A writer-friend was blocked. Three thousand words into writing a new story, he still didn’t know what to call the thing. All forward progress on writing the actual story had stopped, as he was flummoxed by his lack of a working title. In desperation, he turned to social media—
That’s where I found him, floundering away, collecting a lot of bad advice and spinning his wheels, going nowhere. Concerned for his well-being, I stepped in and gave him my one crucial piece of advice on titles, which I now share with you.
Remember: it’s a working title. You will change it later. Now stop worrying about the damn title and get back to work on the story!
That’s what matters. No editor ever bought a lousy story because it had a great title.*
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I know, as a writer who is world-famous for one particular story title, this advice might seem a bit off at first, if not downright hypocritical. But for me, “Cyberpunk” was that rarest of things: a story that had one title and one title only, from the day I began to write the first page of the first draft to the day it was finally published. For the two years it took me to get that story accepted, as it bounced around the offices of every editor at every major magazine then in the field, the rejection letters that came back always commented on the story, and not on its, in hindsight, obviously brilliant title.
As I said, that story was the exception. Most of my stories go through at least four or five working titles between the time I begin sketching out the first draft and the time it’s finally published. Most often these title changes take place during the writing and editing phase, as I develop a clearer sense of what the story is about. In a few cases, though, the final title came to me only after I’d begun shopping the story around and started collecting rejection slips.
That was one of the advantages of working in the good old/bad old days of actual paper manuscripts and mailed submissions. Every few weeks, I got the opportunity to tear open an envelope and look at one of my manuscripts with fresh eyes, and with what turned out to be my developing editor’s sensibilities. Then I’d ask myself, “If I was an editor, would I read past the first page of this?”
Believe me, it was therapeutic. One of my stories was rejected eighteen times before I finally looked at it and realized that, while the core of the story was sound and the first page was perfect, the title was terrible. Whereupon I gave the story a quick tune-up-and-tightening edit, trimmed about 500 words of flab out of the middle, sharpened the point of the ending, christened it with a new title—again, another snappy, fresh, one-word neologism—and sold it to the next pro market to which I submitted it.
Ergo, after 40 years in the writing racket, here are my guidelines for story titles. Some of these come from my personal experience as a writer. The rest come from ten years of wading through thousands of unsolicited submissions in the slush pile.
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Remember, it’s a working title. Expect to change it later. Pick a stub title and move on.
Simple and descriptive titles work best.
Don’t overdo description, though. Avoid titles that telegraph the ending.
Avoid titles that are puns. They’re rarely as funny as you imagine them to be.
Utterly original titles are overrated. Don’t steal a title, but don’t agonize over its being too much like another story, book, or movie title, either.
Avoid obscurantism. There was a time when titles like, “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World” or “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” were in fashion. That time was more than 50 years ago.
No editor ever bought a lousy story because it had a great title.*
No editor ever rejected a great story solely because it had a lousy title. Except: A. Avoid racist, sexist, or homophobic titles. B. Avoid overtly disgusting titles. You may think it’s gross-out humor, but slush pile readers are unlikely to agree. C. Avoid overtly offensive titles. You may think you’re leading with your best Harlan Ellison badass tough guy attitude, but again, editors are unlikely to agree. D. Remember, your title is just a reference tag. What you want the editor to do is not to be stopped by it, but to get on with reading your first line, then your first paragraph, then your first page, and then to feel compelled to turn to the next page and keep reading until they reach the end.
If an editor gets to the end and likes your story, but doesn’t like the title, they will quite likely suggest that you change it. If one does, again, this is not the time to emulate Harlan Ellison.
Before you submit a story for publication, remember to make sure that the story title on the first page, the story title in the page header, the story title in the file name, and the story title you mention in your cover letter all match. Few things confuse an editor more than receiving a submission that cites one title in the email subject line, a different title in the cover letter, and yet another title in the manuscript file itself. When confused by a submission, most editors’ default response is to hit reject.
If an editor rejects a story, do them the courtesy of revising the story before slapping another title on it and sending it back to them. Re my anecdote about selling a story that had been rejected eighteen times: yes, I did sell it to a market that had rejected it previously, but that was after I made significant changes to the story beyond changing the title.
* Finally, the one exception to “No editor ever bought a lousy story because it had a great title” lies in Hollywood, where people routinely buy the film rights to titles and then discard or completely rewrite the story behind the title. Sometimes they even buy the title with the intention of discarding the original story and putting the title on a completely different work, which is how Alan Nourse’s novel title, The Bladerunner, ended up on the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But if you’re not focused on selling the film rights to Hollywood first, and the print publication rights later or maybe never, this consideration doesn’t matter.
P.S. Yoo-hoo! Hollywood! The film rights to “Cyberpunk” are still available! Have your people call my people. Let’s do lunch!
You can connect with Bruce or view some of his work at the following links:
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