E Is For Esther

Jennifer talks about titles...

Normally, I try to talk about what I think I’ve done well. This time, I’m going to talk about a mistake I think I’ve made. Specifically, regarding a title.

My titles are suggested by me and so far, I haven’t had an editor who’s asked for a title change. That could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it, but in this specific case, with The Seduction of Esther, I think it’s bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the title. However, it’s misleading on a couple of levels. First of all “Esther” is not the name of the heroine. I can’t tell you the number of times people have made that mistake and at this point, I have to admit that the mistake is my own. I came up with the title because my story incorporates the Jewish holiday of Purim. The heroine of THAT story is Esther. I wanted to convey the Judaic piece of the story, so I gave it that name.

The second mistake with the title is that it sounds erotic. My book has sex in it, but it’s not erotic. That mistake may be less of a problem as I think it does make more people take a look at it, but all the same, you don’t get a feel for my book by the title.

I’ve tried to learn from my mistake and in the future, my titles will be much more appropriate for the entire story, rather than just a piece of it. But maybe titles don’t matter to readers?

What do you think?

W is for Wild Wedding Weekend

Debra's story originally didn't have this title.

When I first submitted Abby and Noah's story, the title was "Winner Takes All". The story is based on a game show, so the title was fitting. Unfortunately (or actually fortunately as it turned out) the title was already logged into the system at TWRP for another submission. Although titles can't be copyrighted, TWRP does make sure there are no duplicate titles on its 'shelves'. So when it came time to sign the contract, I had to come up with a new title. I tried something or other, which also happened to be taken. At that point, I think my editor suggested just using "Win a Wild Wedding Weekend", which was the actual name of the game show in the story. I suggested shortening it to simply Wild Wedding Weekend, and wa la...a title was born.

Looking back now I can't imagine the book with any other title. (But I suppose if "Winner Takes All" had been available I would feel the same about that...)

All of my books have a title even before I begin writing. I even imagine the cover and start playing around with a simple blurb. For me, it makes the story feel like a 'real' book even before the writing process begins. Like that goal setting technique of visualizing it into reality.

Other than Wild Wedding Weekend, all of my books' titles have remained the same from first draft to publication. Most of the time those titles come easily to me. I did dither a bit over my series. I wanted all three books to sound like a set, so I played around with the pattern of the wording until I found something that worked for each story but still sounded similar. And I did agonize a bit about the holiday spin-off series, but in the end I went with simple and to the point.

Sometimes I've picked titles, without meaning to, that are already in use, such as This Can't Be Love, which is a song. Who knew? I guess I should have done an internet search first. I get some interesting results back from my Google Alerts sometimes. Every time a celebrity gets married, I get lots of alerts about the shenanigans that went on at their weddings under the topic "Wild Wedding Weekend"! And this time of year, I'm always getting hits for "A Christmas to Remember" that have nothing to do with my story.

How do you come up with the titles to your stories? Are they there from the beginning or do they come to you as you write? Do you ever change the title partway through a project? Do you ever wish you would have, or are you satisfied with your titles? Even though I sometimes get odd responses from Google Alerts, given the chance, I don't think I'd change any of mine. They fit the stories too perfectly.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

D is for Dilemma

Debra is having title trouble.

I am still making nice progress with my latest project. After finishing the first draft, I printed out the mss and did a read-through, marking places needing corrections and other places to go back and tweak a bit. That part is done. The next step will be to go through and do searches for 'that', "saw', 'felt', etc. I'll also run through all of my formatting cues. After that I'll do another read-through.

I need to put together a synopsis and a query letter. At that point, a story is usually ready to send off to my editor.

However, this time around, there is still one major hurdle to cross...my story needs a title. And I'm stumped.

It's a holiday spin-off of my Corral series. I'm planning a few more and would like to sub-title the series "Holidays at The Corral". Then, ideally, each story would have a title including the name of the holiday it's representing. My dilemma is this: All of the stories in the original Corral series start with 'This': This Time for Always, This Can't Be Love, and This Feels Like Home.

So, for consistency and to further connect the spin-offs to the series do I go with titles starting with 'This'? All I can come up with is "This is Christmas" which in no way gives any kind of hint as to what the story is about. The theme is about believing, not only in Christmas, but in yourself and in love, so maybe something like "This Christmas I Believe"?

Do I start another theme for just the spin-offs? In the past I thought about using drink names for the spin-offs, since The Corral is a bar, but the only drink I can think of to go with Christmas is eggnog and it's not mentioned at all in the story.

Instead of using a sub-title, do I name each holiday individually for the title? In which case this one would be "Christmas at The Corral". Which works, but would it work for future installments like "New Years' Eve at The Corral" or "Fourth of July at The Corral"?

Seriously. I'm stuck.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? Concerns? Ideas?

Help...

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com