Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Title Trouble

What's in a title? Well everything. Would Catcher In The Rye be the same book if it were called Holden Visits New York? And I'm not comparing my latest tome to J.D. Salinger, not by a long shot. But I am trying to show an example of the difference a good title makes. And my latest manuscript went through dozens of titles. DOZENS. And finally I selected one that wasn't even created by me but by my fantastic agent. But I had scads of people, including best selling authors, helping me out. We looked for words within the text, song lyrics, song titles, clever phrases, anything and everything that would convey the fun of the manuscript as well as the relationships within the pages. And the thing that's interesting about this title is that even with this much work to come up with a few words, the title might not stick. The editor could decide to change it or the marketing department might not like it and that's okay. As long as they help to come up with the next clever few words that label the pages. I mean consider if Scout And Boo's Big Adventure had been called something silly, you know, like To Kill A Mockingbird?
xoMaggie

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