by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: June 06, 2009

Creating the perfect title for your writing is of paramount importance, irrespective of the genre or medium to which you write. The title is almost certainly going to be that which successfully draws a potential reader's eye to your work, or alternatively fails to do so, and therefore has to both accurately reflect the nature and content of the work, as well as prove eye-catching to your aspirant readership.

Whether the piece of writing be a novel, a magazine article or an article on a website such as this one, Helium, the title should be good enough to attract and hold the reader's attention. It should make them want to pick up your book from the shelf rather than one of the perhaps hundreds of others which accompany it, or stop them turning the pages of the magazine, or make them click the link in the Google search. Writers have to remember that they have a lot of competition from other writers and if their title is not up to scratch by comparison, they should be absolutely certain that they will lose out in the majority of cases to those writers whose titles are superior.

The best way in which I have found to title a piece of work effectively is to leave the process of doing so until the end. This is particularly true of larger works such as novels, when the "working title" as it is often referred to during the course of producing the work may not ultimately reflect the nature of the finished piece. As all novelists or aspiring novelists know, a work of this length can during the process of writing all but take on a life of its own and end up being a very different production than the writer had intended. Considering the novel only upon its completion, therefore, and pondering what short phrase it actually shouts at the author themselves, is very often the best approach under these circumstances.

When writing such as magazine articles, the process may have to be slightly different in that the writer may be writing for a very specialised publication. What they should therefore do in this instance is consider the readership of the magazine, what they are hoping to find within its pages and make their title not only relevant to their work but something which will pique the curiosity of any casual browser interested in the subject at hand.

Writers of online articles may well find themselves in the situation where they have no choice but to determine the title of their work prior to writing or publishing it. This would be where they have to suggest a title to a Website editor for approval prior to submitting or even writing the actual article. A very similar procedure should apply in these circumstances to the situation with the magazine article writer in that the title should reflect the nature of the work but be intriguing enough to make the casual browser click upon their link.

Creating the perfect title for writing is simply therefore about catching the attention of another human being. If the writer considers their title carefully in this way and ensures that they come up with one which would catch their eye in the relevant circumstances, they will know the best chance of success.

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