Girl with Head in Hands
Yep, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and shove 'girl' into my title - bound to get people reading my ramblings, right?
Originality is hard to come by, just about everything has been done before. In fact, you could argue (along the lines of intertextuality) that everything HAS been done before, all new pieces of writing are influenced by previous works to some extent or another.
However, titles do not have to be so repetitive and unimaginative do they? Why do we need to buy into some marketing ploy that says, 'Gone Girl sold well, so if we put Girl in the title people will think it's the same kind of stuff and, whey hey we've got sales.'?
I've not read Gone Girl, nor Girl on the Train, Girl in the Ice or... [ad nauseum], nor am I tempted to (I do have to admit to having read Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but that was before we had Girl overload). Anything with Girl in the title is anathema to me. The writing may be original, brilliant, insightful, witty or what-have-you, but I'm not going to find out as the title with its utter lack of originality has put me off.
I may well be cutting off my book-sniffing nose to spite my literary face, but if you've got Girl in the title of one of your novels, sorry but you've lost potential reader, and I can't believe I'm the only one.
Below, just a selection of Girl titles.
Originality is hard to come by, just about everything has been done before. In fact, you could argue (along the lines of intertextuality) that everything HAS been done before, all new pieces of writing are influenced by previous works to some extent or another.
However, titles do not have to be so repetitive and unimaginative do they? Why do we need to buy into some marketing ploy that says, 'Gone Girl sold well, so if we put Girl in the title people will think it's the same kind of stuff and, whey hey we've got sales.'?
I've not read Gone Girl, nor Girl on the Train, Girl in the Ice or... [ad nauseum], nor am I tempted to (I do have to admit to having read Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but that was before we had Girl overload). Anything with Girl in the title is anathema to me. The writing may be original, brilliant, insightful, witty or what-have-you, but I'm not going to find out as the title with its utter lack of originality has put me off.
I may well be cutting off my book-sniffing nose to spite my literary face, but if you've got Girl in the title of one of your novels, sorry but you've lost potential reader, and I can't believe I'm the only one.
Below, just a selection of Girl titles.
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