Post #177 July 22 2019

“Essentials of Plot and Telling a Good Yarn”

In this post, I want to review some essentials of how I construct story plots and some of the critical elements that go into the making of a memorable story.  Most of this is Storytelling 101, but sometimes authors forget things, to their and their reader’s detriments.  Readers tend to reward poorly constructed and plotted stories with the ultimate insult…tossing the book before it’s finished.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story/novelette called “In Plutonian Seas.”  One of the very first things I did when constructing a story was to flesh out just what happens, in rough chronological order.  Here’s an example, from this story:

1. Commander Joe Skellen on Trident’s command deck, dozing off after studying an unrolled printed copy of an ancient sea chart, when a sonar contact alarm goes off.  It’s some kind of wreckage, dead ahead. 
2. Exploratory submersible FCS Trident (Frontier Corps Ship) is cruising Pluto’s subsurface ocean.  There is a 4-person crew and Mission Commander Joe Skellen.  There is also a small research station in orbit around Pluto, to study it and its moons.  It’s called Fort Apache by the crews stationed there.
3. While underway, Trident encounters a submerged wreck at a great depth, near Trident’s crush depth.  Investigating, Skellen and his crew find that the wreckage is a very close facsimile of their own ship, complete with dead crewmember bodies, that closely resemble the crew of a previous subsurface mission on Europa that Skellen commanded…a mission that ended in near disaster.
4. What Trident’s crew doesn’t (yet) realize is that soon after they landed and were trundling across the icy surface of Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia prior to boring through the ice and diving into the ocean, their ship and crew were ‘infested’ by nanoscale robotic devices resembling ice mist…a form of indigenous life on Pluto that has heretofore been unknown to anyone.  The only evidence of anything unusual noticed by the crew was the onset of some severe headaches right after landing…the Bugs (as they come to be called by the crew) had penetrated the lander and began their infestation. 
5. And so forth…
    
   Right away, if I follow this outline (and it goes on for two pages like this), I’ve got a setting, a main character and a problem.  In fact, I’m one author who particularly likes dropping the reader right in the middle of the action, then backing up later to explain what’s going on.
    
   The website novel-writing-help.com offers a ten step process for constructing a plot that’s worth taking a look at.  Here’s an excerpt:
    

The Beginning

Broadly speaking, the beginning of a plot concerns dumping a problem on the leading character's shoulders and making them decide to take action to solve it. Although it is a little more complicated than that, of course. It involves these three steps...

• Step 1: Start With the Status Quo. We first meet the character in their ordinary world. Nothing has happened yet.
• Step 2: And Then Something Happens. The action kicks in when the status quo is disrupted (the boy meets the girl, the airplane develops engine trouble, etc.)
• Step 3: The Character Makes a Decision to Act. Before this, there may be a period of hesitation (e.g., the retired cop doesn't want to take on the new case. But eventually, they'll commit.
  The Tricky Middle
  If the start of a plot is all about making a character take action to solve a problem, the middle deals with the action itself - or, more precisely, a whole series of mini actions.

• Step 4: The First Mini Plot. Or the first small thing the character must achieve to succeed in their overall goal. Needless to say, it goes horribly wrong and leaves them in a worse position!
• Step 5: More Mini Plots. The character keeps pushing forward and experiences small victories and small setbacks. Overall, the tension rises as they get closer to the object of their quest.
• Step 6: Rock Bottom. The middle ends at a moment of disaster, when all is seemingly lost. This is the most intense point of the novel.
  The Ending
  The ending deals with the consequences of the action. And on the basis that fiction is so much neater than real life, it is also about tidying up the loose ends and leaving the audience satisfied.

• Step 7: Reaction. The character reacts emotionally to the devastating blow they have just received and the apparent death of their dream.
• Step 8: Rebirth. But they then experience a sort of epiphany, or a realization of where they have been going wrong and what they must now do to put it right. This is the point at which the character changes.
• Step 9: Seizing the Prize. Strengthened by their epiphany, the characters go on to fight the final battle... and win. Or in a twist on this, they can decide that they no longer want what they thought they did.
   
• Step 10: The New Status Quo. The conflict is over and all is well in the jungle again. Take this opportunity to tie any loose ends and highlight what has changed between the beginning and the end.
  While I’m not in full agreement with all these points, like No. 1, where you show the main character in their ordinary setting, as a general rule, these are good practices to follow. 
  Although the above excerpt is intended for novelists, most of these steps apply to shorter stories as well.  This is good story-telling practice.
  In my own case, after I have written a basic outline, much of my plot development consists of adding details to this same outline, grouping the details into likely chapters, then re-writing the entire outline in a series of what I called Chapter and Scene Details.  Here’s an excerpt from a novel in my series Tales of the Quantum Corps, to show how a plotted chapter in my finished outline would look:
  CHAPTER 2 (March 26, 2155) UNIFORCE Hqs, the Quartier-General, Paris
              General Lamar Quint is in the middle of composing a report to UNSAC about what Sentinel has detected beyond Pluto when an apparition appears in the corner of his office.  At first, Quint thinks he is imagining this, but the apparition grows into a recognizable human form.  It’s clearly a swarm that has somehow breached UNIFORCE security screens.  That alone is cause for concern and just as Quint is about to sound the alarm, the form becomes recognizably Johnny Winger…a blast from the past.  Winger was thought to have died on Europa in 2121, during the Jovian Hammer mission.  But here is a swarm likeness, an angel, showing up 34 years later.
              The angel appears real and insists it is Johnny Winger, in fact.  But Quint is dubious, to say the least.  The angel reports that Winger is alive and well and working as a spy and saboteur inside the mother swarm of the Old Ones, to prevent the Old Ones from destroying or absorbing Earth .   The angel wants to deliver some intel on the intentions of the Old Ones in the coming months, now that the mother swarm has reached the outer solar system.  Winger describes the Prime Key and what it will mean for Earth and all life on the planet, and also describes the Old Ones’ plans to build a forward base on Mercury and a ring to intercept much of the Sun’s output to facilitate their disassembly and absorption of the solar system.  He indicates that he has some room to maneuver inside the mother swarm and that he can do things to sabotage these plans.  But the intel needs to get to UNSAC and plans should be gotten underway to equip and launch an expedition to stop these efforts.
              Quint is dubious, thinking he’s dreaming or had too much to drink, but promises the angel that he’ll pass this intel on to UNSAC.  When and how can he be in contact in the future? The Winger angel says he’ll let Quint know; he’s running a grave risk doing even this much, but he has to do what he can to stop the Old Ones.  Then, the Winger angel disperses and Quint is left wondering if any of what happened actually happened.
              He goes upstairs to UNSAC’s suite and requests a meeting with Angelika Komar, the Security Affairs Commissioner.  Quint is shown into the UNSAC suite of offices and Komar offers him a drink.  Nighttime Paris is on display outside and they step out onto a veranda, protected by the faint veil of a nanobotic barrier.  Quint describes what has just happened.  Komar is doubtful and thinks Quint has imagined the whole scenario.  She tells Quint it’s either a trap laid by elements of the Old Ones or a stress reaction to all that’s going on.  “Sign yourself into sick bay tomorrow for a checkup, Lamar,” she orders.  “We need our top staff whole and hearty for the days ahead.”
              Quint leaves.  He thinks maybe UNSAC’s right.  “I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.  And with what Sentinel is now reporting, anybody would be spooked.”
              He resolves to do as UNSAC has suggested and returns to his quarters, intending to take something to help him sleep. 
              As this is going on, Dana Polansky has arrived at the doorsteps of the Assimilationist church to find her daughter, whom she thought was caught in a MOBnet, nowhere in sight.  She goes into the church, asks some questions, receives noncommittal and evasive answers, and comes back outside with the dawning suspicion that Jana has already gone off somewhere and been assimilated.  But how to find her?  How to find out?  Dana is frantic.  She decides to follow the recorded footage of the dronecam.  Studying this, she finds that several people from the church have collapsed the MOBnet, rescued Jana and taken her inside the church.  The church claims not to know anything about her.  But the video evidence proves otherwise.
              Furious, determined to get to the bottom of this and rescue her daughter, Dana barges back inside the church.

  
  

  Spend time on your plot.  It can be tedious and hard work but when you have a well-developed outline that follows the storytelling practices above, you’ve done more than half the work. 
  
• The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 29, 2019.
• See you then.
  Phil B.
   

 

 

 

 

Post #176 July 15 2019

“Update on Downloads and a New Series Coming”

I just updated the most recent statistics on my ebook downloads from Smashwords.  Here are the numbers as of 7-1-19:

Total cumulative downloads from when I first went online = 32,876

Total downloads for 2019 = 14, 236

Downloads have been cooking along at about 65-70 a day most of this year.  Somebody out there is downloading and reading my stuff!

There is another set of statistics worth sharing.  These are cumulative downloads for certain ebook series among my titles, current as of 5-17-19:

Tales of the Quantum Corps = 7330

Farpool Stories = 4129

Time Jumpers = 489

Quantum Troopers (formerly Nanotroopers) = 13,091

 

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see which series has been most popular.  In fact, as if 5-17-19, Quantum Troopers alone had accounted for around 45% of all my downloads.  Which leads me to this announcement.  Some time in early 2020, a new series will arrive, entitled Quantum Troopers Return.  Yes, Johnny Winger and ANAD and all the heroes of 1^st ANAD Battalion are coming back in an all-new series.

Here are some details….

1. Quantum Troopers Return is a series of 25,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a quantum trooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.  This series continues the original serial stories of Quantum Troopers, Episodes 1-22 (formerly Nanotroopers).
2. Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 30,000 words in length.
3. A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.
4. There will be 10 episodes.  The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.
5. Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc. 
6. The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Harmony’s efforts to use their nanorobotic ANAD systems for the cartel’s own nefarious and illegal purposes.
7. Uploads will be made to www.smashwords.com on approximately the schedule below:
    
   Episode # (*)   Title                                                     Approximate Upload Date
   1 (23)               ‘Fab Lords’                                                     2-7-20
   2 (24)               “Free Fall’                                                       3-6-20
   3 (25)               “Forbidden City”                                            4-3-20
   4 (26)               “Deep Encounter”                                           5-8-20
   5 (27)               “HAVOC”                                                      6-12-20
   6 (28)               “The Empty Quarter”                                      7-10-20
   7 (29)               “The Hellas Paradox”                                     8-14-20
   8 (30)               “Twist Pirates”                                                9-11-20
   9 (31)               “The Better Angels”                                       10-9-20
   10 (32)             “The Ship of Theseus”                                    11-13-20

 

(Note *: Episode numbers start with Episode 1 in this new series but the continuation of episode numbers from Quantum Troopers is also provided).

With the coming of a new series, I will have to figure out a way to dovetail the work with my larger science fiction novel Monument, which I hope to start this fall and which should be available in late summer/early fall of 2020. 

In any case, there is plenty coming up to keep me busy, as I am still writing episodes of my latest series Time Jumpers.  As of 7-1-19, titles in this series have been downloaded some 785 times since February 1.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 22, 2019.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

Post #175 July 8, 2019

“How Storytelling Became Writing”

It’s general knowledge that storytelling is as old as Man.  It began as an oral tradition, Og and Grog swapping tall tales around a campfire.  There was no writing in those ancient days.  Stories were created and passed down by word of mouth and the storyteller was as much a theatrical performer as anything else. 

Then writing came along.   Writing began as a way of keeping records.  What kind of records?  Commercial transactions.  Agricultural production…Og has brought ‘x’ number of crops to town for sale.  He sold 1/2 x, so we make a record of the sale for future use.  Legal and government transactions, decrees, laws and codes were also among the first things to be written down. 

But after a long time using their writing skills to record transactions, scribes (the first people to become skilled at writing) probably grew a little bored.  They began to adapt their writing skills to other uses, like telling lurid accounts of the great deeds of kings and gods.  These first stories were likely little more than written versions of the oral tales.  There were chronicles of the times, fables, proverbs and sayings, love letters, lyrics to songs and even epic poems, all of this transcribed from the oral storytellers and, over time, embellished with additional materials and using new literary techniques.   Thus, was born literature and the first use of writing as a medium for telling stories.

The legal codes of Hammurabi in the 18^th century BC were an early example. 

From these crude beginnings, scribes-turned-storytellers laid the foundations for some of the great archetypes of stories that we use even today.  This was the beginning of the epic story—a tale of a human being or beings who were larger than life, like Odysseus and Jason.  It was also the beginning of the myth, stories and tales to explain the mysteries of nature and life, to explain things we don’t understand. 

One of the earliest stories of this era was the tale of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian epic from about 2600 BC.  This story detailed what may well be a folk memory of a real king, who ruled a city called Uruk in this time. 

People, in other words, the audiences for stories, were deeply concerned in their time about the thoughts, and actions of the gods and the great heroes (maybe it isn’t really that different today). These were the themes of the first written tales, generally in cities around Mesopotamia. The affairs of the gods were of great importance to the lives of people in this era.

The earliest storytelling writers tried to penetrate the mysteries of life and offer explanations for them, explanations for storms, floods, eclipses, the death of kings, why some cities failed and some prospered.  They tried in their stories to sort out the rights and wrongs of life, and cope with the ever-present fear of death. 

Storytelling writers are still doing that today.  Our lives are infinitely more complex, but reading some of the earliest written stories, we still see and feel a kinship with the concerns and even writing techniques of the earliest scribes.  Techniques like how to build and keep an audience, how to convey a message or a moral.  In time, purely fictional heroes would supplant the heroes of the old oral epics.  Thus, instead of Gilgamesh, we have Captain Ahab.  Instead of Jason or Odysseus, we have Captain Kirk.  Instead of Hercules, we have Tarzan and Batman.

But the same concerns that drove the earliest scribes to record and eventually embellish what they were hearing persist to this day. 

Man is preeminently a storytelling animal. Our brains are wired that way.  We make sense of our world through stories.  Even Jesus Christ knew this, so he conveyed what the kingdom of God was like through countless stories and parables.

The next time you sit at your computer pondering how to get out of some plot complication, remember your scribal ancestors scratching away on a clay tablet, trying to figure out how to explain why the sun god disappeared in an eclipse yesterday. 

We owe more than we think to these earliest writers.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 15.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

 

Post #174 July 1 2019

“How Much Research is Enough?”

To address the question in the title above, I refer you below to some conditions that may occur in your writing adventures, conditions which, if they do occur, will indicate you have enough research to complete your story.

All writers do research.  Some call it other things: background, inspiration, listening to your muse.  Most writers I know enjoy this aspect of their craft, for in doing research to support a story, they learn all kinds of new things.  But remember that a story is more than just some research notes slammed together with a weak plot and weaker characters.  You’re telling a story, not developing an encyclopedia.  The story has to be paramount.  The story guides everything.

With these thoughts in mind, below are some indicators that show you’ve probably done enough research.  You know you’ve got enough research….

1. When you’re living in the story world.  When you dream of being in the story.  When the story consumes your daily thoughts and you view everything around you through the lens of your story.  To be ‘in the story’ is a very special place.  It doesn’t happen all the time.  It means you can tell the story from the perspective of someone who is right there, which means you’ll put the reader right there too.  That can make for some very powerful story telling.  Research and details don’t tell the story but they can make a good story even better, adding realism and power to your narrative.  Most readers of fiction I know want to be transported to other places and other times, live vicariously through the story and its characters.  Research helps that notion of verisimilitude…resemblance to the truth.
2. When the story wants you to start writing it.  You feel anxious to get going.  You have energy, motivation, and once you’ve started writing, a certain rhythm comes over you.  Researching and learning are all fine and good but when you feel this way, research time is over and it’s best to get on with the story. At this point, you’re ‘in the story.’ It’s part of your being.  I think every writer feels this way once in a while. 
3. When there’s no more room in your research and notes box.  I often use boxes to contain physical articles, books, maps, etc for my background and research.  Even today, I can look around my office at several boxes stashed away in corners, filled to overflowing with materials for novels I wrote years ago.  When you can’t physically cram anything else into the box and your computer files are starting to flow off the screen, you’ve done enough research.
4. When the background and setting details become more interesting than the story itself.  Writers have to watch out for this one.  It’s an occupational hazard.  Writers of fiction (really all writers) are naturally curious beings.  We want to know everything about our areas of interest.  I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a child and to this day, I’m still a bit of a space cadet, indulging my interest with astronautical things that may or may not show up in later stories.  When you find yourself pursuing research avenues to the exclusion of the story, or putting off the story to get that one more piece of information (which may or may not be relevant or important to the story), you’ve done enough research. 
5. When you ‘info-dump’ details into the story to justify all the research work.  Jeez, I spent days tracking down that description of the mansion on the hill…I’d better put it in the story so all that work wasn’t wasted.  This is especially an issue for science fiction and fantasy writers, who glory in world-building and developing whole-hog alien cultures.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m like so many sf readers, who love to immerse themselves in a truly alien world and culture and try to figure things out.  SF and fantasy writers even add appendixes to their stories to unload all the details they couldn’t work into the story; I’ve done this myself.  But a little background goes a long way.  Give the reader some credit.  Put in a few details and let the reader use his imagination to fill in the rest.  They like that. 
    
   These are some of many indicators that I use to alert myself that I need to get on with the story and stop burying myself in the background and research.  Being highly organized too, I always use what I call my Next Steps checklist to make sure all my research bases have been covered.  When everything is checked off on this list, I’m pretty sure I’m ready to begin actually telling the story.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 8.  In this post, I’ll look back at the early history of writing and reveal how storytelling, which began as an oral tradition, figured out how to glom on to the new technology of linguistic symbols to expand the reach of storytellers through time and space, to reach audiences far removed from the local clan and campfire.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.
    
    

 

Post #173 June 24, 2019

“You Can and Should Judge a Book by its Cover.”

Two years ago, I upgraded my series Tales of the Quantum Corps with all new covers.  Smashwords (my ebook distributor) recommends doing this on a regular basis as a way to pump up your downloads.  To date, I’ve seen some spikes, not huge, but there has been some increased activity in downloads since I started uploading new covers.

There is an old saying: don’t judge a book by its cover.  Baloney.  We all judge books by their covers.  We have to and we should.  A good book cover captures not only the reader’s attention and interest, but when done well, captures the essence of the story itself.  A really good cover pops and can’t be ignored.  How readers respond to covers varies with each reader but there are some good practices that should be followed in designing a book cover.

Before I get into these practices, I’ll show you how the cover of one of my books has evolved.  The book is Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor, book one in my series Tales of the Quantum Corps.  Here’s the original cover…

   

It’s got the basics: the title and my name.  The image is some kind of virus particle…on a black background.  Looks ominous, befitting the story in many ways.  I liked it because it’s simple, it was easy to create, and it sort of implies something we don’t see all the time…a virus particle magnified a few hundred thousand times.  The story involves a nanoscale robot called ANAD, which is able to function at the same size scale as a virus…in fact, in the book I imply that ANAD is derived from and functions as a programmable virus.  So the image fits the story.

I upgraded the cover to the following…

The new cover is richer visually, more stimulating.  We’re still at the level of atoms and molecules (remember the story hasn’t changed) but now it looks like some kind of vortex or whirlpool has trapped all the atoms.  There’s still the title and author’s name, but now I’ve added the fact that it’s part of the Tales of the Quantum Corps, implying the existence of other stories. 

Only time will tell if the new cover stimulates even more downloads.  Or whether it’s really an improvement at all.  With that, let’s look at some good practices in book (especially ebook) cover design.

Digital Publishing 101 has a web site that offers some well-thought out tips and techniques for cover design.  In particular, the authors speak of 3 critical elements of book covers:

Background

Image

Type

 

Background:

Your cover should have a background color, texture or image rather than being plain white. Plain colors can be a bit dull so consider using a graduated color background or a background image. A good quality image will add a professional look provided it doesn’t conflict with other elements and provides strong contrast for the typographical elements.

 

Image:

Some book covers can work well without an image if the other elements work together. But a strong image can lift your cover design, give it a focus and convey something important about the book’s subject or style. As with background images, make sure this image is of high quality and consider using a stock photo library if you don’t have anything suitable. The image must work with both the background and, importantly, the type. If you need to use an amateur image, you can often improve it with smart cropping or special effects such as fading but don’t overdo these: Like the use of too many fancy fonts, it can end up looking, well, amateurish.

 

Type:

Typography is a real art and sets the best book designers apart from the rest. On covers, effective typography is perhaps the single biggest success factor. It must suit the book’s genre and, most importantly, be clear and readable at the smallest scale.

The top half of the cover is prime real estate so, as a general rule, use it for your main type area. You’re unlikely to be able to fit in much more than the title and author, with perhaps a short subtitle or series cover line visible in the larger images. Non-fiction titles might be better to drop the author to free up space for a subtitle unless the author is well-known.

Covers are the one place you can forget about working with the narrow range of e-reader- and web-friendly type styles because the cover type will only appear in an image. The sorts of fonts that work for covers are quite different from the fonts that work best for body type. For instance, readable body type is fairly open while strong headline types are tighter with less white space and, often, more height. You should only use one or two fonts on a cover and they need good size and contrast against the background and images.

There are lots of great sites for fonts on the internet. One which specializes in good quality free fonts is Font Squirrel (www.fontsquirrel.com).

 

Spend some time on your book covers.  Or engage the services of a professional.  Smashwords highly recommends using the services of a pro.  I’ve elected to do my own covers for the main reason that I know the story better than anyone.  But probably, I’d benefit from a professional approach as well.

 

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 1.  We’ll be looking at how much research is enough for you tell your story believably.

 

See you then.

Phil B.

Post #172  June 3, 2019

“Book Titles: What’s in a Name?”

Every book has a title.  Some are good and some aren’t.  What makes an effective book title?  Let’s explore the art of giving a title to your book.

First, let’s ask a question.  What purpose does a book title serve?  I can think of several.

1.  Identifies the work.
2. Captures the story in a few words. 
3. Grabs the reader’s attention.  Brings the reader in.
4. Sells the book.
5. Genre compatibility 

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

1. Identifies the work. This should go without saying.  You want to select a title that positively and uniquely identifies your book.  Name authors don’t have this problem as what is really being sold is the brand name of the author.  Your title should identify the book along several dimensions (see #5 below).  Is it science fiction?  Mystery?  Romance?
2. Captures the story in a few words, maybe even one.  My best-selling book (in Smashwords downloads) is called Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor.  Not a few words but it does identify the main character and a key location or element of the story.  One of my latest sf novels was entitled The Farpool.  Probably a better title.  Punchier and with a word that you don’t see or hear very often.  Which leads me to….
3. Grabbing the reader’s attention.  Here’s one title I like because it immediately grabbed my attention: Freakonomics.  It’s a juxtaposition of two words that aren’t normally put together.  It seems just wacky enough to make you want to look a little closer.  By the way, one-word titles are all the rage now:  Twilight, Endurance and so forth.  Be careful with this, though.  Your word choice should reflect the story in some way, and ideally, it should offer an unusual perspective or angle or alternative use of that word, maybe in a way you never thought of before…something to get the reader thinking: “Hmmm, maybe I should look at this more closely.”
4. Sells the book.  The whole purpose of a book title (and it should be amplified and work well with the cover too, by the way) is to sell the book.   Readers want to know what to expect when they see your title.  You probably wouldn’t name your science fiction masterpiece Galactic Love.  Love is a word associated with romance, not sf.  Frank Herbert named his best-known book Dune, which is a great title.  It neatly captures images of lots of sand, deserts, brings to mind the kind of cultures that develop and live in deserts, the importance of water, etc.  This one simple word carries quite a punch and performs multiple duties in identifying and selling the book.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s a great read as well. 
5. Genre Compatibility.  This idea is alluded to above, when I mentioned how you wouldn’t normally put “Love” in the title of a science fiction story.  Readers want to be reassured that what they’re potentially buying is what they expected.  Titles help provide that assurance.  One way to do this is to, as an example, go through the science fiction section of your local bookstore or your favorite web site and list common words in the titles.  That’ll give you some idea of what words to use in your titles. 
    
   As an example, here’s a list of Arthur C. Clarke titles from my bookshelf, right beside me:
   2001: A Space Odyssey
   The Songs of Distant Earth
   The Fountains of Paradise
   Rendezvous with Rama
   A Fall of Moondust
    
   What do you see in common with these titles?  References to space, earth, cosmic things.  And if you look at the covers of these books, you’ll see images of Earth and astronomical settings. 
    
   Think of Carl Sagan’s wonderful novel Contact.  It’s one word.  It implies extraterrestrials and aliens and a whole syndrome of thought that surrounds these subjects.  And it works with the cover too: some editions show huge radio telescopes and stars in the background.  There’s no doubt what you’re getting when you look at this book or buy it.
    
   Titling books, fiction or nonfiction, is both art and science.  It isn’t hard to generate titles.  Lots of writer web sites will do that.  The art comes in when you choose your title to meet the 5 conditions I’ve listed above.  
    
   One web site I consulted as research for this post even adds discoverability as a key concern.  The site talks in great detail about keyword search and search optimization as other factors to consider, in this age of digital content and ebooks.  But that’s a topic for another time. 
    
   The Word Shed will take a three-week hiatus from June 3 to June 15.  It’s vacation time. The next post comes on June 24.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.