Choosing a title for a book is sometimes easy, usually hard. So much has to be conveyed in few words. The plot and whole tone of what you’ve written relies on the title. And although I’m speaking here of fiction, the same must apply to factual books. A title has to grab a reader’s attention from a mêlée of others, to at least be picked up, the cover opened and the first page read.
‘Reggie’ was an easy working title for my latest novel which is ready for publication. Reggie, Reginald Wood, is the main protagonist; it is he who intrigued me to begin writing. Some time ago I saw a child swinging on railings, happily absorbed in his own world. That became my starting point, to find out who he was and why he was there.
Reggie, who became older than the boy I’d originally seen, gained a grandmother and mother, two women with tough lives. Reggie is stuck in the middle of their difficulties which he doesn’t fully understand.
As I came near to finishing the story, a friend offered the idea of ‘According to Reggie’. Reggie on its own suggests perhaps a biography, in fact it could be about a dog! However as I typed in the new title to present the first chapter on this website, I knew it was wrong.
On the railings is where I found this boy, where he spends much of his time interacting with his thoughts and other people. ‘Reggie on the Railings’ suddenly became the obvious choice. Doesn’t that also characterise much of how he has to live his life?
My third novel began as a short story, named ‘The Birdwoman’. I was challenged to write this having read the work of magic realist writer, Angela Carter. The starting point was a newspaper article about a woman found dead in a hammock in her garden. She’d lived the final year of her life out there, not in the house. No one knew why. In my fictional version, Joannie finds love with a woman but then loses her; Eva, the mother of the angel child. Who was this angel child? I had to find her story and that of the balloon man who came to love her, and so on and on, creating magical and real characters in magical and real situations. ‘The Birdwoman’ was an intriguing enough title, but my own surname made this problematic. This story was in not about me. And anyway the angel child was the catalyst for the other characters and their actions. It became the perfect choice.
‘Ladybird, Ladybird‘ was a title I wished to use at the start of the novel, as soon as Leonard met the woman who styled herself thus. Again, would it appear odd with Bird being my surname? In this case I decided it could not matter, there was no other.
What does ‘Reggie on the Railings’ convey to you? Have you read the first chapter? If not, you can read it here. Do let me know in the comments on that page what you think of it?