I can’t keep referring to this new project as ‘my new project’, or even ‘my space-opera project’. It needs a name. It needs a title.
But titles are tricky.
Okay, it’s easy to come up with titles. It’s coming up with good titles that takes work. A good title has to catch the attention. It helps if it’s memorable. And a good title needs to say what the story might offer, either in plot or tone (or both).
Yes, there are exceptions. Trainspotting is about drug addicts in Scotland, isn’t anything to do with trains. But most titles go a long way towards explaining the story. Think Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Stargate. Fighting in space, travel to distant planets, and portals crossing vast distances.
It helps that these titles have a certain rhythm, too. Two words (or a combination of two), each with four letters. The pattern helps us remember the title. It’s a technique I’ve used in my previous book titles. The first three Dominions books are Dark Glass, Dead Flesh and Deep Water. I like the symmetry—all starting with the same letter, all having a four-letter word followed by a five-letter word.
Which brings up another point—consistency across a series. It’s not necessary, but does it help? Possibly. So, what are the options?
One option is to have numbers and subtitles: Star Trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Kahn, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. I still think the best version of this was used for the Naked Gun films—Naked Gun, Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear and Naked Gun 33 1⁄3: The Final Insult.
Other series use a common word—Dune, Dune Messiah, God Emperor Of Dune and so on.
I prefer the series title to be separate to the titles of individual books, though. This is the pattern used in The Expanse. So let’s consider those titles for a moment.
First, the series title. The Expanse. It tells you the story’s going to be epic. It points to vast distances, either in space or in time, or possibly both. With a title like that, you expect a series that starts small and then balloons out (expands). It’s a title that fits the story told across the nine novels.
And what of the individual book titles? They all follow a two-word pattern. Leviathan Wakes, Persepolis Rising, Abaddon’s Gate and so on. There’s an epic quality to them, as well as tension. Words like ‘wakes’ and ‘rising’ automatically prime us for action—we know these aren’t going to be light-hearted books. And then there are those initial words. Even if we don’t know the actual references (if our knowledge of mythology or history isn’t sufficient) they still sound mythological, so we anticipate stories on a grand scale.
But titles are also important during the writing process. The files on my laptop refer to my new project as ‘Space Opera Series’ (or simply SO), and the spin-off is ‘Space Opera Spin-Off’ (I haven’t shortened that—don’t know if I’d go with SOS or SOSO). Those work as labels while I get to grips with the stories, but they don’t do anything to describe them. They don’t mean anything. And as I sink deeper into these stories, that becomes a problem.
I need the focus a title can bring. A title turns a bunch of ideas into a cohesive whole, even if there are still gaps, even if the structure needs tightening. A title helps ground a project, helps make it feel real.
Titles also help when thinking about marketing. Writing in a vacuum and thinking about selling the book afterwards is not a realistic option. It’s more sensible to consider marketing while writing, or even before.
By marketing, I don’t mean advertising. That can be a part of marketing, but there’s far more to it. Marketing includes covers, and back-cover copy (or product description or blurb, whichever term you prefer). Marketing involves condensing the whole story, even the whole series, into a punchy paragraph, then further into a tag-line. Marketing means thinking about how to present the books to potential readers. And for this, not having a title is a serious hindrance.
So I need titles. They don’t have to be finalised yet—writing a book, let alone a series, is a long process, and the end product is rarely close to what is initially envisages—but I at least need working titles.
So, here goes. My current working titles.
For the main series, I’m going with Unity. In the story, Unity is the name of the organisation that acts as a galactic government. This entity plays an important role in the story, and is home to some of the important characters. The word ‘unity’ also relates to what is becoming a major theme across the series. Humanity will face a major dilemma, and must come together to find a way through. Along the way disparate groups will need to work together, overcoming their differences.
For individual book titles I did consider things like Unity Fractured and Unity Resolving. But while this might be fine for a couple of books I think the titles would eventually sound too forced—trying to conform to the pattern rather than trying to be proper titles. So I don’t have any book titles yet.
Then there’s this spin-off (read this Substack post for more information). I see this as a series in its own right, but with the books working as stand-alone stories. One of the major story arcs in Unity follows Kane and his crew aboard the spaceship Seraph, and the first spin-off explores Kane’s back-story, focusing on his first contact with Seraph. My plan is for each book in this spin-off series to introduce another member of his eventual crew. While Kane could be seen as the main character, the ship is what binds them all together. For this reason I’m currently calling this spin-off series Chronicles Of Seraph.
I don’t have individual book titles yet. A part of me likes the idea of using character names in the titles, with the final book being something like Seraph Unbound. But I can’t come up with a decent title for a character called Norm. I suppose I could change his name, but ‘Norm’ suits his character. He’s the ‘average one’. He doesn’t think he’s anything special. He’s not the action hero or the smart one, but the one who fixes things on the ship (and cooks the crew’s meals). If I was writing a comedy, he’d probably be the butt of a lot of the jokes, yet take it all in good humour. In my mind he’s Norm, and I’d struggle to change that.
So, no book titles. But I have those series titles now, Unity and Chronicles Of Seraph.
And simply having names makes these series feel real. They’re no longer vague notions but solid projects. I’m no longer tapping away at stories for my own amusement. Instead, I’m creating books.
I still have a long way to go, of course. But every step brings me closer to bringing the project to fruition, closer to having books I can share with others.
This post is the latest in a series I’m running on Substack, chronicling my work on this new project. If you’d like to read these posts as they appear, please consider subscribing for free.
TW Iain 