How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Alex Ritany's website.
I love titles that leave readers asking a question, and Dead Girls Don’t Say Sorry does that marvellously. We know why dead girls don’t say sorry—hard to say sorry if you’re dead, after all, unless we’re dipping toes in a whole different genre—so the other half of it shouts: What does this dead girl have to say sorry for?
That’s the question Dead Girls is asking. What awful thing did Julia do that Nora is haunted by as she processes her own grief and survivor’s guilt?
Another core facet of this story is about healing without closure. When we were bouncing title ideas around, two other options were Dead Girls Can’t Say Sorry and Dead Girls Won’t Say Sorry, both of which speak to the frustration of trying to move on without ever understanding why someone treated you poorly.
Don’t, can’t, won’t—regardless, Nora has a lot to...[read on]
Q&A with Alex Ritany.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
