I was actually planning to write about prepositions for this chapter. But meh, I’m not really in the mood to write about something that is faithful to the scores and mechanics of writing. For today, we’ll be tackling one of the most creative parts of a story – the title.

What is the title?

This is the most cliché words I’ve heard to refer to a title. And while it is cliché, it does a great job on capturing its essence, “The title is the face of your story.” It’s what people will first see, and thus, they base their first expressions based on your title.

If they decide that they want to read your story that depends on the title. If they decide to give it a go, it will depend on your title. If you’ve recently launched a story and nobody’s reading it, take a second look on your title and decide if that’s what turns away the readers or not.

Exercises

To start, let’s start with a pre-assessment activity so that we can determine your knowledge about a good title or a bad title.

Directions: Write on the blank BAD if the title is ty and terrible and GOOD if it is pleasant to the ears and makes the readers wanting more.

                __________1. A Bully is In Love???!!
                __________2. Altair: Collection of Royal Battles
                __________3. Howl’s Moving Castle
                __________4. Chicken-Loving Onew is NOT IN LOVE with a Chicken This Time??!
                __________5. Love Story
                __________6. Children of the Fire Kingdom
                __________7. My Master’s Maid
                __________8. Unravel U
                __________9. The Essence of the Heart
                __________10. Baekhyun the

A discussion on these titles and the answers will be provided shortly right after.

What makes a good title?

There really is no rubric or formula to be followed in order to create a good title. It’s more so on the qualia of things, the subjectivity of things – the beauty, in the eye of the beholder.

That is why, the titles above can actually be seen as beautiful or a smash by some readers. While other readers will pass on these titles as they are simply too horrible for them to bear.

However, generally, here are the things that make up a good title.

We shall call this our M-U-R-E Checklist in order to identify if such titles satisfy these four requirements.

What makes a bad title?

#1, #4, #5, #7, #8 and #9 are all bad titles.

Let’s go into further discussion before you start bombarding me with hateful comments just because some of your stories are patterned with these ones.

#1 A Bully is In Love???!!

This title is downright terrible. There’s no question. For the following reasons:

First off, notice the unusual amounts of punctuation marks by the end? We’ve discussed in Lesson #4, Punctuations, that one should always use three consecutive punctuation marks of the same kind. There are only two exclamation points. Second, the amount of punctuation marks are excessive. There are already three question marks and also two exclamation points??

Third, it’s very generic and tells to match. It’s not mysterious as it already gives away four things. It is not unique as these slur of words can be put together in a whim. We can say it’s related to the plot. But it takes its plot relativity to an extreme level – a level that is no longer acceptable.

From this title alone, we can say that; 1) One of the leads is a bully, 2) That lead character is in love with the speaker, 3) The speaker is a girl and 4) The lead/bully is a guy.

Now how do we make this better? Given the plot that we know from the four conclusions above, we shall rebirth this title.

The Victim’s Lover, The Perpetrator

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