Kate Furnivall: What’s in a Name?
Nearly a year ago, I published a guest essay from Kate Furnivall about addressing her uncovered Russian ancestry through fiction. This summer, she returns to the world of The Russian Concubine with a new novel called The Girl from Junchow… except in the United Kingdom, where it’s known as The Concubine’s Secret. As the possibility of a new guest essay emerged, I found myself wondering about those two titles—so I asked if she’d be willing to explain how they came about.
Titles are magic keys. They open the door to a book. They are designed to give a sense of what lies between the covers but in such an intriguing way that they tempt the reader to pick the book off the shelf in the bookstore.
Question: What makes a good title? Answer: One that sells books.
This is the holy grail of both novelists and publishers. Ideally, any writer will tell you, it is preferable to have settled on a title before even starting to put pen to paper because it means you have worked out exactly what lies at the heart of your book, what your focus is as its author. It means that every day when you open up the file on your computer, it is there in front of you in large letters—the title of the book. Reminding you what it is about.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in such an ideal world? But sadly we don’t. So titles do not always slot into the brain as conveniently as authors would wish. Think about the titles that have attracted acclaim. There are some great ones out there—For Whom The Bell Tolls and Gone With The Wind. And more recently of course the supremely simple The Da Vinci Code. I’d really like to know how convoluted was the process by which those titles were chosen.
An author can spend months trying to drum up the right title. I know. I’ve done it. As the days and months tick by while you’re writing the book, endless wakeful hours in bed are spent with your mind churning, trying out every different combination of words. Whether you’re mowing the lawn, cleaning your teeth or feeding the cat, your mind keeps tugging at the knotty problem. It can end up driving you mad. And that’s when—if you’ve any sense—you rope in your publisher and agent to help.
30 June 2009 | guest authors |
