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Rie Sheridan

Title Fight

Someone asked me in a chat the other night where I got my titles. It was an interesting question. Titles are your first opportunity to capture your audience's attention. They will grab the reader's interest if you are lucky, or cause him/her to pass on your work if you are not.

How do you come up with a good title? I personally am very fond of wordplay, so I use a lot of it in my titles. For example, "The Lute and the Liar" plays on the sound-alike properties of "lyre" and "liar," and still sums up the action and the theme of the story in one short statement.

I also like alliteration, and many of my titles use it, not only "The Lute and the Liar," but also "The Blood that Binds," "Sapphire Eyes Shining," "Date With Destiny," and "Dance with the Devil." Puns are also a favorite device of mine, as seen in my short story collection "RieVisions" and in stories like "A Breath of Fresh Air" or the in-progress "Sidhe Move Through the Faire."

Song titles can be good sources of inspiration... I have based several story titles on songs that thematically tied to the story. One early collection of "fan" stories contained titles like "Won on One" and "Dark Sight of the Moon." The in-progress story above is based on the traditional ballad, "She Moved Though the Faire."

Jot potential titles down in that ever-present notebook. It may be years before I get around to using a title I like, but if I have it written down somewhere, I can always keep track of it.

And be careful when you create your titles... in today's society, almost everything has the potential to be shortened into an acronym. Book titles are no exception. That is why the title of "The Blood that Binds" (TBTB) was changed from "Where Elves Are King." I decided that critics didn't need any help.