The Choppy Waters of Crafting Titles

I came across an unusual review for Legion of the Damned a couple of days ago. It's from a video review site called 'Choppy Reviews' and run by a reader / presenter called Cocolito. A great deal of thought goes into the reviews and even more into the presentation. Cocolito had many nice things to say about Legion of the Damned , which were nice to hear. It would misrepresent his review, however, if I didn't identify a key issue he had with the novel: the four words of the title. Cocolito is not the first to identify this and I've talked about this a few times. Cocolito addresses his issue with great humour and fairness. He deserves a response for that alone, even if I don't agree with him.

While considering the book very good, he doesn't like that 'Legion of the Damned' occurs on the front cover. To justify the title, he would like even more Legion of the Damned in the book. It's not an unfair expectation. We live in a world where many book publishers and authors expect little of their readers. They give their books Ronseal does-what-it-says-on-the-tin titles because they don't expect their readership's attention span to be able to handle anything else. Meanwhile, authors who respect their readership's intellectual capabilities have been using titles as literary devices in their own right for hundreds of years. How does this work in respect to Legion of the Damned? In two ways.

Firstly, there are many books and series that utilise titles that relate to forces, phenomenons and presences that are always present in the book / series but actually spend little time 'on screen' as point-of-view characters. The best example I can think of is the famous title 'The Lord of the Rings'. The 'Lord' is always present - but not always 'on screen'. The Legion of the Damned work in a similar way. They are present in almost all chapters of the novel (read it carefully) before entering and performing their literary function. I won't give away spoilers here. If you haven't read the book, let me encourage you to do so. Not all titles are Ronseal titles. Legion of the Damned isn't. Are the Legion of the Damned present throughout the book. Yes. Do they act in accordance with the background that everyone knows and loves. Yes. Their function necessitates a group requiring their intervention. This allowed me to bring in the Space Marines Excoriators Chapter. I build them from the foundations up in the novel and many readers have loved that a Space Marine chapter could be presented in depth, at the same time as narrative intrigue and action is maintained.

Secondly, the title is a metaphor. There a several legions presented in the novel that are unequivocally 'damned'. Again, without introducing anything that isn't covered in the blurb, there is the 'Legion of the Damned', the Excoriators - who believe themselves damned and doomed to failure - and the World Eaters: a Chaos Space Marine legion enslaved to the god of bloodshed and hatred. All of these legions are damned. The title could relate to any one of them but in fact relates to all three. Titles are literary devices and a good author will make four words work hard for him. A lazy one will slap a Ronseal title on their book and underestimate their readers. It also does raise the issue of the blurb. It is the blurb's responsibility to accurately convey the content of the novel it is introducing. Check it out: it does.

Anyway, Cocolito put a good deal of effort into his review and I believe that he deserved a response. I encourage you to check out his review here. Beyond his issue with the title, he says many nice and insightful things about the novel. Beyond even that, it is a funny and entertaining review that is well worth watching. I've also put a link to Cocolito's review site - called 'Choppy Reviews' - on the side bar blog roll. He deserves to be part of 'the Scene'.

'Killer Titles'

Titles shouldn’t be underestimated. They are not a bolt on, once a writer has completed a story or merely a heading for the sake of having one. A successful narrative is a team effort: every word must do its part and some more than others. The words in a title carry more of that burden because they are the acid test for the piece of fiction. They are the first words chosen by the writer that are seen by a prospective editor or agent or by a potential reader, scanning book spines along a shelf. Writers are judged on their titles in a microsecond. Second chances are rare. Titles need to give the reader an excuse for taking an interest. More of an interest, hopefully, than the excuse offered by the previous title on the pile or the shelf. Titles are the ambassadors of a narrative and if they make a poor impression or no impression at all, then those two or three words can cost a writer thousands.

Successful titles can achieve their aims in a number of ways. The first way in which they can do this is by arousing interest in the reader. The following titles spookily use the same word but essentially achieve the same thing. 15 Hours by Mitchel Scanlon and Execution Hour by Gordon Rennie both establish immediate interest with just two words. They simultaneously suggest a time limit and force the reader to ask a question – which automatically involves them. What happens in 15 Hours or on the Execution Hour?

As well as arouse interest, titles can also promise the reader a good time. The nature of this good time depends upon the genre in which the fiction is set, for example, in the Warhammer universes, action and violence tend to play a major role in a potential reader’s enjoyment of the text. The ‘War’ in ‘Warhammer’ tends to give this away and is an example of a successful title in its own right. Titles like Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill and Death or Glory by Sandy Mitchell accomplish this admirably. The titles say ‘lots of action to be had here’, without being too on the nose.

What a title really needs to do is create more than interest and engagement, however.Titles need to excite. Firstly, a title should excite the writer. It might give them a buzz of expectation and be part of the inspiration either for writing the story or showing it to others. Significant ‘others’ that they will need to excite with the title are potential editors, agents and reviewers: people for whom the title will be a deciding factor in them wanting to spend more time on the narrative. The short story collection Let the Galaxy Burn and Ben Counter’s The Bleeding Chalice both have titles that get me excited about the contents of the narratives. It is sometimes difficult to quantify what is and what isn’t an exciting title. If a writer can’t wait to share their title with others, as well as the story the title heralds, then the chances are the writer is excited about and has created an exciting title.

One gauntlet that all writers have to run is the possibility that their titles will be changed later on in the process. Movers and shakers in the collaborative part of the writing / publishing process will want to do this for a myriad of reasons. Should this be a reason not to strive for the above in a title? No. A writer cannot get to that point without exciting their editor, for example, with a killer title and so therefore even a title that isn’t used still has a role to play and a requirement to excite and be exciting.

The successful Horus Heresy Series is blessed with a myriad of exciting titles. Take the following three: Horus Rising by Dan Abnett, Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow and Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon. All three derive their excitement from giving the suggestion of being ‘in media res’ or in the middle of events. All three also contain verbs that lend them a sense of immediate action and plot movement. Nick Kyme's Back from the Dead achieves the same effect.

Other titles are successful in different ways. Some titles are particularly evocative or make it easy for the reader to picture a strange or unusual situation. Dead Sky, Black Sun by Graham McNeill achieves this. Some titles achieve a resonance or have a memorable nature that sticks with the reader after reading them. Ravenor and Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett are undeniably cool sounding names: they are unusual and contain interesting phonetic patterns that roll of the tongue in such a way as they are suggestive of gravitas or impending conflict. Faith and Fire by James Swallow also uses the sound qualities of the words – the alliteration created through repeated consonant sounds – that make the title easy to say and recall. Alliteration lends a title an almost poetic quality. Metaphors also make memorable titles, forcing the reader to become engaged in the process of combining two ideas to create a fresh and unusual third idea. Dan Abnett does this with the title The Armour of Contempt.

Can titles be successful without following these rules? The answer to this is yes. Space Marine by Ian Watson is about as on the nose as you can get and Nathan Long’s Zombieslayer sets up the straightforward expectation that the novel’s heroes will indeed slay zombies. This does not stop these titles from heralding successful books and in many cases, readers can come to expect them as part of the marketing angle – for example, the Slayer books. Despite this, many stories fall by the wayside, however, because their creators fail to give their titles the thought they need and deserve. Readers cast their eyes along bookstore shelves, skipping innumerable spines before having their interest piqued by a single title that makes them reach for the book (and then hopefully take it to the sales counter and ultimately read it). Feel sorry for the writers of those neglected texts, gathering dust on lonely shelves – but not too sorry. They fell at the first hurdle and failed to give their stories ‘Killer Titles'.

Rob S.