The title; ask any writing guru for advice on how to be a better writer, and the first thing they will probably mention is not only the attention you need to pay to the the quality of your work, but also that the quality of your writing should shine through the title of your work.
The Importance Of a Good Title When Writing
The title introduces you and your work to you audience. You have to be able to inform, be precise, capture the eyes, tease the imagination and spark the mind of your potential reader.
Many manuscripts of a host of both struggling, budding and accomplished writers, are gathering dust in the backrooms of publishing houses as the writers simply failed the title test.
Editors of magazines and newspapers are bestowed with a certain privilege. Basically, their task is to vet not only the content and its eventual arrangement in the complete magazine layout, they also get to pick and decide on which story will grace the front cover of the magazine.
Of Headlines, Catchy Titles And The Ever Green Flourishing Tabloid Industry
For the writer, the chance to write the headline story is usually more than they could ask for. On the other hand, headlines to consumers of the news mean a totally different prospect.
There is a certain allure that lies in the beautifully crafted word play of headlines that readers cannot simply ignore. In fact, many readers make purchases purely based on how the titled related to them ; a fact that has fuelled the much publicly loathed but secretly heavily imbibed tabloid industry.
Yes, the readers know that being a tabloid, the magazine they are purchasing is packed with bogus sensationalism.
But what the hell. The prospect that the title promises is just too juicy to overlook. Have a feel of the following random titles:
” David Beckham and Posh Spice Exclusive x-Rated Pictures “ , one popular tabloid screamed out.
” PANDEMONIUM ! “ may be the only bold-ed word on the front page of that newspaper.
Or, One that is spotted in a Local Daily Recently ” Gor Sips Tusker “ – in reference to a soccer derby between two local giants Gor and Tusker FC, where Gor edged out the later 2-0. Gor Mahia, or simply Gor, is one one of the most successful and supported community based sides in the local league (The Kenyan Premier League), while Tusker is a large multinational controlled by the Diaggio group that heavily sponsors sporting events including its equally successful soccer side -Tusker FC. Tusker is a very successful brand in East Africa, to the point of being the unofficial national Kenyan beer. In fact, its is so easy to spot a Kenyan when abroad; chances are that they will probably be donning a Tusker t-shirt/basketball cap and a huge proud smile.Oh! one more thing; the community base for Gor are The Luo. The tribe from western Kenya from which Pres. Barack Hussein Obama’s traces his paternal roots.
Good Article Title Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices in Freelance Online Writing.
This title business even gets more complicated in Online publishing, especially with all the fuss about keywords. Good search engine optimization (SEO) practice involves including at least some, if not all , of your keywords in your title. This task as many of you here in Triond may testify, may be challenging especially if you are new to Online writing.
So daunting is the task of coming up with a good title that , the writing process may actually stop at this initial step. Below is a list of top quality book titles that I stumbled Upon on the Internet, that may help get your writing vehicle moving. It is a long list of 100, but trust me, you will not even notice the length of the task. Such is their quality. Some are plain funny in their metaphorical nature, some of the titles are plain quirky, others carry a hint of controversy while some of these titles simply exhibit creative genius.
Top 100 Book Titles as voted by Readers
I have gone ahead to three- star [***] my picks from the lengthy list. To me, these titles pass “the title Test” with flying colours. I chose to use three stars instead of the customary five-star rating since I am yet to go read a host of them. But nonetheless, all these articles deserve the accolades as they were voted by a community of regular readers and authors at goodreads.com.
People who posses the reading culture.
With a good Title, the work of increasing exposure and selling as a writer is half done. As you will notice, some of the popular titles in this list have been made to blockbuster movies- Case in Point: The multi-Oscar winner: No Country for Old Men and The Devil Wears Prada.
Top Ten Best Book Titles
- [***] Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep by Philip K. Dick
- The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of The Apocalypse by Robert Rankin
- [***] Eat, Shoots & Leaves The Zero Tolerance Approach To Punctuation by Lynne Trus
- I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosely
- Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler
- [***] Stop Dressing Your Six Year Old Like A Skank: And Other Words Of Delicate Southern Wisdom by Celia Rivenbark
- Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil by John Berendt
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide TO the Galaxy (Hitchhiker’s Guide #1) by Douglas Adams
Best Book Titles 11-20
- An Arsonist’s Guide To Writers’ Home In New England by Brocke Clarke
- The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Might -Time by Mark Haddon
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- [***] Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off (Country Music Collection #1) by Cara North
- Women Are From Venus, Men Are From Hell by Amanda Newman
- [***]The Earth, My Butt, And Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
- The Long Dark Tea Time OF The Soul by Douglas Adams
- I Am America by Stephen Colbert
- Still Life With Psychotic Squirrel by C.B. Smith
- A Heart Breaking Work By Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
- Another Bullshit Night In Suck City by Nickk Flynn
- [***] How To Lose Friends & Alienate People by Toby Young
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by
- [***] If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?! By Cynthia Heimel
- The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead by Max Brooks
- [***] I Still Miss My Man But My Aim Is Getting Better (Pocket Book Series) by Sarah Shankman
- How To Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art by Kathleen Meyer
- The Baby Jesus Butt Plug: A Fairy Tale by Carltom Mellick III
- The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Best Book Titles 31-40
- Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, Ray Cruz
- The Spy Who Came in From The Cold by Jon Le Carre
- When Will Jesus Bring Beck The Pork Chops by George Carlin
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, Ron Barret
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Annie Shaffer, Annie Barrows
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory Rabassa
- Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Best Book Titles 41-50
- [***] Well- Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thactcher Ulrich
- Hitler the Cat Goes West by Robert G. Pielke
- The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
- [***] I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by Tucker Max
- This Is Not a Novel by David Markson
- The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton
- [***]She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
- [***] Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining: America’s Toughest Family Court Judge Speaks Out by Judy Sheindlin, Josh Getlin
- [***] English as a Second F*cking Language: How to Swear Effectively, Explained in Detail with Numerous Examples Taken From Everyday Life by Sterling Johnson
Best Book Titles 51-60
Best Book Titles 61-70
- A Wrinkle in Time (Time, #1) by Madeleine L’Engle
- Even God Is Single, So Stop Giving Me A Hard Time by Karen Salmansohn
- [***] High Heels and Dirty Deals – Globetrotting Tales of Debauchery from a Binge-drinking Nymphomaniac by Brett Tate
- The Haunted Vagina (Avant Punk Book Club) by Carlton Mellick III
- Fuck This Book by Bodhi Oser
- On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
- Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed by Lance Carbuncle
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Best Book Titles 71- 80
- As Hot as It Was You Ought to Thank Me by Nanci Kincaid
- Walter the Farting Dog: Trouble At the Yard Sale by William Kotzwinkle & Glenn Murray
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
- The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
- [***] What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shad Helmstetter
- Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (Goodreads Author)
- The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore
- [***] I Gave You My Heart, but You Sold It Online (Domestic Equalizers Book 3) by Dixie Cash
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Best Book Titles 81- 90
- Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants by Dav Pilkey
- Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins
- [***] Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez & Edith Grossman
- [***] Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes by Lewis Grizzard
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, & A.W. Wheen
- The Faggiest Vampire by Carlton Mellick III
- Rode Hard, Put Up Wet (Rough Riders, #2) by Lorelei James
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker’s Guide, #2) by Douglas Adams
- You Suck: A Love Story (Love Story, #2) by Christopher Moore
Best Book Titles 91-100
- Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
- [***] All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre
- The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague
- Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- [***] There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble by Laurie Notaro
- The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
- Catapult Soul by Brian Celio
- Dance Lessons for Zombies by Peter Hiett
- No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
- [***] The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World by Favell Lee Mortimer, & Todd Pruzan
