Titles: either they come to you in a flash or you struggle with them for perhaps longer than it took to write the story.
The title is the first point of contact with a potential reader, which makes it pretty important. It’s got to catch your attention sufficiently that you read the first paragraph. After that, the story has to sell itself.
B.W. Clough and David Steffen offer some helpful hints on giving your story just the right title with examples of things that work and things that don’t.
Even the best writers have title trouble. Some of Shakespeare’s titles wouldn’t leap off the shelf at me: Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well (why bother, then?), Much Ado About Nothing (ditto). He did much better with The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew.
Other top writers have also had difficulty creating titles to match their works. Here’s a list, compiled by Emily Temple, of famous books that began life with different names than we know them by. One she missed for Gone With the Wind was Mules in Horses’ Harnesses.
