If you use Wix for your website you'll know that 'Add a Catchy Title' is their default invitation to write a new blog post. I thought it would be appropriate to leave it in place for a blog post about choosing a title for your novel.
Before I begin, I must acknowledge and recommend the blog post which inspired me to tell my story here. Writer Dr Gail Aldwin's post is a must-read if you're a writer, or if you're simply interested in where novel titles come from. So, with thanks to Dr Gail, you'll find it here: https://gailaldwin.com/2023/05/03/you-used-how-many-titles/
My novel is about hiding a lottery win. It's the story of Jack, a millennial, gig-economy ESL teacher who is being divorced by Cindy, an Aussie, millennial, gig-economy fitness instructor. When Jack wins the lottery, he decides not to tell Cindy. I didn't have a set working title when I first started plotting and then writing; my initial document was simply called Lottery, but it was never a 'contender'. And while I'm not trying to play one-upmanship with Dr Gail's excellent post, I did, at one point or another, have a lot more than four titles audition for the role.
Some of the early candidates, before I'd done too much work on plot or characters are probably easily guessed: You Make Your Own Luck, Get Lucky, It Could Be Me, What Are The Odds? were all very early, generic contenders, but ultimately ended up as also-rans. As the story began to develop during the plotting stage, a few more story-specific titles suggested themselves.
More Money Than Sense came into the running as my MC Jack began to take on the sort of 'good natured, harmless but hapless' characteristics that I'd used in my Jeremy Dean books. Ultimately, however, I felt it tied the title too much to the character of Jack, and I wanted a much wider 'cast' to take centre stage than just him. Win Some, Lose Some attracted me for a while when I began thinking about a possible plot twist. I rejected it in the end because I felt it might be too much of a 'spoiler' - but I won't tell you here whether I eventually used that possible plot twist, so you'll have no idea whether it acts as a spoiler here or not.
The amount of money (£2.3 million) for a while attracted me as a possible title. I thought about calling the book 2.3, or possibly Two Point Three, but ultimately felt that they were a bit too obscure to attract readers as they said so little about what the book was about. I must have gone through an 'obscure' phase as I briefly considered (and rejected) titles based on Jack's favourite lottery numbers or the sources of them, so both 4,7,10,22,24,36 and April, Eric, Wazza, 22, 24, Maple Road were both rejected quite quickly.
Interestingly, I originally cast Ryan Giggs (number 11) in Jack's lottery picks, but as Bloodhound Books offered me a contract for the book Ryan Giggs was in court facing charges of assault and coercive behaviour against his girlfriend. So I dropped Giggs and sent Wayne Rooney (Wazza, number 10) on as a less controversial late substitution.
I am a fan of John le Carré, so (for reasons I won't explain for fear of letting slip another plot 'spoiler') the title Rich Man, Poor Man, Liar, Thief came - and went, although I was quite partial to it. In the end, I feared that the link to le Carré's usual genre might be off-putting to budding RomCom readers...
By this time the plotting was going well and I had come up with the idea of Jack always wanting to own a Beemer - so, Wheels of Fortune appeared in the frame, only to speed off into the distance with the smell of burning rubber as it clearly suggested a roulette wheel as opposed to a lottery ticket. This was when What Price a Beemer? displaced Lottery and became the first 'real' working title, and stayed there for quite a time. It was expanded to What Price a Beemer and an Ibizan Tattoo? when another MC revealed her violin tattoo, and this became the next serious working title for a lot of the writing stage. I have to confess, I liked this as a sort of nod to Four Weddings and a Funeral, the longish, 'odd' title, that would make people wonder 'what's that all about...'? However, pretty much all my beta readers said they didn't like it, so it was ditched along with the rest.
There were a couple of other 'possibles' as I neared the end of the writing stage but I'll explain them at the end under the SPOILERS heading, as they really would give the game away if you haven't ready the book - but still might. Funnily enough, I can't honestly remember how or why Hitting the Jackpot came to me, but it was very late in the process and seemed 'right' pretty much immediately. I'll have a little more to say about 'why' in the SPOILERS section at the end.
So, there you have it - the search for a 'catchy title' can be a bit more complicated than you might expect, or maybe I'm just incredibly indecisive...
SPOILERS
I briefly toyed with the idea of calling the book Dropping Giggsy, but a number of reasons argued against it. The main one was that it would be a huge hint (and potentially a massive spoiler) regarding the end of the story. I also feared that an overtly 'football' title might alienate readers who didn't like football. After all, although the 'football' element in the story is crucial to the plot, it is a very small part of a story which isn't about football at all. So, I dropped that idea - long before I ended up dropping Giggsy altogether (see above).
I considered Can't Buy Me Love as a possible for a while, but feared another spoiler effect as it could have suggesed to the reader that Jack might have to choose between money and love - and I certainly didn't want to flag that plotline before it came up in the story.
The reason why Hitting the Jackpot felt so 'right' begged the question as to why I hadn't thought of it before, after all, 'jackpot' comes straight from the National Lottery vernacular. I particularly liked it because it alludes to the fact that (in the end) Jack discovers that his 'jackpot' isn't the money after all - it's Milly. But I felt this interpretation would only be obvious after the story had been read, so I didn't fear it would act as a spoiler to that element of the story.
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