The Novelry on Writing Podcast: How to Create a Title for Your Book

The name of your book is your story’s most important marketing tool, so you must choose your novel’s title wisely. In this inaugural episode of season two of our podcast, The Novelry on Writing, join writing coaches Gina Sorell and Tara Conklin as they share the five keys to finding and crafting a unique, memorable, and insightful title to hook your readers before they even crack open the spine! Read on for the episode transcript. 

You don’t always find it right away. And not to despair. There’s so many different avenues that you can have in terms of exploring a name. So many things to draw upon. Just make a list and as you’re writing the book, as you’re reading through the book, then you’ll be able to really focus on what is the best name, and that’ll become more evident.
—Gina Sorell

Introduction

[Tara Conklin] Hi, I am Tara Conklin. I’m the New York Times bestselling novelist of three books and I am a coach in the literary fiction and historical fiction groups at The Novelry. And I’m here with Gina to talk about five tips for naming your novel.

[Gina Sorell] Hi, I’m Gina Sorell, and I’m an author and a writing coach here at The Novelry. I love naming novels. 

[TC] I do, too. It’s so much fun.

[GS] It’s honestly one of my most favorite things to create not only the name of the book, but then to also name all the different things in the book. But that title is so important. 

[TC] It really is.

[GS] Right? And I find the thing that helps me is if I focus on an outline or a strategy, what I like to call the Five As. Things to answer about the novel, and also the audience that I want the novel to reach. And so let’s talk about that first one.

Who is the audience of your novel?

[TC] Yeah, the audience. That’s number one. I think that’s really important when you’re envisioning what the title will be, because obviously you want people to buy your book. 

[GS] Yeah!

[TC] And the title is basically your advertisement. It’s like your first run advertisement for the book. So when thinking about audience, it’s primarily:

• What genre are you writing in?
• Are you writing a romance?
• Are you writing a thriller?
• How do you use your title to target the people who are going to buy that kind of book?

[GS] Yeah, absolutely. And as somebody who writes women’s fiction and contemporary fiction, I want to make sure that I can cast the net really wide, right? Because especially in contemporary fiction, I want to make sure that I have young readers and older readers and pretty much everybody who is the audience, I’m hoping, of my book. So, I want it to be something that’s accessible and catches their interest, makes them stop and stare and see that book and be like: Oh, I want to pick that up and read the back of it, and then open it up and read inside of it and buy it.

[TC] Exactly.

[GS] That’s always the hope. And really just enjoy the book as well, right? To engage their interest.

[TC] Yeah. What’s your tip number two, Gina?

What do you want your title to achieve?

[GS] The thing I’d like to think about after my audience is really what I want that name to achieve.

• Do I want it to communicate the fact that it’s a mystery book, for example, if I was writing mysteries?
• Do I want to have a sense of danger or intrigue in that?
• Do I want it to communicate that the book is humorous, it’s got a great sense of humor about it?
• Or maybe I want to allude to the fact that it’s something complicated that the characters are going through. 

[TC] Yeah. And I think it is important to remember that the title is trying to communicate something. I mean, my second novel was very hard to name.

[GS] Oh, really?

[TC] And for the longest time I was calling it this very generic name of... See, I can’t even remember it now. Sea, Sun, Sky  or Sea, Ocean, Rivers  or something like that. And I kept referring to it by those three words to my editor, and she kept shaking her head and being like: ‘No, Tara, it’s too generic. It’s too broad. You need to be saying something about the book. We need to be achieving something, communicating something about the novel.’ 

[GS] I’m curious, was there a reason why you were thinking so much about bodies of water? Is that something that featured a lot in the book? 

[TC] There was one particular scene that I considered kind of the heart of the novel. And it was where one of my protagonists was gazing out at the ocean and kind of having this existential dilemma moment. And for me, that was really like... He lived in South Beach, Miami. And it was just this pivotal moment in the book.

[GS] Yeah. That makes sense.

[TC] But for me, having that be the pivotal moment of the book was not enough to merit it being the focus of the title, which really needed to get across something else to the reader about the book as a whole.

[GS] Right. I was going to ask you one more thing.

[TC] Oh yeah?

[GS] That was pretty interesting to me because now I know the name of that book, and I think what you chose to do is focus on another element that communicated that same kind of feeling that you had. Which probably had a really much more attention-grabbing achievement at the end of that, right? So what was the name of that, that you finally did? 

[TC] The title was The Last Romantics.

[GS] Right. Which is very romantic, staring out over the water. Thinking about the people in your life who you love and maybe what’s gone wrong. I like that title a lot.

[TC] Yeah! Thanks. I do, too.

[GS] I think your editor may have been right.

[TC] I think she was, and we’ll talk later about where I actually got that title when we get to maybe four or five.

What’s the attitude of the book?

[GS] You’re leading nicely into the next point, which is about the attitude of the book. So, really, that speaks to the tone and the personality of the book. And you had a very romantic book, and it’s really heartfelt, and it speaks about that as well, or elements of it, right?

[TC] Yeah.

[GS] And sometimes there’s different naming styles, like some names are declarative. You know, they feel like mission statements. Some feel like calls to action, and then some names are what I like to call funny or punny. You know, there’s a play on words there, or it’s a special twist on a phrase or an idiom that we know. 

[TC] My third novel is exactly that, and the title is Community Board,  B-O-A-R-D.  And I specifically chose it because of the play on word with ‘board.’

[GS] Smart. 

[TC] Because it’s based in a small town where people are very involved in their local neighborhood message board dealing with, you know, the very minutiae of community life, but because they kind of don’t have anything else going on. That’s the drama in their life. Which it is for many of us, the dramas that erupt on a neighborhood board can be—you know, even though they’re tiny, they can be the stuff of great tragedy. 

[GS] Yeah. That’s a great play on words.

[TC] So, wait, we’re on number three. Attitude?

[GS] Yeah. Attitude. And so my second book is The Wise Women and it’s the same thing. It’s a play on words, right? Because you think of wisdom, wise women, and the character’s last name is actually Wise. And the mother, Wendy Wise, is a matriarch and she was an advice columnist. 

[TC] Oh, that’s wonderful.

[GS] Right, so she’s giving out wise words. There’s the wisdom. But it’s a play on that, you know? I think that’s fun. It just makes people smile when they look at it and it gets their attention. That’s something which is another way to name. And I also really love names that have lots of layered meaning in them.

[TC] Exactly.

[GS] You can get something on first level when you see it, and then you can get something if you go a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper.

[TC] Yeah. And I love that when you pick it up, it will maybe grab you for one reason: the title. But then, when you read the book itself, the title will sort of unveil itself to you as having all these other meanings.

[GS] Yes, I love that.

[TC] I’m thinking of All the Light We Cannot See, which is such a beautiful title.

[GS] Yeah. It’s beautiful.

[TC] And then as you’re reading the book, you know, it’s a blind protagonist. And there’s just so much in that title that is uncovered as you read through the novel.

[GS] Dealing with themes that are light and dark, playing with all of that. No, absolutely.

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What are the attributes of your novel?

[GS] And that brings us to our next point, which is attributes, which is about the theme—

[TC] Number four, for those taking notes at home.

[GS] Number four. Yeah. The theme can really be something that you draw upon as well when naming the novel, right? When choosing your title. You want to talk a little bit about that, that you’ve done for yourself? 

[TC] Going back to The Last Romantics, the sort of heart of this novel was the relationship between four siblings. And the idea that the love of your life was not necessarily like a romantic partner but could be someone, you know, in your own family. And for these siblings, they were all sort of the loves of each other’s lives. 

[GS] Beautiful.

[TC] And that was the theme of the novel that I wanted to convey in the title.

[GS] Oh, I love that. For my first book, my debut, Mothers and Other Strangers, the theme was estrangement, right? Like a mother who’s estranged from her daughter and all these secrets and lies and trying to uncover the truth. And I thought that was something which was... You don’t think of your mother as being someone who’s a stranger.

[TC] No.

[GS] So to say, you know, Mothers and Other Strangers, right away it’s saying: Ooh... There were problems in this relationship.

[TC] Yeah.

[GS] And I love the idea of using that theme to really shed light on what that title could be.

I also have a story about what that original title was, like yourself. It was called Homecoming, because it was like trying to figure out home, and where you belong, and that sense of home and where the mother’s from. And my editor also was like: No. Too vague.

[TC] Too generic.

[GS] Yeah, too generic. And sometimes I think that’s important for people to know, is that you don’t always find it right away.

[TC] For sure.

[GS] And not to despair. There’s so many different avenues that you can have in terms of exploring a name. So many things to draw upon. Just make a list. Just make a list, and as you’re writing the book, as you’re reading through the book, you know, you’ll be able to really focus on what is the best name, and that’ll become more evident. But I think sometimes people get too attached to their first choice. And then it’s hard to really move past that. 

[TC] Yeah.

[GS] I think it’s important to remember that it’s all movable.

[TC] Yeah. It is  all movable. And even if you don’t have a title when you start writing, and you keep changing titles or your editor tells you to change titles...

[GS, laughing] Yeah!

[TC] For example! You know, you will. You’ll find it. And there are many, many different places to look. And so this brings us to... Number five!

Think about the ancestry of your title

[GS] Yes, it does bring us to number five. Which is ancestry—where that name comes from. Or maybe sometimes even the etymology of the name, or the inspiration that you can draw upon from other sources for the name. And you’ve got some great thoughts on that you want to share.

[TC] Yeah. A good writer friend of mine gave me this tip a couple years ago that I think is brilliant—that the name of your book, the title of your book, is very often in the draft itself, in the words that you’ve written.

[GS] Oh, interesting.

[TC] And just to try reading your book with an eye for a subtle turn of phrase or a line of dialogue or something that maybe, as you were writing it, you didn’t think: Oh, this is going to be the title. Or it didn’t stand out to you. Her book, she was having the hardest time naming it, and her editor actually said: Well, you have this really wonderful line: ‘Women are the fiercest creatures.’ That ended up being the title.

[GS] Yeah. I love that title.

[TC] And Andrea Dunlop, who was the writer, she had not really considered that as the title. They had been through a lot of different titles at that point. And that ended up being the title of the book. And it’s so... It has everything that you want. It has these layered meanings, that kind of is telling you it’s communicating something about the book.

[GS] Very much so.

The title of your book is very often in the draft itself, in the words that you’ve written... Try reading your book with an eye for a subtle turn of phrase or a line of dialogue or something that maybe, as you were writing it, you didn’t think: Oh, this is going to be the title.
—Tara Conklin

Other places to find inspiration for book titles

[TC] Yeah. It was great. And a couple other places that I like to go to if I’m really kind of up against it—I look at classical poetry and Shakespeare.

[GS] Oh, that’s great.

[TC] You never know what you’re going to find! And The Last Romantics actually came from a Yeats poem.

[GS] Wow.

[TC] And as soon as I read that because, as I said, my editor and I were having this big debate about what should be the title. And so I went to some poetry books that I had leftover from college.‍

[GS, laughing] Amazing.

[TC] And I read this poem, ‘Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931,’ and it had the phrase ‘the last romantics’ in it, and the whole tenor of the poem was sort of about nostalgia and about lost love and looking backwards, which was precisely the kind of tenor of the novel. So it just worked. It worked great.

[GS] That’s fantastic. I like song titles.

[TC] Yes!

[GS] Yeah. You know, I love listening to music when I write and I’ll often put something together and create a playlist for myself. And usually, there are themes that either overlap in terms of the music I’m listening to or the tone of the music that I’m listening to. Or the type of artist. And I just love that song titles can be so evocative and they’re so original. And sometimes they’re a really great jumping-off point, really inspiring to think about. Because it is like poetry to music, right?

[TC] Yeah.

[GS] And so it’s just another way to think of the work and, sometimes, something emerges that you weren’t expecting if you let yourself look a little bit outside of the box.

[TC] Exactly. Yeah. And I think it’s important to remember that naming a book is really fun. 

[GS] It’s so fun.

Song titles can be so evocative and they’re so original. And sometimes they’re a really great jumping-off point, really inspiring to think about. Because it is like poetry to music.
—Gina Sorell

[TC] And I admit that I have probably more titles than I have books [laughing] in me. I mean, because sometimes it can start with the title—like my first novel, I had the title almost before I had the full story, and it really kind of helped shape the way I wrote the book.

[GS] Yeah. I think so, too. I also sometimes like to have my characters write their own books or be writing articles and, you know, I’ll sort of play around with: what could this title be?  We could put that in there as well. But I think sometimes it actually can help to think of your right to think of the title first if you want to, you know, as a way to almost... Almost like a logline. What you want to communicate about the book, you know? See if you can make it really succinct that way. 

But I am also really well aware, having done it, that it can be the very last thing that you write for your book. And really, the most important part is the story. Because the story is going to inform what that title is, right?

[TC] Yeah, definitely. As we teach at The Novelry. Story first!

[GS] Yes, absolutely!

[TC] Gina, it’s been so fun talking to you about this today.

[GS] Oh, thank you. It’s been so fun chatting with you. I could talk about this all day.

[TC] Me too. Thanks so much, everybody. Bye. 

[GS] Bye.

Closing words

[Louise Dean] Thank you for joining us today. We are so pleased to have you along for the writing journey, and we hope to see you on another episode of The Novelry on Writing.

If you’d like to learn more, visit us at thenovelry.com. From first draft to finished manuscript, at The Novelry you’ll enjoy one-to-one coaching from bestselling authors, live writing classes with award-winning authors and literary agents, and you’ll work with a publishing editor all the way for submission to literary agents toward a publishing deal.

All writers learn from other writers, even the greats. Write your novel in good company. Join us at The Novelry.

We’ll show you how to start, coax your story into shape, and cheer you on to type The End.

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