Urgh. I hate coming up with titles.
I don’t entirely know why. I just do. Nothing I can come up with seems to fit — I know what I want the title to say, I know the feel I want to convey, what I don’t want to say or push into the reader’s face. But none of the words that I come up with fit together, or they sound trite, or clichéd, or even worse, saccharine.
It took me months to get “In the Dark,” and I’m not even sure the process I used. I agonized. I wrote lists. I read my entire Thesaurus. Twice. It just hit me out of the blue one day — boom, “In the Dark.” It’s a vampire murder mystery and the main character hasn’t been a vampire for long and is sorely undereducated about her new condition. Therefore, in both senses of the phrase, she is in the dark. Haha. Double entendre, which I wanted for this title. Don’t ask why, I just like them.
So the evil faerie story is almost done, and the working title is still “Evil Faerie Story.” Awesome. I want to convey to the reader somehow that this is a faerie story, but a creepy faerie story. I do not want to bludgeon my readers with the word “faerie” right in the title, I want to imply. The main character must make a physical and mental journey to accomplish her twin goals of saving her best friend and saving herself. I’d like to convey the journey, a journey through Faerie and one’s own mind. I keep coming back to “The Dark and Twisting Road,” but something about it grates. I don’t love it. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it.
So now what? I’ve narrowed down what I want to convey (faeries, journeys), I’ve read my Thesaurus (three times), and there just aren’t too many awesome words or phrases to describe what I want. “Keep yourself upon the trail” “Don’t leave the path” “Trail of breadcrumbs” “Labyrinth” (taken) “Journey within.” Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
“This Dark and Twisting Road.”
“A Dark and Twisting Road.”
“A Dark and Twisted Road”
Hm. I kind of like that.
Maybe I’ll sit on that one for a week, and see if I still like it then. I don’t know why I like it better than the first one, but I kind of do.
Wish me luck. And a fertile title imagination.
