By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky

As an editor for The Citron Review, a common trend were great stories with mediocre titles. I don’t blame writers for struggling with this. It can be tricky. Here’s some quick thoughts on how to elevate the quality of your title for your fiction.

Don’t be obvious: Overly simplistic titles are generally too vague to inspire specific intrigue. Something like, The Coffee Table, or The Lamp, or The Quilt are too easy. If it’s the first thing you think of, it’s probably not going to be the best title for your work. A great writer once told me that fiction works by distraction. The title, to a certain extent, should also work by distraction. Titles shouldn’t speak directly to the subject matter or theme, but they should point to it. Think of them as the mysterious stranger in the hooded cloak pointing a crooked finger down a path you’d like the reader to journey down. A hint, a direction, yes, but far from a full explanation or revelation of all the great intrigue and adventure to follow.

Twist a common phrase: Think of a cliché, and then twist it enough so it feels fresh and strange, familiar and enticing. Instead of A Bird in the Hand, try An Elephant in the Hand. Instead of Raining Cats and Dogs, try Raining Lilies and Nightingales. Black as Night might become Gray as Dusk. Birds of a Feather might evolve into Raptors of a Feather.

Grab something unique from the story: While at The Citron Review, I made a habit of delving into the work and finding a pivotal moment, phrase, or image to use as the title. This technique resulted in titles like Any Sense at All, and Happy, Free, Alive. The best things to look for are unique lines of dialog or an image that seems to encompass the emotional context of the story. Something like Knee Deep in the Pacific will always be better than The Ocean. This is a technique Flannery O’Connor (one of my favorites) used when she titled her works (great stories like A Good Man is Hard to Find, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Wise Blood, The Violent Bear it Away, and Everything that Rises Must Converge).

Be specific: One of the problems with vague titles, such as The Tree, is that the lack of specificity leaves us without a solid image. If you’re able to pull out specific nouns, and combine them with strong, specific verbs, the quality of the title leaps off the page. Take the generic The Car and turn it into something like Racing Audis.

Make sure you have a title: At the risk of offending beginning writers, Untitled is not a compelling title. At all. All stories and novels must have titles. Not having a title is akin to saying there is no compelling reason to read the following prose. I understand several poems lack titles (Emily Dickenson, for example, never titled a single poem, other than simply giving them numbers). Prose is not poetry, though we may borrow elements of them. One thing we don’t borrow from it, however, is the lack of titles.

Try literary allusions: The Violent Bear it Away, Absalom, Absalom! are both references to passages from the Bible that speak to the overall themes and symbols working throughout the novel.

In addition to being a loving father and husband, Aaron Gansky is an award-winning novelist and author, teacher, and podcast host. In 2009, he earned his M.F.A in Fiction at the prestigious Antioch University of Los Angeles, one of the top five low-residency writing schools in the nation. Prior to that, he attained his Bachelor of Arts degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from California State University of San Bernardino.

He lives in quiet little town in the high desert of southern California with his family.