Wrestling With Brevity, Relevance, and Wit

In finding or dreaming up a title for Novel #2, I’ve been stumped for quite a while. Here’s my off-the-cuff take on my as-yet unresolved title frustration:

 Whether it’s a newspaper article headline, magazine article title, or title for a short story, novel or movie script, we all strive to please the goddesses Brevity, Relevance, and Wit.

During my months-long tag-team wrestling match with these three- they take turns, I just keep being thrown to the mat by one after the other – I’ve come away with dozens of bruised bad ideas.

I’m tempted mightily by Brevity: McBee as the title for Novel #2. That’s it. Just McBee, the last name of my main character, my reluctant good man. Then I think of Travis McGee, who went by McGee, and who stands tall among the ‘60’s anti-heroes of detective fiction. I can’t go there. McGee’s maker, John D. McDonald, would simply rise from his grave and snatch me up like a ragdoll and shake me. McDonald can create McGee, and McBride can create McBee, but McBride can’t steal the one-word McGee icon and slap it on a wannabe. I get that. I can’t go there. No way, Jose.

So consider what Relevance has to offer: Novel #2 is a Civil War story with a sub-plot of romance and intrigue. Or, more likely, it’s a story of romance and intrigue taking place during the Civil War in Virginia.

 I can think of war novel titles all day long: Hold Not Back is Old Testament Biblical, sounds warlike and gritty to me, and is actually connected to a historical artifact relevant to the war tale. It fits nicely, but none of my writer circle friends or my wife got it. So Hold Not Back is Held Yet Back, but not yet buried.

After a glass or two of wine I can also think of titles for historical romances, but I’m not even going to start tossing out titles oozing with swords, lust and lace and such. Pretty soon it would it reach the Men In Tights level, and I don’t want Mel Brooks on my butt either.

Suffice it to say, I haven’t been able to tie the two threads together, giving equal play to both the war and the romantic intrigue, without laughing out loud.

That brings me to the witch queen Wit, who has a sexy offspring, Alliteration, who terribly tempts and twists my title ideas. (Sorry, but that sort of silliness suckers me in every time.)  McBee’s Bloody Boots is typical of the result I get after Alliteration’s addictive attentions.

The primary woman character is named Faith, so I’ve been fighting the urge to waiver under Wit’s wily ways (Oops, sorry, again) and play on Faith’s name as a favored moral condition. McBee’s Faith was the first obvious and stupid thought. Tempting Faith came next, but was also obvious and stupid, and mischaracterizes the lovely lady and the plot. There’re more, but that’s enough to get the idea.

So here I am, wrapping up the manuscript and writing emails to a graphic artist who specializes in book covers for indie authors like me, and moping for want of a title to pass along to her.

Got any good ideas?