Great Titles

[Steven Hunley]

The first thing that hooks the reader is the first thing they lay eyes on, which is the title.

Just lately the authors in the short story forum have great titles, like Bridge of Worms or A Fistfull of Soup. I'm always catching myself inventing great titles on the spur of the moment, like ' Tastes Sweeter than Mango' for a yet to be written erotic piece, or my unstarted noir thriller, 'Mirror of Deception'.

Anyone got some great titles out there? What does it take to make a great title anyway?

[MANICHAEAN]

Great idea for a Monday morning. My nominations:
1. Wolf Woops Wopperty Woo Woo.
2. The Pachydermatous Bronx Paradise.
3. Pythian Perceptions.
4. Goodnight Possum.
5. Al Tinos Verde Revisited.

[cacian]

Great titles there Steven although I always wonder about your avatar . Is that Popeye? If it is not apologies.
Anyway titles are like the hook they captivate the reader's imagination. That is the first glance you get from a book and then usually the print.
One of the title I find intriguing is by Pratchett ''I shall Wear Midnight'' It plays on a visual versus vacuous.
One thing sometimes happens with titles is that I read a book and then the title is not linked not found with the references of a book and so I don't get the why the separation.
A great activity we are often asked to do as a warmup or brainstorming in my writing class is to write a story around one proposed title. It is to interpret its meaning whilst we write a story. The end result is always surprising because not one story is the same although the title is one and only.
Here is a couple of my titles I made up earlier:

a. the jolly dormant
b. beneath the sirens pale
c, the river could not wait
d. perfect lays ahead
d. the pager's wages

[Steven Hunley]

Yes, it IS my avatar. Betcha the woman in yours isn't you either. I agree, a good title can be a most effective hook, that and the cover art. I like to always include my titles in the story too, and believe it provides a kind of continuity.

About my avatar. I hit upon it while writing a short called French Sailor, and decided to keep it, since it gave no indication of my true identity, and I didn't want the readers swayed in any particular directions. Here's the short:

The French Sailor Trilogy

The French Sailor
by
Steven Hunley


Jean Paul Belmondo was named after the actor. It happened because his mother knew the moment she was impregnated. She remembered right where and when. It was in the last-row of the little theater down the street when they were playing Breathless. With subtitles. That’s when they stopped reading and started making out. So Jean Paul. That was alright with him. After all, he wasn’t the only man with a French name living in Quebec. There were plenty of others, as the movie was quite popular.

When he walked downstairs that typical Canadian morning to eat, there was nothing, only a huge mountain of spinach left over from the night before. He unwrapped a cube of butter, stacked it on the pinnacle of the spinach mountain, put it in the microwave, and gave the button a push. It was done in two minutes.

Then he ate it. It wasn’t remarkable, him eating it all. That was just his way. What was remarkable was what happened next.

His right arm started to itch, then his left. His right forearm started to swell, then his left, then both at one time, though his elbows stayed pointy.

“Q’uest que ce?” he remarked, though I can’t be sure, it was in French.

A dark shape started to form on his skin marking his forearm. It was T-shaped stick with a curve and something all pointy on the ends.

Starting to dress, he slipped on the skinny jeans he normally wore. But somehow he thought,
“Il n’est pas bon.”

So he walked to his uncle’s room who was an ex-hippy who lived in Berkeley when he was an exchange student Francaise. In the back of the closet he found what he wanted, a pair of white bell-bottomed pants. Then he located a wide belt to match. He looked in the mirror.

“C’est bon,” he said to himself, as nautically as possible.

He went back to his room and found a striped long-sleeved shirt with no collar.

“Oui,” he said to the mirror.

Lastly he went to his brother’s room and stole his white sailor’s cap left over from French Halloween when he attended a masked ball as Marshmallow Françoise.

Before he walked out into the sunshine, he pulled up the sleeve of his right arm and exposed the now perfectly formed tattoo of an anchor, like an Ed Hardy piece of human art.

He looked at himself in the mirror before exiting the door.

“C’est magnifique!” he announced to himself in a remarkedly Gaulic fashion.

He had an odd thought he’d drive to the docks. On the way he noticed that only skinny girls demanded his attention. The skinnier the better. He started wondering just where was it he could obtain a corn-cob pipe.

“Ou est le pipe cob-corn?” he said, while scratching his noggin and squinting his eyes.

When he got to the docks and was looking for a likely ship, a man with a tie and bowler hat, a rather wimpy-looking man if you get my drift, started to approach. Somehow he knew that the man wanted to borrow money for a hamburger, and pay for it next Tuesday. He started to run willy-nilly to avoid him, and accidently ran off the end of the pier.

A giant brute of a man with arms like tree trunks who needed a shave caught him as he fell off the pier and saved his life.

When the para-medics tried to revive him they asked him who he was.

“I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.” he muttered, and they took him away.

A week later when he got out of the hospital, the doctors told him he’d had an allergic reaction.

“And lay off the spinach,” was their professional advice, and the only one Canadian National Health would pay for.

“Mais oui,”he replied, and ended the story right there.

***

The river could not wait is evocative as all get-out and beneath the sirens pale too, downright evocative, as is Goodnight Possum and Al Tinos Verde Revisited. You read titles like this you just HAVE TO read on.