This post started as a rant to my daughter one evening. She thought it was hilarious and has been bugging me ever since to post it. So here it is!

I hate coming up with titles. They should all be banned and everyone shall henceforth be required to deduce the subject of a blog post purely by silly reading the darn post.

Not really. I wish I could, but I suppose that’s not very kind of me to set you adrift like that.

But really, coming up with a title that will simultaneously tell you everything you need to know about a book or blog post and yet not spoil it is, frankly, ridiculous.

This is not just a me problem. How I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when Brandon Sanderson told his editor that the fifth Stormlight Archive book was to be called, “The Book of Endless Pages.” I’m sure the editor’s expression would have powered a goodly number of bouts of laughter from me. He also tried to name a book “Nowhere” before his editor convinced him to switch the title of the book which would become Cytonic.

Titles have to carry the weight of a book, and like naming a baby, it takes an enormous amount of effort trying to find a name that will carry it through life with minimal ridicule and maximal sales. That’s why you get series with a clearly defined pattern, or trends in book titles like “A (Noun) of (Flowery Nouns) and (Nouns).”

When one book does well, everyone decides to copy everything from the story to the cover to the —you guessed it—the title.

Can all the “(Boy Name) and the (Dangerous Magical Thingamajobs” please stand up?

And if you buck the trend and pick something else, your book won’t sell. That is, until readers get tired of not being able to tell the difference between all the books on their shelves and get mad. Then it’s off to a new trend!

Anyways, back to wracking my brains for another title…