How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Yael Goldstein-Love's website.
The book was originally called A Reasonable Woman to get at the dilemma that motherhood puts women in. You’re supposed to be instinctual but also rational, trust your gut but not be anxious. But while that title got at the psychological realism of the book, it hid that this is also a sci-fi thriller.
Then the book was called Hannah42 because my main character teams up a version of herself from another reality who calls herself Hannah42 in a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She feels that calling herself Hannah1 would be presumptuous given the infinite versions of herself she now knows to exist. This title had the opposite problem– it made the book sound like hard core sci-fi instead of a book that uses sci-fi as a metaphor to explore motherhood.
The Possibilities finally struck the right balance. My main character “rides the possibilities” – travels to other possible worlds – in order to save her son, and this is both the actual plot of the book and also a way of capturing what...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Possibilities.
Q&A with Yael Goldstein-Love.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
