How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Seraphina Nova Glass's website.
Titles are so hard. When I was writing Hallmark scripts, I learned that networks will sometimes buy just a title by itself, or buy a script they don’t like just to take the title because they are so powerful. I find coming up with a title painstaking, and arduous. It sometimes seems easier to write the whole novel then land on a title you love.
I’ve also learned that the publisher usually wants to change it. So far, my very first book, Someone’s Listening, is the only title I had as a working title that made it to the actual final vote and was used. At first I was a little offended. Can they just change my title? Now. I’m very grateful because my titles are usually crap and they have a glorious team of people working on creating a title that works on so many levels.
Often, I start with a working title and part way through writing the book, I hate it so much, I take the time to go into all my working documents, the notes, outlines, character pages and change it everywhere because I can’t look at it anymore! Dramatic, I know. But, I’m happy to report though, that the novel I’m writing currently is titled The Vanishing Hour, and I think it suits the piece for a change, and I’m happy with it.
My novel, On A Quiet Street, coming out this month was originally called The Payoff, and my agent and I, and our film agent really liked it and thought it would stick, but when the publisher proposed On A Quiet Street, it felt right. All of the three main characters in the story live in a quiet cul-de-sac in Brighton Hills where all the chaos rests just under the glossy, manicured surface, and they are all just close enough to nose into one another’s secrets and uncover a…[read on]
Q&A with Seraphina Nova Glass.
--Marshal Zeringue
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