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I am going to agree with Surtsey here. I do not think single word titles are the prevalent. I still think I can answer the question of what are the benefits of using a single word title. I am also going to focus on "Climb" and not "Superhot", as I think the second is just 2 words.
Titles of things are there for the first time impact. You want to hear the ...
18
The short answer is that there is no right answer. The hardest word choice in any book is the handful of words that make up the title. And if I were allowed to give advice then the advice I would give is to trust in magical word angels who will eventually whisper in your ear and tell you what the title should be.
But let's say that the whispering word ...
16
If you think the title is the best fit for your novel, you should keep it. There are many novels with the same name in the market, which makes it a little hard to find a novel with smaller market presence written by unknown author. Thus why, it is only a problem if the novel you're writing has the same name with another novel written by an author with more ...
16
Short answer: no.
Long answer:
A title is a very important part of a novel. That and the cover are the only two things you have selling your book to someone browsing the bookshelves (or internet). The title is what gets them to open the book. From there you should have them (assuming you have a good grip as your opening line), but you'll never get there ...
answered Jul 8 '17 at 22:34
Thomas Reinstate Monica Myron
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14
As with others, I think your assertion is incorrect. Based on an analysis of the 342 film title given in this list of film releases in 2019, I find that 26% of films have 1 word titles, 32% have 2 word titles, 19% have 3 word titles, 13% have 4 word titles, and the remaining 10% have 5 or more. The longest was 9 words.
This shows a strong preference for ...
12
It's fine to shorten but only when the reader can fill in the blank.
So far, you have:
Managing a lot of people is a very difficult problem to Lot of
people, difficult problem
In this example, you have 3 concepts:
It's about managing people
There are a lot of people
It's hard
The most important of these is the first, that your article is about ...
answered Apr 1 '19 at 15:19
10
Book titles are often duplicated quite by accident, and there is pretty much no way of preventing other people from publishing a book with the same title. It happens all the time, and as long as the title isn't something trademarked (like something in the Star Wars universe), it's generally not a problem.
I'd recommend you concentrate on writing the book, ...
10
The reason, as you guessed, is marketing. One word that sums up something memorable about a movie is a mental handle, it can appear in far larger type on a billboard, it eats up only 1 second in a 15 second commercial, it is very easy for people to recognize and associate a single word; psychologically that happens faster.
If I say "Avatar" you know exactly ...
answered Oct 14 '19 at 17:50
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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9
Yes, they mean exactly the same. There are plenty of stories that have "who didn't have" in the title; and it really doesn't connote an event in the past. By contrast, Amazon has no fiction books with "who doesn't have" in the title.
It's very common to use the past tense in the title of a story, without any implication that something happened in the ...
9
There are 3573 entries on Goodreads with the word "f***" in the title (I only splat it for this site, not for my own sensibility). The titles contain the full word, spelled out.
2744 entries with the word s*** in the title.
And so on.
It's just not an issue with many publishers. It may be for others but those others likely wouldn't publish your book ...
answered Mar 1 '19 at 5:19
9
I think you need either a more general title for your book, or a more specific title for your first chapter.
The main thing I see wrong with that is it will make it seem like the whole story is about Chapter 1, and then Chapter 2 is about ... another story? After the story?
But many stories are named after the crucial event in the story. The title "When ...
answered Aug 9 '19 at 19:26
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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9
The following is a VERY naive piece of research.
I've downloaded the IMDB titles dataset (available here: https://datasets.imdbws.com/title.basics.tsv.gz), and took the 3rd column - primaryTitle. I then created a histogram of the number of titles containing each count of words.
One very probable problem is I'm not taking language into consideration; ...
8
This may seem like a trivial distinction, but as a title choice it's important as the title conveys an overall sense of the tone of the story.
First of all, the use of the contraction didn't is less formal than without so it might be best to consider the verbiage you've used throughout the story and match the word choice to the formality of the voice in ...
8
As the other answers have stated, I don't believe re-using the story's name for the first chapter is a particularly good idea, especially if it means something different later on in your story. However...
Would the answer be any different if it were the last, or any other chapter?
Yes.
It's not unknown for anime to name their final episode after the ...
8
The Word "Legend" Evokes an Expectation
Putting Legend into a title is fine, but it's a promise to your audience of something a bit larger-than-life.
Given a title like "The Legend of [Protagonist]", I would personally expect something medieval, with a light touch of magic - like the Arthurian legends, with knights and quests, etc.
But it ...
7
I don't know what a Gigaku Mask is, but I had no idea what The Stone Dance of the Chameleon was either, and that didn't prevent me to buy - and love - that book.
Don't forget that the reader buys also by the cover and the resume, and that will probably give them more insight. If I had seen the picture of a Gigaku Mask, I would know it was some kind of ...
7
I recently watch 7 editors choose stories for anthologies. They had read all of the stories a month or two earlier, and were now considering them in front of a live audience.
Every now and then, an editor would pick up a manuscript from the pile, read the title out loud to the audience, and say, "I have no memory of this. Give me a minute..." Then they'd ...
7
How about... "Crowd Management Challenges"
Where "Crowd" encapsulates "lot of people"
and "Challenges" implies "is a difficult problem".
7
I don't think the tag conveys the fact that there is violence, as Cyn's comment says, it sounds "old fashioned".
From "Gentleman" and "Never Tells" my mind jumps to sexual trysts some woman must keep secret. It doesn't jump to informing on a client (if that is even what you meant). And because it is tag line, I assume the story is about these sexual trysts....
answered Apr 6 '19 at 19:15
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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6
I think a title has two purposes: to get the attention of the potential reader, and to give him a clue what the story is about.
Putting a foreign word or a word that is likely to be unfamiliar to most potential readers can attract attention. A natural response is, "What does that mean?", which may get them to look for more information.
If the potential ...
6
It's not that it's unsuitable, but the word play of "Ins and Outs" isn't very well matched with the subject of "Boolean Variables." "Ins and Outs" sounds like it's more about GPIO pins.
I'd be tempted to do something like;
"If This_Chapter == About_Boolean_Variables {Read}"
;)
6
An informal, jokey title is perfectly appropriate. This is especially true if, as I surmise, you're writing a progrmming manual of some sort. Computer science is a pretty informal field, after all. It's almost expected.
The title isn't very eye-catching, but it's a common enough turn of phrase and there's nothing wrong with it, as such.
6
One reason for this style is that, to an event greater extent than today, a lot of novels of this period were studies about a particular character -- modern books have a tendency, at least in most genres, to focus on an event and the characters involved in that, but a popular form at the time was to focus on a character and secondarily on the events that ...
6
Management Difficulties Scale with Headcount
Titles follow the same rule as billboard advertisements: no more than 7 words; no matter what their size. Scientifically speaking, billboard comprehension rates drop off a cliff after 7 words.
Apply the same rule to your titles.
answered Apr 1 '19 at 15:07
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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6
Every good story title is a come hither word or phrase. Phrases are usually better because they can impact more of an idea than a single word. Yes it should encapsulate an important aspect of the story, but it should intrigue the potential reader to want to read the story.
Since your story, all 1600 words of it, are about someone who goes through a process ...
6
Chapter names serve many purposes so, as long as your choice is one that fits with other chapter names, it's fine.
If you always named the chapter after the POV character then you had one named after a non-POV character, it would be confusing. But if you regularly named other chapters after events or happenings in the chapter, then naming it after a ...
answered Aug 25 '19 at 14:46
5
Neither; it should be an em-dash or a colon. A hyphen is used to connect a compound (a must-read book, Linux-based) and an en-dash connects a range of numbers (1966–69). I prefer the colon if you must have a subtitle. If you use the em-dash, I prefer spaces around it, but that's up to the house style of where you're publishing.
Also, titles should be in ...
answered May 26 '14 at 23:10
Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
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5
I have trouble coming up with titles, too! Yet titles matter. Busy agents and publishers aren't going to spend much time looking at material that appears uninteresting, and your title (in addition to your cover letter and perhaps your first few sentences/pages) is one of the few opportunities you have to catch their attention. Even if the title is changed ...
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