Titles

I was listening to Front Row on Radio 4 tonight and all the features were about crime writers as the annual Crime Writers’ Festival is on at the moment in Harrogate. Kate Atkinson was being interviewed and was asked about the titles of her novels and she commented that often she has a title in her head long before she has a novel to go with it. I’ve never had that happen to me… maybe that’s where I’m going wrong! Quite often the title is the last thing which falls into place for me.

Some titles have been fairly straight forward, but some I have finished the book and am twiddling my thumbs waiting for the title to appear… well, not exactly, but you know what I mean.

• Farholm – this was fairly easy and straight forward as the novel is set on Farholm Island; it is also a play in words as one of the characters was born and brought up there
• Loving Judah – I struggled a little here; Judah is the stepson of the main character, and his death before the novel starts triggers everything else that happens in it. However, the story is really about two characters, and I wondered whether to use their names somehow, but I am glad I didn’t
• The Stalking of Rosa Czekov – this was the working title and it just stuck and I’m quite happy with it
• Night Vision – I’m not sure when or how this title arrived, but it came while I was still writing the book. One of the early scenes takes place in the dark; it was also the idea of being able to see clearly in darkness because there are secrets and hidden truths in the story which Beulah, the main character has to discover
• Flipside – I took a long time to find this title but it just suddenly came into my head; the main character suffers night terrors but is also afraid that he might have some sort of other psychosis concealing another personality. It was the idea of someone’s character having another side to it, good or bad, but also the idea of something being spun like a coin, to land heads or tails
• A Strong Hand From Above – this was a happy coincidence. One of the character’s names is O’Brien and the motto for the O’Brien family is ‘A strong hand from above’; in the novel, at one point Mal, the main character is trapped in a car which has been run off the road into a dyke and she is pulled to safety by a strong hand from above, so the title seemed to fit because of this as well
• The Double Act – I struggled with this title for a long time; for a while a flirted with the idea of something along the lines of ‘The Strange Story of Dr Herrick and Mrs McCauley’, and then for a while it was titled ‘The Sea-Nix’. I wasn’t really satisfied with this and wondered about a title to do with mermaids but that seemed a little fey. Suddenly from nowhere ‘The Double Act’ appeared and it was just right!