Doubloons in the Deep: Art of the Title

The business of creating titles can be complicated. Titles have purpose. Least of all, they put a short (or long) name to a body of words so that readers, scholars, and librarians can identify them. At best, they represent a theme or an ideal. They may also hint to the solution of a mystery, mean to advertise their wares, or merely signify the first and easiest thought in their authors’ heads.

The best titles are memorable. They are labels that allow us to file away impressions of the works to which they’re attached. Isn’t that what we writers hope for — to have our pieces remembered by readers?

While your primary schoolteacher’s objective may have been to get students to put down any old something for a title, just to get started and move on, such a dismissive approach to the importance of a provocative heading has served no professional writer.

A title is just as important to a poem as it is to a novel, an article, or a movie; a poem’s title is an opportunity. Poetry, by nature of its brevity (as opposed to prose), must depend on succinctness to convey its intended significance within the limits of any given poem’s maximum lines and form. Why not, then, use a poem’s title as an additional line?

A title of “Untitled” almost always trumpets a missed opportunity, by its author, to take great advantage of all and any of the reasons listed above.

Many poets and writers have their own specific methods for generating appropriate (and hopefully artful) titles. Some of these involve historical, literary traditions or techniques.

A list of these long-established title-designs may include:

Name of the protagonist

Name of the antagonist

Name of the location or setting

Descriptive phrase representing the plot

Duplicate of the first line in a poem

Duplicate of the last line in a poem

Single word

Meandering phrase

Nonsensical sentence that later makes sense

Promise of magic (or blood. Or magic and blood.)

Other methods tend to put to use one-time constructions skewed to the material at hand. This is the sort of title I like to see writers employ — one developed through customization.

One of my favorite techniques for coming up with intriguing titles is one I borrow from conceptual illustration. When I illustrate a book cover, a poem, or other body copy (such as in editorial or advertising), I read through the material closely and look for a striking conceptual image, or a vivid descriptive passage from which to develop my artistic representation. In this case, I don’t mine the title for its obvious visual inspiration. That’s too easy. The deeper the well of the source, the more intriguing the final image is likely to be when introducing a work. Especially if it appears to have some, even slight, conflict with its title.

“How does this apply to writing?” you may be asking. (“And I’m not sure I want to think about conflict with an illustration that doesn’t yet exist . . . ”)

Okay, I know, let’s go back to this phrase: “I borrow from conceptual illustration.”

A title, as I’ve said before, is an opportunity to label, remind, represent, hint, signify, advertise, and use to give more to the reader. In poetry, rather than repeat the first or any line in a poem, instead dig deeply into that poem for a concept or image that’s layered there, perhaps a metaphor that’s never otherwise clarified. In prose, look for a chapter with an especially fine action sequence or passage of lyric description and choose a title that partially references it.

If you do this, you draw your readers deeper into the writing, as well. People do judge books by covers; they are at least intrigued by strong imagery (and titles that conjure images). Readers — I, included — are often drawn through stories and poems by the sweet-scented carrot-of-a-promise made by the introductory elements of a piece of writing. We will read on, wondering when we shall make the discovery that ties the title (and/or cover) to the content. It’s like searching for treasure.

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