Re-imagining a Book Title

Novel titles are not my strong suit. Writing 80,000 words—no problem. Coming up with a couple words to encapsulate those 80,000 words—huge problem. Titles present a ton of pressure. The title must hook the reader, stand out, look good on a book cover and reflect the tone and themes inside those covers.

Think of your favourite books. The title is part of what makes them awesome. Would The Hunger Games have caught on if it had been called The Volunteer? Or if The Fault in our Stars had been called Augustus and Hazel’s European Vacation? Title are important. The pressure!

A couple years ago, I wrote a blog post about my novel-naming woes called, “No Name Novel.” I wish I could say that in those years I somehow mastered the art of titles, but it’s just as much of a struggle as ever.

So when my publisher approached me and asked to change the name of the second book in my One Bright Future series, I wasn’t surprised. The first book, originally titled The Enslavement of Rielle James, was trimmed down to Enslavement. I’d given the second book the working title of Captivity, which had grown on me as I worked through the edits.

A new title was suggested, but I wasn’t keen on it for a number of reasons. I did an Amazon search to see how many other books had that title or something similar. There were a lot! So, rather than coming back to my publisher and shooting down their idea, I decided to put together a list of titles I could live with. I brainstormed on my own, then with some writer friends. When I’m serious about brainstorming ideas I like to write them on my hand and wrist. Don’t ask me why.

So, with a list of about 15 titles scrawled on my skin, I narrowed it down to three. Writers are word people, so to me, each title word not only had a unique definition, but had nuances, undertones and a shape (dull, sharp, round, jagged) that played into my decision.

I presented my reasons for not wanting their suggestion along with the short-list of my suggestions to my publisher. After some back forth via email, we settled on the new title. It’s taken some getting used to and some habit breaking, but I’m thrilled with this new moniker. What did we agree upon? Book two in the One Bright Future series will be called Subversion. And it’s the perfect title for this book.

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Melinda Friesen writes novels for teens and short stories from her basement in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada. Presently, she's trying to pretend there's something outside besides snow and ice.

Differing Points of View

The two most popular points of view for fiction seem to be third person or first person. And most people I've met have pretty strong opinions about what they like to read or write. But do you know about all the other POVs out there?

Here are the main choices:

First person - the narrator is generally the main character in the book and tells the story in his or her own point of view, as "I" (I did this, I said, I felt). Here’s an example:

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.

~ Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

 First person plural - more rare, with the story told by "we" (we did this, we said that). An example:

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

~ A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

Second person - very rare - the reader is treated as a character and is referred to as "you." This type of POV works well for some non-fiction works. For example, if I was writing a guide book or How-to article on painting, I could use this to say "First, you gather your supplies. Then you take the paint brush and apply paint. Then you do this and this and this." For fiction though, this POV isn't used often and mostly for books like the Choose Your Own Adventure series or other interactive stories. Here is an example:

What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to recollect yourself after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages of your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at them before they can flit into obscurity.

~ “The Haunted Mind” in Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Third person limited - the narrator is outside the story but focuses on one character at a time. (He said, she said). While the POV may change between different characters, these changes would be separated by scene or chapter breaks. While in the point of view of a particular character, the narrator cannot tell the reader what anyone else is thinking, feeling, or experiencing. The narrator only knows what the point of view character knows. An example:

Just then the stern line came taut under his foot, where he had kept the loop of the line, and he dropped his oars and felt the weight of the small tuna’s shivering pull as he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in. The shivering increased as he pulled in and he could see the blue back of the fish in the water and the gold of his sides before he swung him over the side and into the boat.

~ The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Third person omniscient - the narrator is outside the story but doesn't focus on one character. The narrator knows all, sees all, conveys all.

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy…Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

~ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

While some of these POVs seem to be more or less popular in “mainstream” fiction, all of them can work if executed well. Do you have a favorite POV you prefer to read or write?

Urban Fantasy Resources

Since it may be hard to recognize us from that still, the panel is (L to R): Moderator Jen Garrett, Author Christina Mercer, Author Angelica R. Jackson, Author Jessica Taylor, Author Heather Marie.

I took part in a panel of fantasy writers over the weekend (there's some video of it on my blog), representing the Urban Fantasy genre, and the first step in my preparation was to try to nail down a definition of Urban Fantasy. Not an easy thing to do, by the way, and greater minds than mine have tried.

The simplest definition is that Urban Fantasy is a story with fantastical elements that takes place in an urban--and usually modern--setting. But by that definition, some of the earliest and canonical UF titles don't actually make the cut. Some UF books are set in rural towns (as is my own Crow's Rest), and some are set in cities--but in historic or future times. And then there's the fact that paranormal stories, especially paranormal romance, often overlap UF enough that the two genres get lumped together on lists. So what separates urban fantasy from similar genres of paranormal, horror, romance, retold fairy tales, and even steampunk?

The website Best Fantasy Books has an answer to that question that I thought would be a great place to start: "Urban Fantasy is more of a hybrid of other genres than its own hard definition. Urban Fantasy tends to have a gritty atmosphere similar to crime fiction or noir, but mixes elements of mystery, romance, horror, and fantasy. As a result of its hybridity, authors have plenty of room to experiment and have fun."

(That last part is certainly true, and is one of the things that attracted me to the genre!)

Wikipedia offers a definition that is not quite as inclusive of setting as the one above:
"Urban fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy defined by place; the fantastic narrative has an urban setting. Urban fantasy exists on one side of a spectrum, opposite high fantasy, which is set in an entirely fictitious world. Many urban fantasies are set in contemporary times and contain supernatural elements. However, the stories can take place in historical, modern, or futuristic periods, and the settings may include fictional elements. The prerequisite is that they must be primarily set in a city."

But like me, writer Emma Newman also takes issue with the "rule" about a city setting, and in an article on The Creative Penn blog she presents the definition that I like best:
"The way I conceptualize urban fantasy is magic and weird stuff creeping in at the edges of a world in which magic is not the norm. Everything appears normal until you walk down a particular alleyway after midnight on the third Tuesday of the month...The majority of the people who live there will have normal lives, oblivious to the magical all around them, hidden in plain sight."

For me, that collision of the strange and the everyday, with more in-your-face magic and possibilities than magical realism offers, is essential to a great urban fantasy.

In fact, before researching UF definitions, I would have defined it as "Fairy tale or mythological creatures bleeding into our world, and the resulting havoc they wreak on our lives." Which fits my worldbuilding in Crow's Rest, but not necessarily the urban fantasy genre as a whole. For that purpose, I think I'll stick with that Best Fantasy Books definition. There's also a pretty exhaustive rundown of the history of UF on Refractory, and if the above definitions have left you unsatisfied you may want to check it out.

In the course of this quest for a definition, I realized examples would be helpful. So this is not by any means an exhaustive list of the Urban Fantasy canon--these are just some from my own bookshelves.


*The Borderland series, which starts with an anthology of the same name edited by Terri Windling, and moves on to some novel-length works like Elsewhere by Will Shetterly. It may have actually established the "collision of the strange and the everyday" definition in my mind.

*Ariel by Steven R. Boyett is a cult favorite from 1983, which takes place in a post-Apocalyptic landscape--where the Apocalypse was caused by technology failing and magic returning to our world.

*Books by Charles de Lint, who made Urban Fantasy popular with his Newford stories. I recommend starting with Little (Grrl) Lost for the younger YA set, or Svaha for older readers.

*Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Fiest is a great example of UF that straddles the line into horror

*The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone, which starts with Three Parts Dead, is a great example of what makes UF so hard to compartmentalize--this fantasy novel takes place in an urban environment where the natural laws on the existence of magic are completely different from our world, and yet aspects of the city and its denizens still seem so universal and relatable.

*The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black can stand in for the vampire books that are sometimes labeled "paranormal" (with or without "romance" added to it), sometimes fantasy, but in my mind are UF. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor is another that fits that description (but not with vampires).

*Gail Carriger's Finishing School series, which begins with Etiquette and Espionage, is another world that could equally be described as steampunk or UF. So could Cassandra Clare's books, especially her Infernal Devices series, in my opinion.

Bonus: here's a highlights video from the panel




If you have any other favorite definitions of Urban Fantasy, or UF titles, please share them in the comments!