Let’s say you’ve written a novel.

Now comes the tricky question: what punchy word or phrase could you possibly use to encapsulate your story? You have poured so much time and effort  into your book. How could you be expected to boil it down to a couple of words?

You turn to the internet for aid, only to be met with a flurry of self-proclaimed experts, best-seller guaranteed formulae, and psychological analysis. They should be short, but also informative in what they invite us to expect. They should indicate the genre of the book – imagine, for example, the classic fantasy formula ‘A … of … and…’ (almost certainly inserting at least one of shadow, sword, night, or flame). You must, of course, throw in a keyword that will actually appear in the book (think Philosopher’s Stone). Why not also name it after the main hero, or at least the main theme? Oh, and don’t forget that you have to have some quirky juxtaposition in there as well! 

You will shut your laptop more perplexed than when you started. The advice is conflicting. But most importantly it is no longer to do with the novel itself – it is solely advising you on how to make a book commercially successful, not artistically so. 

Consequently, keywords are chosen for search engine optimisation. Cliché titles are there to lure a captive audience into yet another volume in their preferred genre. 

The pressure for a book’s title to appeal to the audience often leads editors to change the title that the writer originally had in mind. Think, for example, of Jean-Paul Satre’s Nausea, which he himself wanted to call Melancholia, after an engraving by Albrecht Dürer. 

‘Are such cheat codes inherently bad?’, you may ask. ‘YES!’, I would shout, without a doubt. 

However, before we get into the nitty-gritty of my rant, it would be useful to take a step back and look at the history of ‘titles’. In the earliest days of literature they (like the name of the author) were not present in the place we think they belong nowadays: front and centre. If the author did not make a paratextual reference to the piece near the beginning or the end (like ‘what Herodotus learnt by inquiry is here set out’), then we only have a name if it has been reserved through oral transmission or added later. Even when printed books were invented, the situation did not change that much: title pages were not in vogue, but rather the reader had to go to the end of the book (the colophon) to find out the name of the tome they were reading. It was only from c.1475-80 that the title page made its entrance onto the literary scene, and this was its one appearance in a book. Far different to the flurry of front cover, back cover, title page, and that other odd secondary title page immediately after the first that we now are faced with. 

Their original purpose was merely to identify and distinguish– the books of Moses were called by their first words in Hebrew, Cicero’s works when first categorised were labelled by their subject matter (‘On Friendship’, ‘On Old Age’, etc.), and most of Plato’s dialogues were named after their speakers. Such title habits are still common in academic and non-fiction writing – their titles function to specify succinctly their subject matter, for anything vague would actively harm their purpose.  

You would expect that, since we now have other means of simply identifying one novel from another (e.g. a 10/13 number International Standard Book Number), books that do not seek to inform, but entertain, could throw off the shackles of deterministic naming systems. I would say that the practices suggested above keep fiction in this age-old prison. 

These conventions suggest to hem the book into one genre with cliched naming patterns. To give the potential reader a hint of what will be inside – whether the name of the eponymous hero, the setting, an important object, or the central theme. This is no different from the traditions of yore: our A Court of Thorns and Roses might as well just be called Romantic Fantasies 1(followed by volumes 2-5), given that the title is doing little more than shouting its genre at us. 

I believe it is time to fully appreciate and unleash the power of a book title. 

A title should not be a mercantile addition to the content of the book, for then it is no better than the blurb, the reviews on the back, or even the list of upcoming publications inside the cover. It is far more exciting to see a title as a gateway into reading a book, not just to buy it. As the first thing you will notice about a book, titles nowadays are truly one of the most versatile epitextual elements at an author’s disposal. 

As you might expect, plenty of literary analysis has gone into the possible roles a title can play. Genette’s divisions (Structure and Functions of the Title in Literature, 1988) are a good starting point. He says the only mandatory function of a title is that of identification – just to differentiate this book from all other books. However, this function can never stand alone, as even the most basic form of identification (like a number) can be loaded with meaning. The second role a title plays is that of description. Here, he highlights the split between thematic and rhematic titles, the former of which are “what is talked about”, the latter “what is said about it”. Thematic titles could indicate the place of action, the characters involved, or of course a central theme. Rhematic titles are few and far between, nowadays, but used to be very much the norm. They are the most explicitly generic titles (Odes, Hymns, Essays, Poems, Autobiography, Dictionary etc.). Titles also have a connotative function – i.e. effects caused by the way in which the title (whether thematic or rhematic) is expressed: for example, the cliched titles of modern fantasy novels, or of older surrealist works. These situate a text in a wider literary genealogy. Lastly, is the seductive function. This is not a separate function, but rather something that exists in union or opposition to the other functions depending on the audience. However, Genette just categorises – he does not judge. We could turn to Umberto Eco to find a more vocal critic on the merits of each type of title. 

When asked what a title meant, the philosopher Gotthold Lessing once said that it meant ‘no more and no less than a title should. A title should not be a bill of fare.’ Eco (Apostille) echoes this as a word of warning to writers: the most sensitive author would be aware that no writer should supply interpretations of his work within the work itself, so the main problem a title has is that it is a key to interpretation. How can they avoid biasing the reader by their choice of title? Though he marks them out as not the most evil kind of title, Eco says that even just naming a narrative after its eponymous character is too great an interference on the part of the author: by putting this name on the cover, they focus the reader’s attention to the loss of the other characters. 

 All the suggestions listed at the start only have one effect – they reduce a book’s entropy, its capacity for multiple conflicting readings. Eco here concludes with the advice, ‘A title must muddle the reader’s idea, not regiment them.’ 

So what paths, within Genette’s and Eco’s boundaries, are left open to the budding fiction writer trying to pinpoint a title? Definitely not rhematic titles – they are for  the realm of non-fiction, ancient works, or at a stretch assorted collections of fiction. Nor specific thematic titles, both because they limit the scope of a book and lay too heavy a hand on the reader’s interpretation. Yet a title has to have a descriptive function, and it seems I have just ruled out both of the options. This, fortunately, does not have to be  the case: thematic titles need not always be limiting and specific. 

Say that you walked into a book store with no specific bounty in mind, just scouting for an interesting read. Tell me truly, which title would catch your eye more: a cliche one, or one that for the life of you you cannot figure out what the contents could be? I would wager that few people would pick up the first to read the blurb – they could probably guess most of what it would say – but the second would be so annoyingly opaque that you couldn’t help but leaf through its pages.

I would suggest that the best title is one which give you no hints, no genre marks, no focal points, and no character/place biases before you read it, but which, when you finish reading the book, carries so many polyphonic references to the contents that you have an epiphany why it was given that name. Such a title will give the reader no guidance, no surface level interpretative training-wheels at all as they start their journey, but leave them to work out themselves why the book came to be named that title specifically. It need not be distant from the thrust of the book to be vague: in fact, realising what the relevance of a title is is like finding the blueprints to a complex building. Beforehand you have no idea how it could possibly fit together, but then you see how integral the title is, inescapable for its initial obscurity. 

An example could be a work by Eco himself: The Name of the Rose. Of course the word ‘rose’ has a huge array of symbolic meanings – love, mystery, war, etc. – yet none are the whole key to unlocking this medieval detective story. Eco finishes the story by quoting a Latin hexameter from Bernard of Morley: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus (the rose of old remains only in name, we hold onto bare names). Maybe this is the clue to the title – a nominalist reading about the enduring power of names in spite of physical destruction? However, this interpretation cannot explain all the chaos that unfurls in the narrative (no spoilers!). In short, I’m still not entirely sure on how I would like to interpret the title in light of the contents of the book, and that is what makes the title great. It does not limit how I read the book, but rather challenges me to dive headlong into different interpretations in the search for how I could make sense of it. 

So, to counter the tsunami of advice online on how to write a (boring and interpretation-limiting) book title, I’d like to propose only two guidelines:

  1. You don’t need to be generic to attract attention – the introductory function of a title will be enhanced by its inscrutability, not diminished
  2. Don’t tell me, let me figure it out for myself – keywords are commercial, a feeling is artistic 

Both of these points boil down to one phrase: a title should attract, not inform. A title shapes the process of reading more than any other device, so it should be treated with tender loving care: it should not just look like it could have been AI generated (my favourite YA title that was generated for me was ‘Because I am Pandas’?!). 

You may ask whether the present trend really is so bad that an author should have to go to a much greater effort to name their book. My answer would be that, firstly, the title is a part of the work and it shouldn’t be an afterthought anymore than the very plot of the book! And, secondly, even though a cliche title may not be harming anyone, it is the active choice not to embrace the positive aspects of a title that is grating. There are countless banging titles which do intrigue, perplex, and enlighten without revealing what lies hidden within their covers (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird). Why not join them? I don’t think I’m naive to believe that the system I outline could work: that novels named for the sake of their art are far more interesting and alluring than novels named out of commercial ease.

 I just wish that one day when I walk into Waterstones I won’t be confronted by an assault course of tables stacked with clones.