Title My Book!
Okay, DS friends, this is your chance to make the most significant contribution of all to this book: THE TITLE!! I need suggestions! (PLEASE CONTRIBUTE SUGGESTIONS AS COMMENTS TO THIS JOURNAL, RATHER THAN EMAILS TO ME, SO I CAN KEEP THEM TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE) I definitely want the word "Rape" somewhere in the title, just so it can be found using keyword searches on Amazon, etc. It ought to be self-evident what the book is about, as opposed to some mystical, artsy "concept" title. There are dozens of decent books out there about rape, but nobody's read them because nobody can find them when they search for "rape" on Amazon! Nothing with the word "Silence" in it; that's a cliche in most books on this topic (Aftert Silence, Silent all the years, Silent no more, etc.) A good title has an action word in it: "Waiting to exhale" is a good example. "The Client" is not. I'm not trying to find something profound, just GOOD. That means a viewer could see the title and know immediately what this book is about, and understand that this is a positive book, not a sorrowful, traumatic narrative. Some possible examples: Victory Over RapeHope After Rape (or, Finding Hope After Rape, and similar variations) Resurrection After Rape (***I kinda like this one; I keep coming back to it in my mind) (all of these are quick, short titles that describe EXACTLY what topic this book covers, but they're also positive and hopeful, not sour and bleak.) You'll notice that I avoided leading with the word "rape" at the beginnig of the title; instead, I lead with a positive word.You might also go in another direction and describe the process itself: Learning to live after rape You might also consider an empowered, militant, "fun" tone: How to fight back against rape (and win) From Victim To Survivor Regarless of whatever title we pick, the sub-title is going to be: "An un-boring, un-depressing guide to recovery!" ...because wouldn't YOU buy a book that said that right on the cover? Please brainstorm some ideas. I'll consider them all, and add comments.
Replies
Victim to Survivor: Learning the Difference After Rape
Or maybe Death of a Victim Birth of a Survivor: A Resurrection after Rape... too long?
It\'s not too long, but starting the title on a \"death\" word may not launch the tone in the reader\'s mind that I\'d like to create.
I\'m starting to see that the title should be some form of \"X after rape,\" where X stands for a positive term like hope/victory/resurrection.
I\'m starting to bond to \"Resurrection After Rape\" because it has that nice iambic pentameter flow to it, the alliteration, and it would make a great website URL to accompany the whole project.
I could certainly live with that, but I\'ll wait for the rush of Monday DS visitors who may not log in on weekends, and give them their chance for input.
Hey, wait--how about this??
Resurrection After Rape [in large, gorgeous font]
An un-boring, un-depressing guide to transforming from victim to survivor
[in much smaller font, as a sub-title]
It has BOTH elements, and says everything necessary. Thoughts??
perfect, powerful title followed by a soft over view
how about just Resurrection from Rape???? I see where that second part would be ok but I think its too wordy i dunno but I think that the simpler you keep the title it would seem less like the stereotypical self empowering book it would be more ....Real? i donkt know what word to use there but I think you get my drift.
Yes, I\'ve been leery of using cliches. But I also know that if it were me and I were looking for a book to read, I\'d choose the one that actually said \"Un-boring\" and \"un-depressing.\"
How about a subtitle like: Finally, an uplifting, interesting guide to transforming from a victim to a survivor ? \"un-boring\" and \"un-depressing\" bother me. I\'m not sure why.
how about getting back up after being beaten down...(a survivors guide to fighting rape)
The \"Finally, an uplifting guide...\" is a better intro for back cover details, and I might use it there. The \"un-boring\" and \"un-depressing\" terms are bothersome because they\'re clunky, not poetic. But they still express something a potential reader would want to know when choosing this book over others.
I love the \"A Clean Slate: Healing After Rape\" but would change it to \" A Clean Slate: Becoming Empowered After Rape\" or \"A Clean Slate: Being Empowered After Rape\" - It adds a sense of strength, confidence.... empowerment.
What if i changed the subtitle to something that flowed a bit better, like:
\"A guide for transforming from victim to survivor\"
and removed the \"un-boring and un-depressing\" words? I could easily strike them from the cover, and relocate them to a basic book description on the back cover instead, where they don\'t interfere with the flow of the title.
I like the \"clean slate\" idea, but it would need work. Two things occur to me: \"healing after rape\" can sound too much like a physical description, as in actual medical healing. Maybe if it were \"emotionally healing after rape\"
...And the \"empowered\" term is a bit of a buzzword; it crept into corporate office jargon in the late 90\'s (along with \"paradigm shift\" and \"think outside the box\" and \"Vision statement\"), so the word is losing meaning, sadly.
If you\'re looking to get away from \"un-boring and Un-depressing\", maybe you could go from the negative forms to the positive, like \"exciting and uplifting\", or \"intriguing and inspirational\". Just a thought. I like the directions you\'re leaning, though. Also, for what it\'s worth, everything I\'ve picked up that had the word \"survivor\" in the title made me feel like I was back in my high-school guidance councellor\'s office...and that\'s *not* a good thing.
Yes, and Lisa68 wrote a post on DS a couple of months ago ab out how she hated the term \"Survivor.\" I started a discussion here in an effort to find a suitable replacement term, but the end result was that after testing out all sorts of other words, it became clear that they were either clumsy or they were so sensational that it called MORE attention to the avoidance of \"Survivor\" than any other benefit they offered. So it\'s a flawed word, and I take that problem on directly in writing. But at least I\'ve dialed it back down to a minor word in a subtitle, and not an emblazoned pop-culture buzzword cliche.
I\'m recognizing that part of the hindrance to rape recovery is that there\'s simply not a very good vocabulary available to us to work with. They\'ve either been taken over by the Dunder-Miflin corporate lexicon (\"Empowered\", which is even my own screen name here!), or they\'re hokey and new-age-y (\"vision\" and \"warrior women\" and such), which leaves us with a vocabulary that doesn\'t suffice.