell the story. No one would pay money to go see the movie if they already knew what happened.
It’s a process, and I’m going to use my newest book, When Pigs and Parrots Fly, as an example.
Obviously the book features a parrot. In fact, the book opens in the pet store when everyone is waiting for the parrot to arrive. As events roll along, the parrot causes some issues that help get the heroine and hero together. Therefore my title needed to include something about the parrot as the catalyst for the pending romance between the hero and heroine. But the parrot isn’t exactly a matchmaker. In fact, he’s kind of a cranky feathered fellow.
I’ve met a few parrots in my life, they’re beautiful birds, but when I actually got up close to one, I realized that I really didn’t know how big they were. Up close, that big beak suddenly looks very scary. As a child I’ve been nipped by a budgie, which is a member of the parrot family, or so I’ve been told. It hurt. If a little bird like that can inflict so much pain, I shudder to think at what a bird with a 5 foot wingspan could do.
I still don’t like budgies.
Pushing away the thought of budgies, I checked out videos of parrots on YouTube, as research, of course, you understand. Parrots doing tricks. Parrots singing. Parrots dancing. They weren’t scary at all. Most of them were quite amusing. Except I shouldn’t have been watching videos, I should have been working on a title for my book. But then I decided I needed to study the parrots for behavior.
Yes, I got distracted. (yes, that’s a big surprise if you don’t know me) Getting back to what I was supposed to do, my task was to think of an expression that involved parrots. I couldn’t think of anything. The only animal expression I could think of besides raining cats and dogs was “when pigs fly”. Naturally my mind wandered into the thought, pigs don’t fly, but parrots do. A big part of the story happens when the parrot really does fly, so, a title was born.
You’re invited to see the parrot here.
Gail Sattler lives in Vancouver BC with her husband, 3 sons, 2 dogs, 1 lizard, a tankful of fish, but no parrot. When she’s not busy writing, Gail likes to curl up with a cup of hot coffee and a book written by someone else. Please visit Gail’s website at http://www.gailsattler.com/.
If you’re a writer, how do you come up with the title for your story? Others, have you ever thought about the process of titling a book? Any favorite titles to share?
Comments 14
Loved this post, Gail! Welcome here.
I’m not very good at titles. Well, I don’t think I am. Sometimes, they come to me, but others, they just sound cheesy. 😛 I just figure I’ll pick the best title I can and won’t say no to help if I can get it!
I don’t say no to help either. 🙂
Thank you for sharing your writing process with us, Gail. I like your ideas of how you brainstorm titles.
I usually think about the main theme of my story and try to center my thoughts around that, coming up with one complete, descriptive sentence. From there, I try to pare it down to a few key words that sum up the story and what the book’s about. The challenge is to make it “pop” from a reader’s perspective.
Thanks for sharing your process, Cindy. It’s fun to hear how others come up with their titles. 🙂
Thanks for sharing, Gail! Titles aren’t my strongsuit but every now and then I pull one out that I think, “Oh yeah, that’s the one!” And then I remember it’s always subject to change! hee hee
Yep, subject to change. I figure it’s a good idea to hold to any title I might come up with pretty loosely. I never want to be the author who gets weepy if a publisher changes my title. Hehehe…
Lovely to meet you, Gail! I just named my WIP “Enticing Julia Morgan” (which, I’m quite fond of!). When I was coming up with the name I asked myself: what is this book about? It’s about two best friends who are vying for the attention of one very beautiful woman. So they are courting her…I looked up “courting” in the thesarus and one of the words offered was “enticing” – which I thought was a great double meaning! The men are trying to entice her – and she’s an enticing woman. Voila! 🙂 Titles are so important – and very hard to find!
Gabe, that is an awesome title. I LOVE it!
What a fun title … and I appreciate the fun glimpse into the how-this-title-came-to-be process.
Titles are key for me. I often have a title by the time my synopsis is done. So far, my editors have kept my titles — Yay!
I play around with words and sentences, trying to capture the essence of the book, the “What is going on here?” interplay between the heroine and hero.
I toss some examples back and forth with my husband and family and friends … and then when I have an “Aha!” moment, I stay with it all the way through the fast-drafting.
Ooh, maybe I need to have you start titling my books, Beth. 🙂 I’m not so good at the process. I tend to slap something on and figure I’ll think about it later. But there is something so cool about the perfect title…your books definitely have awesome titles!
I typically like one word titles, but those are nearly impossible to come up with! I tend to think about it while I’m writing and as I get to the mid-end point of my story I stumble across a word or phrase that works.
Yours cracked me up–love it.
I agree, Gail’s title cracked me up too. Definitely makes you want to pick up the book, doesn’t it!
Funny title. And it truly makes you want to buy the book. My titles just seem to come to me. I have no idea where. Just thankful they do. And the editors only slightly change them 😉
The great thing about editors is we can trust them, yeah? If they change our titles–whether slightly or massively–they have smart reasons. One thing I hope to learn through the publishing process is how to think like an editor more and more…understand what they’re looking for in titles, characters, plots, etc. 🙂