by Lawrence Coates | Dec 12, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
Raymond Chandler once said, “A ‘good’ title is the title of a successful book.” That makes a kind of sense. If the book is a big success, that means the title was excellent. So a title that really makes no sense, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, is just fine since the book was made into a celebrated movie and still continues to sell. It’s true that a title is part advertisement. However, I’d like to think that the quality of the title is due to more than just the commercial success of the book it’s attached to. Here are a few qualities that make for particularly good titles: A good title can take on multiple meanings and do some artistic work for the story. For instance, A Farewell to Arms is about leaving the war behind. But of course, the main character also says farewell to the arms of his wife, who dies at the end of the book. Love Life, by my teacher, the late James D. Houston, is another good example. The novel is about a woman’s love life. But it’s also a command – Love life. The Children Act by Ian McEwan is yet another good example. The title refers, literally, to a law, a legal act that protects children. But it obviously is also a complete declarative sentence. The children are acting upon those adults who are trying to care for them. A good title can make use of metaphor in some way that does some artistic work for the book. The Blackboard Jungle and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter are both good...
by Lawrence Coates | Dec 10, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard for finding a title is to look within the work itself. Read your work carefully and look for a particularly compelling phrase or image within it that evokes the mood or setting or plot. I’ve heard this from Jane Bradley (author of You Believers), and this is also a technique favored by Jerome Stern in his book Making Shapely Fiction. Another method for discovering a title is to think of the overall work and pick out the setting, the season, the main character’s name, or the main action of the plot. This could lead you to one of the kinds of titles I’ve posted about in “The Who of Titles,” “The Where of Titles,” etc. Hemingway used to brainstorm titles, writing down anything that came to mind and then crossing out the bad ones. This is why we know that he came up with such clunkers as They Who Get Shot and The Carnal Education before settling on A Farewell to Arms. If you’re fortunate, you might have a spouse like Carol Steinbeck. She came up with the titles to John Steinbeck’s two best novels: The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men. He divorced her after the success of The Grapes of Wrath, but that’s another story. One of the reasons I began this techniques blog with a consideration of titles is because I have had so much trouble settling on a title for my fourth novel. My original title was Temporary Landscapes. This title expresses an important thematic concern in the novel, but my editor said it...
by Lawrence Coates | Dec 2, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
While there are still other kinds of titles that will be listed in my taxonomy, I wanted to move to the last category, the Metaphysical/Symbolic title. This kind of title expresses something essential to the meaning of the work, frequently in a high poetic language. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner Everything that Rises Must Converge Flannery O’Connor The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers The Song of the Lark Willa Cather It seems to me that this kind of title is not as suitable for a short story. They seem to be too weighty for short fiction, though there are always exceptions. Sometimes these titles come from a larger literary work. Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible seem to be inexhaustible sources for titles. Faulkner used both – along with The Sound and the Fury, from Macbeth, he used Absalom, Absalom, from the Book of Samuel. The verse goes as follows: And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! Interestingly, there is also a novel entitled My Son, My Son, by an author named Howard Spring. A good title of this kind will attract the reader because of its beauty. Ideally, it will also take on greater meaning once the book has been read. In...
by Lawrence Coates | Nov 21, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
After writing about the journey story for a few weeks, I’m returning to titles. Titles that establish a season of time are worth consideration. I enjoy them in part because of how important the season is in my thinking about stories. Here’s something I’ve said often in class. If you are writing about a particular part of a character’s life, you are implicitly saying that this part of that character’s life is story-worthy. This time of that character’s life is important – it’s a season of time filled with significance. Things will happen in that character’s life that are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. Let me repeat that. For a season of time to be worthy of story, things will happen that are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. It’s a commonplace in workshops to ask “What’s at stake” in a story. If things happen that are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible, you won’t have to worry that not enough is at stake. So a title that expresses the season of time in which events will happen might be a good choice. The title can let the reader know the beginning and end of the story, and also give some hint about the subject matter, the characters, the tone, or other aspects of the story. Here are some examples: “Doe Season” “The Year of Getting to Know Us” “A Romantic Weekend” “A Day in the Open” “Blackberry Winter” “That Championship Season” The season invoked could be a season in the normal sense of the word – autumn, or winter. It could be a single day or a weekend, it could be a season...
by Lawrence Coates | Oct 13, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
“Last night at the Black Cat Café…” I remember hearing Ron Carlson quote that line and say that he just loved knowing where a story was set. Titles do this frequently, growing out of setting or place. And I think that setting is always a possibility when you’re searching for a title. Still, if a title is just the setting and no more, you are missing out on an opportunity to make your title a part of a coherent work of art. Consider two titles from two recent novels: Golden State, by Michelle Richmond California, by Edan Lepucki At first glance, the two titles seem very similar. But Michelle Richmond’s title is doing a little more work. It evokes a certain sense about my home state, a sense that it’s a promised land, a sense that it’s a place where the most extravagant dreams can come true. Edan Lepucki’s title is a little flatter, and it doesn’t hint at the post-apocalyptic story she is telling. I’m discussing these titles without making judgments about the relative quality of the novels themselves. I have read and admired the work of both authors. My point is that a title that evokes place, and yet also has some thematic resonance, is doing more for your story or novel. Here are some titles that both evoke a place and also do something more: “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham The Isle of Youth by Laura Van den Berg “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford “Brokeback Mountain” is a story about the strained and tortured lives...
by Lawrence Coates | Oct 8, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
I’ve been thinking a lot about titles, since I’ve been struggling with a title for my forthcoming novel. Titles have a dual role: they are part of the work of art, but they are also an advertisement, a way to attract a reader to pick up a book from a shelf in a bookstore or library, or read the first sentence of a short story. I’ve taken the time to think through some general categories of titles, and I’ll be posting a complete list. But for now, I’d like to think about one category: Character. Novels and short stories titled after characters are legion, and go back to the beginnings of the novel. Think of Don Quijote, or La Princesse de Cleve, Emma, or Oliver Twist. Titles that derive from character can do more than just give the character’s name, of course. They can be a character’s profession, as in the “The Paperhanger,” by William Gay, or “The Caretaker,” by Anthony Doerr. Or they can be even more intriguing, like “The Prophet from Jupiter,” by Tony Earley. Consider The Book Thief, or The Handmaid’s Tale. Isaac Basheivis Singer seemed to have a talent for this kind of title: “Gimpel the Fool,” “The Spinoza of Market Street,” “The Slaughterer,” or “The Dead Fiddler.” My friend Ann Gelder’s new book Bigfoot and the Baby falls into this category. A good title can work in more than one way. Even a seemingly simple title like Jane Austen’s Emma is doing some extra work. The title slyly hints at the marriage plot at the center of the book, since the issue will...
Lawrence Coates is the author of five books, most recently The Goodbye House. His work has been recognized with the Western States Book Award in Fiction, the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, the Miami University Press Novella Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University.