“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything.” — Oscar Wilde
One of my favorite parts of writing a piece of fiction is coming up with the title. I agree with Oscar Wilde: Naming a work of art is an art in itself and should always be treated as such. The name that is given to a work of art is massively influential on how that work is received. As a result, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the titles of my books (and the names of my characters, but that’s a topic for another day).
Sometimes the title comes first. A great title comes to me, then I build a story around it. But that is rare. More often, the core idea of a story comes first, then I build the title around the story. The title usually comes early in the process. Once I have the basic outline of a plot, I can begin brainstorming potential titles. One or two titles seem to perfectly fit based on the subject, genre, and tone. A title should convey those three core elements. In rare cases, a good title never comes to me after completing a first draft, which may indicate some inherent problem in the story that needs to be addressed in further edits.
Trick or Zombie Treat is a title I was rather pleased with. It lets you know the subject (Halloween and zombies), the genre (horror), and the tone (comedic, due to the pun). Putting a new spin on an old saying (“trick or treat”) is a good method to create a memorable title. Or you can take an old saying as it is, like I did with Work for Idle Hands. I chose that title because it was mysterious about what the title may mean in this particular story, and mystery is the ultimate genre of that book. Plus the title conveys that something nefarious may be lurking under the surface, that all may not be as it seems. Overall, the title implies a more sophisticated and philosophical work, which it is.
I despise generic titles, especially those that are one word, a word that is so common it is almost impossible to google (ie Lost, Old, Monster). That could work while the movie/show is new and popular, as it would be a top search hit for “lost,” but less so years later. The opposite problem can also arise: you want to search for information about “aliens,” but the results are all about a James Cameron movie.
One-word titles are especially common in movies, for some reason. It is rare for a one-word title to be great, especially short words, but it can be done. Jaws was an iconic title and perfect for that movie. But Jaws would not have been as great if it was called Shark. Jaws is a rare enough word that it worked. I love the movie Alien, but that title is a bit generic, like calling Jaws “Shark.”
Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors, and almost all his movies have single-word titles, but they are at least rare words—Inception, Memento, Interstellar, Tenet—and those words all have a vital meaning to the story. It is rare for a one-word title to work so well, but they work best when the word itself is rare.
Movies will often take actual creative titles from books they are adapting and re-name them with bland simplistic titles. For instance, the novel All You Need is Kill was retitled Edge of Tomorrow. A unique pun-infused title was replaced with the most generic-sounding title ever. What does “Edge of Tomorrow” tell you? Absolutely nothing.1 This rename likely hurt the film at the box office, considering they re-named it again upon home video release to Live Die Repeat which might be even better than the original title, as it fits better thematically.
One exception where generic titles might actually be better is in sequels. The worst are movies that use the title of the original (usually a good title) and then add a generic subtitle, such as the Jurassic Park and Mission Impossible franchises. Because the subtitle is generic and forgettable, you forget which number sequel it is in the larger series. The first Jurassic Park movie had a great title. The second had a subtitle The Lost World: Jurassic Park2. Kind of generic, but not too bad. The third was simply Jurassic Park III, which was probably a better choice. In retrospect, The Lost World should have simply been “Jurassic Park II,” but since Spielberg planned for the second to be the final Jurassic Park movie (which it was for him), that was forgivable at the time (plus it was the title of Michael Crichton’s book). There’s no reason to call a movie “part two” if there’s no part three coming (though in The Godfather’s case, they probably should have stopped at two).
The reboot of the Jurassic Park series was Jurassic World. Not a terrible title, but the sequels to that were the real problem: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Dominion3, and Jurassic World Rebirth. I mistakenly watched Fallen Kingdom twice, thinking it was the newer Dominion because both the subtitle and the movie itself was so forgettable. They should have just named them Jurassic Park IV, V, and VI. If “Part II” was good enough for a cinematic masterpiece like The Godfather, it should be good enough for a series about dinosaurs.
A better option than simply numbering the sequels is coming up with a completely new original and creative title for each entry in a franchise, such as the James Bond movies do. They feature some truly unique titles like Goldfinger, Octopussy, and Moonraker) The titles usually refer to the villain of that particular movie, so you can instantly recognize and tell them apart. Unfortunately the Pierce Brosnan sequels after GoldenEye got generic again (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day). Which one was set in North Korea? How could you possibly remember from the title alone? But which Bond movie was on the moon? Obviously Moonraker.
Hollywood studios are hesitant to follow the 007 route with original titles for sequels, however; because they want the title of the original movie in the title of the sequel for name recognition purposes. That is the entire reason Hollywood is making so many sequels and remakes these days—it is all about capitalizing on the pre-existing fan bases of those franchises. Which is fair enough, I suppose. If you’re spending $265 million on a movie, it had better make double that at the box office.4 But if all you care about is the bottom line, then stop trying to be artistic and just admit what you are: Movie Title 2, Movie Title 3, Movie Title 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc…
One case where the title came first was my short story “The Dualist Duelist.” For whatever reason, I was thinking about the philosophy of dualism and the combat technique of dueling, and how practitioners of each sound the same but are spelled differently. I thought “The Dualist Duelist” would be a great name for a story, so I then had to figure out what such a story might be. The result is a sci-fi/fantasy tale about a philosophical sword-fighter. “The Dualist Duelist” was recently published in The Double Dealer magazine (alliteration is another common aspect of good titles) Issue 14, available now on Amazon.
T.Z. Barry 