Not me reconsidering the title of my next book "The Ghosts of Tieros Kol" hahaha. But, my last book titles I don't think fall into any tropes too hard, so, I won't burn anything down just yet.
I'll also share the SPFBO X title map thing to really drive home why we should try to be original with our titles...
I feel so validated! Shadow was the biggest word!!!!
Nah, when it comes to your title, ignore me. I don’t know what I’m talking about. haha For what it’s worth, “Tieros Kol” is a really cool sounding made up name. Waaaaaay better than Medalon.
Right? Ursula K. Le Guin I think would back me up that authors and readers often have really low standards in the fantasy fiction genre. Not that there aren’t a lot of good ones, but there are a lot of bad ones.
Indeed, and even a superficial swim in YouTube suggests that most young aspiring writers have between one to 10 fantasy books in them, desperate to be unleashed on the world. It makes me feel a little sad.
I think it's staggeringly difficult to create compelling fantasy or sci-fi.
Based on my reading of Le Guin, I think writing good sci-fi comes down to having real, fleshed out characters. Funny how the basics of good storytelling apply here too.
Silly names, banal and cliched inciting incidents, random world building, childish magic systems, wooden characters and dialogue, tortured writing style - the sins of wanna be, and actual, fantasy writers are extensive. I don't know why so many people imagine themselves to be capable of being a fantasy writer, it's the most difficult genre, to my mind.
I have just this trouble in bookstores’ SF/F sections! It’s so frustrating!
As a science fantasy author, I’ve gone hard in the opposite direction. My first (completed) novel is called Quibble; books to come in the series are Quiddity and Quandary. The Q conceit is perhaps simplistic but I tend to think it’s elegant. I’ve been told, quite strenuously, to rename the first book to clarify its genre. I refuse. Since I’m really b(l)ending genres, I think my titles should express the uniqueness of the books, how they try to stand outside conventions.
This assumes, of course, that modern publishers want their authors to be memorable or for individual titles to stand out. McDonalds does not want its individual cooks to stand out and establish names for themselves, they want them to be infinitely replaceable teenagers. (Though they do have to pay them more than the average fantasy author makes.) Similarly, they don't want anything taking away from the brand name Big Mac, so, since books do have to have separate titles, the next best thing for publishers it to come up with a thousand different ways of saying "Big Mac."
Eric Hoel made a very valuable observation about why all the writers in the Atlantic or The New Yorker sound exactly the same, and why they sound worse when they publish on their own Substacks. The voices you hear in The Atlantic and The New Yorker are not the voices of writers. They are the voices of editors. https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-are-famous-writers-suddenly-terrible
A great deal of what is wrong with literature today, and not just fantasy, is that it is not the voice of the author at all, but the voice of the editors, who are paid agents of conformity. https://gmbaker.substack.com/p/classic-vs-modern-fiction-part-4
Mark, I never regret reading a comment or article of yours. You said this really well.
It reminds me of grading papers and how easy it was to slip into just grading people down if they didn’t conform. And how much I did not want to give prompts that encouraged uniqueness. It’s way harder to grade something unique. Nope, give me something I can check boxes for so I can get on to the other 50 essays.
I try to name books based on the theme of them, rather than an important figure. And neither of the ones I have planned (incl. the one going up on Substack right now) use the word "of." But... the second title is in Latin. I'm not totally sure that's a good one to use. (It just encompasses the theme of the book so well!)
Combine the Latin title with a great cover image, and you may hook me even still. Also, don’t take me too seriously. But I really like the spirit of naming based on theme. I think that’s solid and is a vote in favor of staying power, rather than naming it something like Vampires in Space, which is just begging to be here today, gone tomorrow.
My friends and I love to riff on these trends. A current fixation (that's perhaps falling out of fashion) in YA fantasy seems to be "A ____ of _____ and _____": see "A Song of Ice and Fire", (which isn't YA but probably started it), "Court of Thorns and Roses", "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes", etc. They get increasingly blurry: "A Curse So Dark and Lonely", "Children of Blood and Bone", etc.
Over in the literary fiction world there's a similar but different trend denoting, of all things, smallness? "Small Things Like These", "A Little Life", "Big Little Lies", "Little Fires Everywhere", "Tiny Beautiful Things", etc. When you see those titles you know it's probably gonna be about a middle-aged woman in a cable knit sweater with perfect hair holding a glass of red wine on the balcony of her New England beach house.
The thing is, even if literally everyone hated the uniformity, it would still dominate the market because uniformity reduces unit costs in what is a low margin business.
I predict that in the future, they will run out of combinations of two fantasy title words, and they'll have to add a third. "The Crown of Blood, Iron and Shadows."
I'm about to share your comment to share a tweet I once saw because the "A __ of __ and __" is absolutely something that modern YA fantasy publishers cling to (and I'm not sure whether it alerts you or not if I share the comment, so I'm just going to leave this comment here with the hopes that you will find it and it will give you a good laugh)
This was a fun read. I actually — sometimes — like a shelf of books I’ve never heard of. You can occasionally pick up an hidden gem. I recently read “the masters of solitude” which breaks your “of” rule, but still drew me in. (But the unique cover design was the main cause, the other side to this fantasy marketing coin)
Anyway, masters of solitude was amazing! And I never would have found it if it hadn’t of been on one of those shelf’s that make you go “I thought I was a fantasy fan but I’ve heard of non of these”
This reminds me, a few months back I stumbled into a used books bookstore as well — they were selling these books for the cheapest prices (I got three at the price of half a book!), and even though I had never heard of any of the books, or even the authors most of the time, I thought it was a breath of fresh air since I got to explore books without knowing what it entailed through the internet’s lens. It was just a fresh perspective that truly came from me, myself and I without any influence.
For some reason, the quality of all of the books astounded me as well, the writing captured me immediately, the covers were fun, and if I could I could I would have camped in that store for the rest of summer.
That’s amazing! I tried this once—picking a book just based on the title and cover and description—and I didn’t make it three chapters. It hurts because I know I would eventually find a good one—there are so many good ones—but I’m just so busy… :P
I'm gonna be honest, I don't even read much fantasy and I do recognize and have read a number of the authors in that bookshelf. They aren't great, but they aren't obscure nobodies.
I agree with the premise of this article, but tbh even the names you held up as being good, well, The Return of the King for example is fairly generic, just like The Last Unicorn. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is great, because of the interesting contrasts it sets up (you don't usually put these things together) as is The Once and Future King, which does a lot more than The Return of the King.
This is what's difficult about creating titles--they're so subjective! You say, "Made up names don’t provide a solid hook to peak reader interest." But then you go on to list many titles with made up words that you think are great titles. You seem to like those titles because "the word itself is intriguing enough." But what makes a made-up word intriguing or not? It's very hard to pinpoint.
Titles also have to work within the context the book is published in. I love so many of the same titles you love, but would they work for a modern audience? It's hard to say. I have a hard time picturing the title *The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe* on the shelf of a modern bookstore. (I agree with you that *The Horse and His Boy* is a really great title!)
In the end, the issue is mostly moot (unless you self-publish). Publishers choose titles and have the power to override authors. It's savvy to go in with some great title suggestions, but authors are usually not great at coming up with titles that signal genre and category, so publishers end up picking what they think will work better.
All good points. Really making a good title is somewhat like rolling the dice. I mean you can improve your chances but you can’t guarantee it’s really good. And yeah it’s very time bound a as well.
I enjoyed this a lot. Like you I often find looking at SFF shelves in bookshops a bit depressing. Don’t contemporary readers deserve to discover the classics? I usually end up buying something from the SF Masterworks series because most of the rest looks depressingly… well… generic.
I will admit I have a made-up name in the title of my latest, but it’s no. 4 in the series.
This has very little to do with the naming conversation (great though it is) but as someone who loathes the keep your book to 100k or less writing advice, the Jonathan Strange meme killed me. I want to print it out and hang it 😁
I actually still need to read the book lol. This reminded me and I added it to my Libby audiobook holds -- to find that it's 32 hours long!!! Always heartening as a long book writer/lover.
Lol, I actually do recognize most of the titles and/or authors on that shelf. However, I worked in a library for eight years, first as a page and then a library clerk, so was surrounded by them for hours on end. The thing with naming conventions is that it's partly a marketing tactic of: if you liked fill-in-the-blank-with-popular-book then you might also like this similarly-titled-book. When a new naming trend first starts, it's not too bad in the beginning, but it quickly falls flat with the glut of books that follow it. Book naming is a battle! Finding the right name that fits the book, has a hook, and/or indicates at least something about it (whether it's the tone, setting, genre, main character, or what have you) and isn't bland, generic, confusing, or forgettable is a real struggle. However, when a lot of authors admit to struggling with naming their characters and places, is it really all that surprising if they also struggle with titles?
I have a coworker who reads a lot of indie fantasy/romantisy novels. She says the main reason for this cookie cutter fantasy problem is that all of these authors go to the same workshops and get the same lessons from the same people, and in order to continue selling tickets to these workshops year after year, the trends have to change. This means that a lot of the indie authors are just writing whatever is in vogue at the time. So, if we wanted more creativity in this genre, there needs to be writers who are willing to take risks and/or these workshops need to start losing money.
Yeah, and then you get those new authors or designers who say "it worked for Tolkien, Lewis, Martin, or [insert famous fashion designer here], so it should work for me," to which everyone with a brain should say "but you're not [insert person]."
Not me reconsidering the title of my next book "The Ghosts of Tieros Kol" hahaha. But, my last book titles I don't think fall into any tropes too hard, so, I won't burn anything down just yet.
I'll also share the SPFBO X title map thing to really drive home why we should try to be original with our titles...
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcmVSQ4jp2zQXrcySWOldprK7wiikONCeKQFVeV1JpbsCzUQtkTGO7S1Aj8P6l6zRiOk4QxbcK08tCk2tqEKRf252xwgtOmBcX9DTeeW88-5tgnARVikmzFYkrsWhI41bDIdNVEyFXhHirJqIQFIvAHDWoCx84h6ssMYrR5VLIu2pf_fSqttF-wUEHQWG7/s540/wordle.jpg
I feel so validated! Shadow was the biggest word!!!!
Nah, when it comes to your title, ignore me. I don’t know what I’m talking about. haha For what it’s worth, “Tieros Kol” is a really cool sounding made up name. Waaaaaay better than Medalon.
Yes, to all of that.
But wait, the book covers are hideous too! 😂
Who is buying? The fantasy and sci-fi reading markets must be staggeringly robust, despite the low bar to entry.
Right? Ursula K. Le Guin I think would back me up that authors and readers often have really low standards in the fantasy fiction genre. Not that there aren’t a lot of good ones, but there are a lot of bad ones.
Indeed, and even a superficial swim in YouTube suggests that most young aspiring writers have between one to 10 fantasy books in them, desperate to be unleashed on the world. It makes me feel a little sad.
I think it's staggeringly difficult to create compelling fantasy or sci-fi.
Based on my reading of Le Guin, I think writing good sci-fi comes down to having real, fleshed out characters. Funny how the basics of good storytelling apply here too.
Silly names, banal and cliched inciting incidents, random world building, childish magic systems, wooden characters and dialogue, tortured writing style - the sins of wanna be, and actual, fantasy writers are extensive. I don't know why so many people imagine themselves to be capable of being a fantasy writer, it's the most difficult genre, to my mind.
I have just this trouble in bookstores’ SF/F sections! It’s so frustrating!
As a science fantasy author, I’ve gone hard in the opposite direction. My first (completed) novel is called Quibble; books to come in the series are Quiddity and Quandary. The Q conceit is perhaps simplistic but I tend to think it’s elegant. I’ve been told, quite strenuously, to rename the first book to clarify its genre. I refuse. Since I’m really b(l)ending genres, I think my titles should express the uniqueness of the books, how they try to stand outside conventions.
I love your titles! Combine it with a cover image that foreshadows a little, and I think you have a winner. I love the boldness and the alliteration.
Thank you! I’m a fan of this image, which I use for my Substack avatar: https://platformphotodotorg.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/work-by-christian-hopkins/#jp-carousel-1715
This assumes, of course, that modern publishers want their authors to be memorable or for individual titles to stand out. McDonalds does not want its individual cooks to stand out and establish names for themselves, they want them to be infinitely replaceable teenagers. (Though they do have to pay them more than the average fantasy author makes.) Similarly, they don't want anything taking away from the brand name Big Mac, so, since books do have to have separate titles, the next best thing for publishers it to come up with a thousand different ways of saying "Big Mac."
Eric Hoel made a very valuable observation about why all the writers in the Atlantic or The New Yorker sound exactly the same, and why they sound worse when they publish on their own Substacks. The voices you hear in The Atlantic and The New Yorker are not the voices of writers. They are the voices of editors. https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-are-famous-writers-suddenly-terrible
A great deal of what is wrong with literature today, and not just fantasy, is that it is not the voice of the author at all, but the voice of the editors, who are paid agents of conformity. https://gmbaker.substack.com/p/classic-vs-modern-fiction-part-4
Mark, I never regret reading a comment or article of yours. You said this really well.
It reminds me of grading papers and how easy it was to slip into just grading people down if they didn’t conform. And how much I did not want to give prompts that encouraged uniqueness. It’s way harder to grade something unique. Nope, give me something I can check boxes for so I can get on to the other 50 essays.
Everyone’s playing it safe and lazy.
I try to name books based on the theme of them, rather than an important figure. And neither of the ones I have planned (incl. the one going up on Substack right now) use the word "of." But... the second title is in Latin. I'm not totally sure that's a good one to use. (It just encompasses the theme of the book so well!)
Combine the Latin title with a great cover image, and you may hook me even still. Also, don’t take me too seriously. But I really like the spirit of naming based on theme. I think that’s solid and is a vote in favor of staying power, rather than naming it something like Vampires in Space, which is just begging to be here today, gone tomorrow.
My friends and I love to riff on these trends. A current fixation (that's perhaps falling out of fashion) in YA fantasy seems to be "A ____ of _____ and _____": see "A Song of Ice and Fire", (which isn't YA but probably started it), "Court of Thorns and Roses", "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes", etc. They get increasingly blurry: "A Curse So Dark and Lonely", "Children of Blood and Bone", etc.
Over in the literary fiction world there's a similar but different trend denoting, of all things, smallness? "Small Things Like These", "A Little Life", "Big Little Lies", "Little Fires Everywhere", "Tiny Beautiful Things", etc. When you see those titles you know it's probably gonna be about a middle-aged woman in a cable knit sweater with perfect hair holding a glass of red wine on the balcony of her New England beach house.
Haha! I love it. Should have asked for your input before I wrote this because it sounds like you figured it out before me.
Honestly I love the conformity because it gives those serious about their craft a chance to stand out.
The thing is, even if literally everyone hated the uniformity, it would still dominate the market because uniformity reduces unit costs in what is a low margin business.
I predict that in the future, they will run out of combinations of two fantasy title words, and they'll have to add a third. "The Crown of Blood, Iron and Shadows."
I'm about to share your comment to share a tweet I once saw because the "A __ of __ and __" is absolutely something that modern YA fantasy publishers cling to (and I'm not sure whether it alerts you or not if I share the comment, so I'm just going to leave this comment here with the hopes that you will find it and it will give you a good laugh)
This was a fun read. I actually — sometimes — like a shelf of books I’ve never heard of. You can occasionally pick up an hidden gem. I recently read “the masters of solitude” which breaks your “of” rule, but still drew me in. (But the unique cover design was the main cause, the other side to this fantasy marketing coin)
Anyway, masters of solitude was amazing! And I never would have found it if it hadn’t of been on one of those shelf’s that make you go “I thought I was a fantasy fan but I’ve heard of non of these”
Thanks for the rec! I'll check it out. And thanks for reading.
This reminds me, a few months back I stumbled into a used books bookstore as well — they were selling these books for the cheapest prices (I got three at the price of half a book!), and even though I had never heard of any of the books, or even the authors most of the time, I thought it was a breath of fresh air since I got to explore books without knowing what it entailed through the internet’s lens. It was just a fresh perspective that truly came from me, myself and I without any influence.
For some reason, the quality of all of the books astounded me as well, the writing captured me immediately, the covers were fun, and if I could I could I would have camped in that store for the rest of summer.
That’s amazing! I tried this once—picking a book just based on the title and cover and description—and I didn’t make it three chapters. It hurts because I know I would eventually find a good one—there are so many good ones—but I’m just so busy… :P
I think it also depends on the genre and time of publication haha, most of the books I got were literary classics !
I'm gonna be honest, I don't even read much fantasy and I do recognize and have read a number of the authors in that bookshelf. They aren't great, but they aren't obscure nobodies.
I agree with the premise of this article, but tbh even the names you held up as being good, well, The Return of the King for example is fairly generic, just like The Last Unicorn. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is great, because of the interesting contrasts it sets up (you don't usually put these things together) as is The Once and Future King, which does a lot more than The Return of the King.
Yeah, it’s hard to stay unbiased. I’d be much better suited to writing this article if I didn’t know the stories associated with the titles.
Any from the shelf that you’d recommend?
Not really tbh. Although, you may enjoy Guy Gavriel Kay, as he's more in the literary fantasy camp.
Say no more. I’m adding him to my list.
I’d read a western called Gun Shoot.😂
I’m guessing you’re the kind of person who bunjee jumps and does extreme downhill mountain biking.
I’m not. Gun Shoot sounds like a spoof, like if Terry Pratchett wrote westerns instead of fantasy.
Now that you mention it, you’re right. That would actually be really fun if he wrote a western.
This is what's difficult about creating titles--they're so subjective! You say, "Made up names don’t provide a solid hook to peak reader interest." But then you go on to list many titles with made up words that you think are great titles. You seem to like those titles because "the word itself is intriguing enough." But what makes a made-up word intriguing or not? It's very hard to pinpoint.
Titles also have to work within the context the book is published in. I love so many of the same titles you love, but would they work for a modern audience? It's hard to say. I have a hard time picturing the title *The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe* on the shelf of a modern bookstore. (I agree with you that *The Horse and His Boy* is a really great title!)
In the end, the issue is mostly moot (unless you self-publish). Publishers choose titles and have the power to override authors. It's savvy to go in with some great title suggestions, but authors are usually not great at coming up with titles that signal genre and category, so publishers end up picking what they think will work better.
All good points. Really making a good title is somewhat like rolling the dice. I mean you can improve your chances but you can’t guarantee it’s really good. And yeah it’s very time bound a as well.
I enjoyed this a lot. Like you I often find looking at SFF shelves in bookshops a bit depressing. Don’t contemporary readers deserve to discover the classics? I usually end up buying something from the SF Masterworks series because most of the rest looks depressingly… well… generic.
I will admit I have a made-up name in the title of my latest, but it’s no. 4 in the series.
Yep, I feel like I haven’t run out of critically acclaimed books enough to be desperate to try the used books roulette.
And yeah you can ignore my rules if you want. More like guidelines anyway…
This has very little to do with the naming conversation (great though it is) but as someone who loathes the keep your book to 100k or less writing advice, the Jonathan Strange meme killed me. I want to print it out and hang it 😁
Thanks! I try so hard with the memes, but this one made itself.
I actually still need to read the book lol. This reminded me and I added it to my Libby audiobook holds -- to find that it's 32 hours long!!! Always heartening as a long book writer/lover.
Lol, I actually do recognize most of the titles and/or authors on that shelf. However, I worked in a library for eight years, first as a page and then a library clerk, so was surrounded by them for hours on end. The thing with naming conventions is that it's partly a marketing tactic of: if you liked fill-in-the-blank-with-popular-book then you might also like this similarly-titled-book. When a new naming trend first starts, it's not too bad in the beginning, but it quickly falls flat with the glut of books that follow it. Book naming is a battle! Finding the right name that fits the book, has a hook, and/or indicates at least something about it (whether it's the tone, setting, genre, main character, or what have you) and isn't bland, generic, confusing, or forgettable is a real struggle. However, when a lot of authors admit to struggling with naming their characters and places, is it really all that surprising if they also struggle with titles?
So... "Shadow of the Blood Wolf" is right out....
(Although a quick DDG search with quote turns up nothing.)
I have a coworker who reads a lot of indie fantasy/romantisy novels. She says the main reason for this cookie cutter fantasy problem is that all of these authors go to the same workshops and get the same lessons from the same people, and in order to continue selling tickets to these workshops year after year, the trends have to change. This means that a lot of the indie authors are just writing whatever is in vogue at the time. So, if we wanted more creativity in this genre, there needs to be writers who are willing to take risks and/or these workshops need to start losing money.
Kind of like the fashion industry. Some people set the trends, and we all just race to keep up until they change again. Then we race some more.
Yeah, and then you get those new authors or designers who say "it worked for Tolkien, Lewis, Martin, or [insert famous fashion designer here], so it should work for me," to which everyone with a brain should say "but you're not [insert person]."