By Gene Wilburn
You finish your article, essay, or blog entry, putting the final polish on your prose, declaring it ready to go. Almost. Except for the title. If you're like most writers, you have a working title -- something you used to give your work focus during the writing -- and it's often about as catchy as a scientific paper on speciation in savannah sparrows. Dull.
Titles. They can make or break your chance of grabbing a reader's interest. Newspaper and magazine editors know better than anyone that nothing captures your attention faster than a snappy title. Get the reader as far as the first paragraph and you have a good chance of snagging that five seconds or less of interest most readers spend before deciding whether to read on or skip to something else.
Good titles are especially important in science stories. We're not a science-oriented society, despite its critical underpinning of modern life. We, as casual readers (assuming you're not science-trained), are easily bored and have an innate resistance to anything that sounds 'scientific', 'educational' or 'difficult'. Give us straight science and, mentally, we run the other way. But use the right lure and you might just hook us.
Take this example from the NYTimes Online science section: British Fight Climate Change With Fish and Chips. That's not just intriguing -- it's funny, with echoes of Monty Python. The article, by Elisabeth Rosenthall, is a story about how used non-fossil-fuel cooking oil from fish and chip stands are being recycled and sold directly to car owners who pour it into the tanks of their diesel-powered autos. It's an excellent piece, but would you be as tempted to read it if it were titled "UK Diesel Car Owners Try an Alternative Fuel Source"?
Not all stories lend themselves to snappy titles but it's worth it when they do. It doesn't always take much, sometimes a single word at the end: Geographers Find bin Laden -- Theoretically. I particularly liked this title: Data Uncover Bigger Galaxy in Cosmos, and It's Ours, about how the Milky Way is far larger than originally estimated.
Health science articles attract us more easily than the other sciences mainly because we obsess about health issues. The stories are more immediate to our lives than alternative diesel fuels or the size of galaxies. Even so, a catchy title is good for grabbing our attention: Great Workout, Forget the View, is a story on how stair climbing can give you as good, or better, workout than an elliptical trainer with an expensive health club membership attached.
Or how about Your Morning Pizza, a piece on rethinking traditional breakfast foods. Health articles also have the advantage of grabbing our attention with anything that sounds controversial or iconoclastic: Vitamin Pills: A False Hope?
It's not just science and health stories that need good titles, of course. Any piece you write with a catchy title has a better chance of being read. For instance, I'm not innately interested in reading about the buying patterns of Japanese youth, but Sayonara, Prada, an article by Alexandra Harney in The Atlantic, on how Japanese youngsters are turning away from luxury goods, hooked me for a good, thoughtful, read.
Titles with puns catch my fancy immediately -- such as Bear Essentials, an article by Jo Calvert in Canadian Living on knitting bears. I don't knit, but I read some of the article simply because of the title. This title would work equally well for a chapter or pamphlet on camping in bear territory.
Thinking up good titles for essays, short stories, and novels is even harder. What words can be used to invoke the right feeling or mood? Gone With the Wind? Good one, but taken. For Whom the Bell Tolls? Can't use that one either -- well you can, but you'd better have something awfully good to pull it off or it'll look pretentious. Puns on famous titles, however, can deliver a fresh take. How about a retro look at how you became totally hooked on fantasy literature: Gone With the Wand. Or a serious piece on money woes called For Whom the Bill Tolls.
The trouble with thinking up with good titles for blog postings or short essays is that it can take more time than the piece itself. And there's that dark place in our brains that fears we might use up all our good title ideas and run out. It won't happen, but the best way to convince yourself of that is to keep practicing. After you've come up with a zinger or two, it gets easier, and more fun.
Try to think up a catchy title for every piece you do. Give it some pizazz, some spunk. Your editor may change it (some of mine don't share my sense of humor), but when one of your best titles gets through the editorial process intact, and you see it in print or online, it adds sizzle to your satisfaction. Not to mention luring additional readers. And isn't that one of the reasons we write?
Gene Wilburn is a Canadian essayist, blogger, magazine writer, and co-host of the Creative NonFiction Writing Forums