What the hell does that mean?

The art, craft, and frustration of titles.

Photo by Chris Arthur-Collins on Unsplash

Some writers are really good at titles… and some aren’t. Either way, there is a great gnashing of teeth and burning of brain matter whenever writers try to come up with a title for their novel. When I think about the book titles I love, they usually have just the right amount of intrigue and rhythm, and avoid the overly clever, or worse, cliché monikers.

Searching my brain, DeLillo’s Underworld comes up first. It’s the perfect title for an epic novel that is about, well, everything. Big books need big titles: one word, or two at most. Infinite Jest by DFW, Beloved by Morrison, Emma by Austen (haven’t read this one, but have heard it’s pretty good. Oh be quiet, I’ll get to it.) Gilead by Robinson is one of my all-time favourite novels, with a plot so slow I could feel myself age as I read it—and I loved every page.

A novel title should point to the theme of the book, but not overtly. It should be unique; although you can’t copyright titles and there have been many with the same name published. And if anything, a title should be interesting.

Short story titles are even more crucial in the way they hold the meaning of a story, which may be layered or hidden (looking at you New Yorker.) I always loved Raymond Carver’s story names like Fat, Elephant, Cathedral, and of course, What we talk about when we talk about love. Carver had no idea that w.w.t.a.w.w.t.a.l would become so famous that it would begin to appear at a meme-like level. And notably by people who have never even heard of the story—or from Murakami (What we talk about when we talk about running) who surely has.

I work really hard on titles, some come easier than others. And I guess this post was created to talk about the novel title I get the most questions about: Surf City Acid Drop.

As this was to be the first Luke Fischer book (at the time, I thought the only one), I wanted to capture the vibe of the novel. I thought about other crime fiction and mystery novel titles that I liked. There were all those Travis McGee novels by the great John D., with each featuring a colour in the title—but I’ll admit, they got tiresome, and almost ripe for parody. Darker than Amber, The Deep Blue Good Bye, A Purple Place for Dying, The Crimson Ketchup Packet.

Travis McGee in the little known adventure: The Crimson Ketchup Packet

I think Joe Lansdale has amazing titles, especially for his Hap and Leonard books. They trip off the tongue and hint at the humourous mayhem within. The Two-Bear Mambo, Mucho Mojo and Rumble Tumble. Just reading those titles you know you are in for a helluva good time.

Lansdale is a big influence on my work, so I wanted the first Luke book to have that similar vibe. I went through countless names and word combinations, but nothing really tripped off the tongue. At one point in the querying process, I simply called the novel, Fischer. Which is okay as the first book in the series, but also a bit of a yawn.
Finally, I wanted to capture the vibe of The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley. Of course it has echoes of Chandler, especially The Long Goodbye.
I realize that I’d set the bar pretty high for myself. But I dove in anyway. Yes, that’s a surf-pun, shut up.

While writing the book, I’d started to be intrigued by the small sub-genre of Surf Noir. Probably the most famous book being Tapping the Source by Kem Numm. (A book that I love the opening two-thirds of as much as I hate the last third.) I also landed on a web page that listed a bunch of surfing terms. Strangely, a week after I finished the novel, that web page disappeared. It’s a sign! (It wasn’t.)

Read two-thirds of this book and stop. Thank me later.

There were some great terms in the surfing lexicon. Some were familiar to me: hang ten, pipeline, barrel and carve. But then there were those I’d never heard of: Corduroy – This is when swell fills into a bay and the ocean looks like corduroy fabric. Or Barney – a surfer that is not cool, untalented, rookie. And then of course, I found the Acid Drop. I’ve seen different definitions of this, but I like this one best: When you take off on a wave and the bottom falls out suddenly and you free fall down the face.

So basically you’re riding a wave that disappears underneath you. I can’t fully explain why, but this was a perfect way of describing my hero, who is neither a detective or a surfer, Luke Fischer, and the quest he goes on. As someone reviewing the book recently said, it’s like Drifter Noir—which oh my, I do like the sound of that.

The problem was how to put this in a title, and not make it sound like a book about LSD—which I had already written. See: Fall in One Day. I know that I somehow wanted “Surf” in the title. I thought about Beach Boy’s songs and places that have earned the name Surf City, like Huntington Beach (the setting of Num’s novel.)

Okay… so I had four words: surf, city, acid, drop. They were good words. But that’s not a title is it? I tried different combinations, none really made sense, so I went back and tried other titles. Bad ones. Like Morning Over the Waves (When I consider that could have been the title, I throw up in my mouth a little.)

At the end, finally, I said fuck it. I just like the sound of those words. So I went with it.

For the most part, the title has been really well received. And this led to a similar vein of thinking when I eventually wrote the second book in the series. I had no idea what to call that one either… but I always liked the sound of the town name, “Manistique.”

I’ll leave it there for now. Please share some of your fave book titles—including your own! Or if you are a writer, your process about how you come up with a title.

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