Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin January 16th, 2008

Seth’s blog has an interesting take on titles:

1. You can pick a completely descriptive, generic, boring name that precisely describes what’s inside. Like “Shredded Wheat” or “12 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog” or “Installing Linux on the 8088 Platform in 24 Hours”. The advantage of this approach is that Google likes it, and so do people who are quite goal directed.
2. You can pick a more clever name that’s designed to entice the reader to read the subtitle, or the first few lines of your post or the back of the cereal box. You can imbue the name with some attitude, like BlogWild, or you can pick a name that just begs to be researched, like Join the Conversation.
3. The third approach is to pick a name that gets talked about. To create a phrase that you hope will enter the vocabulary.

When it comes to something creative, like a movie or a story, there are additional challenges to coming up with a good title. Here are my 3 rules for writing titles.

1. The title should be interesting. I scour YouTube for interesting shorts to post about. The first thing I look at is the title. Especially as an indie filmmaker, your title is going to be an important marketing tool.
2. The title should relate. A lot of movies tend to pick titles that are reflective of one aspect of the movie. Good titles will have titles that fit the whole thing. Almost like a thesis statement.
3. The title should illuminate. This one is the hardest. The strongest titles add more meaning to your story. It should be an extension of your theme that brings insight to your work.

These 3 rules can work in conjunction with what Seth laid out.

-Penguin

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