Tantalizing Titles
No matter what you write, a bit of poetic license can be a valuable asset to any writer’s arsenal.
Want a headline that stands out? The answer is in your essay.
If you are struggling with titling your essays and articles, it’s important to realize a good title is vital—it can make the difference between an editor reading your piece and relegating it to the slush pile.
A little-known secret: Often, an editor will assign on the basis of a compelling headline that displays an angle that makes it stand out, even if the pitch isn’t fully fleshed out. Even better if the title evokes emotion or even anger. I love a good alliterative title, that also plays on words such as a piece I wrote for Writer’s Digest, “Polishing Your Prose: Tips for Self-Editing,” or my student’s title “Seoul Searching in San Francisco” in Bloomberg (which plays on the words soul and Seoul, evoking a journey and a spiritual quest).
I always try to put a title at the top of the page when I’m working on an essay. It may change, but at least it gives me a roadmap and helps keep me focused as I write.
Here are 11 title tenets to craft yours, with examples of compelling titles from me, my students, and other writers.
1. ANSWER A BURNING QUESTION
What question does your essay ask? Answer the question in your title. It can be either direct or indirect but implied.
EXAMPLES:
• “Why Do People Take the
Public, Social-Media Spectacle of Celebrity Death So Personally?”
• “Elijah the Prophet Will Toast You on Zoom: Ways to Get Through a Socially Distanced Passover”
• “How to Bullyproof Your Child”
ESTELLE’S EDGE: Try writing up a short sentence about your piece’s meaning or purpose, or the situation that has to be overcome.
2. SHARE YOUR CHALLENGES
What are you dealing with that others can relate to and also evokes emotion?
EXAMPLES:
• “I Was Uncontrollably Angry After Giving Birth”
• “What to Do About Your Tween’s Toxic Friend?”
• “My Husband Doesn’t Post About Me on Facebook and That Makes Me Sad”
3. INSERT AN IMPORTANT MOMENT
Cover what is at stake and how is it focused on in the essay.
EXAMPLES:
• “My 9-Year-Old’s Unexpected Seizure Taught Me the Power of Letting Go”
• “I Had Quintuple Bypass Surgery. A Trait I Never Guessed Might Affect My Heart May Be to Blame.”
• “I Had My Daughter in Midlife and She Became My Writing Muse”
ESTELLE’S EDGE: Think of words or phrases related to your topic and the emotional implications and cultural significance. If it’s motherhood, words that work might be birth, placenta, breastfeeding, rules, postpartum depression, binky, obligations, musings, child-free time.
4. OFFER WORDS THAT RESONATE
What are your protagonists saying? Are there any phrases, colors, or specific details that stand out? Or is there a single word that is repeated throughout the piece?
EXAMPLES:
• “The Red Cane”
• “Don’t Blow Up Your Life for a Byline”
• “Friends, Fleetwood Mac, and the Viral Comfort of Nostalgia”
5. SET UP A PROBLEM/ SOLUTION
Write the first part of the title as the situation or problem or vice versa, and then write “and that’s why I realized …” or found or this happened, or I did this to solve X.
EXAMPLES:
• “I Lost My Brother to a Cult When I Needed Him Most. A Tragic Twist of Fate Brought Us Back Together.”
• “I Was Told My Parents Were Dead. 38 Years Later, I Got an Email That Changed Everything.”
• “When to Reply on Social Media—and When Not to”
6. INCLUDE THE ACTION HAPPENING
You can pull it from any part of the piece, including the inciting incident
or narrative arc: the beginning, middle, or end.
EXAMPLES:
• “When Your Tween Acts Up in Lockdown”
• “A Fake Uber Driver Tried to Pick Up Me & My Daughter”
• “Singing My Dad Back to Me”
ESTELLE’S EDGE: If you are still struggling to define your headline, take specific words out of your essay and look them up in a thesaurus or dictionary to find synonyms that might work in your title and get ideas percolating.
7. SHARE A NUMBER
Numbers in headlines promise specific information and insights and solidify the concept for the reader.
EXAMPLES:
• “15 Kinds of Kisses for My 5-Year-Old”
• “6 Reasons We Don’t Let Our Daughter Sleep in Our Bed”
• “8 Ways to Defend Yourself From Writing Coaching Scams”
8. EQUATE TO A CELEBRITY
The idea is to pose the concept: Like [CELEBRITY NAME], I am also dealing with [AN ISSUE]. Or, this celebrity helped me deal with [AN ISSUE].
EXAMPLES:
• “How John Mayer Helped Me Become a Better Therapist”
• “Like Naomi Campbell, I’m an Older Mother. My Experience Is a Gift to My Child.”
• “Why Penny Marshall’s ‘Laverne’ Was the Role Model That Saved Me”
9. SEEK OUT SETTING
Go through your essay and see where it takes place, or where most of the scenes occur and highlight those places in your title.
EXAMPLES:
• “Thanksgiving in Mongolia”
• “Georgia on My Mind”
• “My Husband Wore Really Tight Shorts to the Eclipse Party”
ESTELLE’S EDGE: Do word mapping to figure out a way to discover new connected words that you can use. For example, if your piece takes place at a farm, you might word map: Sunnybrook, rooster, wake up, milking.
10. “VERB” YOUR WORK
Which verbs resonate as you read? If so, jot them down in the Notes app on your phone. Use active verbs like churned, sauntered, splintered, spiraled, collapse, turbulent, and peppered to paint a picture for the reader.
EXAMPLES:
• “Unmuting a Brother-Sister Relationship, One Chord at a Time”
• “What to Do When Your Tween Is Trash-Talking You”
• “Mom Hacks to Cut Through Other People’s Crap”
11. MAKE A PROVOCATIVE STATEMENT
Remember, it is only clickbait if the essay doesn’t deliver on the title. Yours will.
EXAMPLES:
• “Confessions of a Former Hoarder”
• “My Secret Life as an Underage Massage Therapist”
• “Being Hypnotized Into a Past Life as a Man Brought Me True Love”
TITLE GENERATOR JUNCTION
A title should draw readers in. It should inform. Intrigue. Entertain. Show the stakes. Often changing just a few key words, or switching the focus or tone, makes the difference between an OK title and one that gets attention.
ORIGINAL TITLE: How I Stopped Wishing My Neurodivergent Children Were Different
FINAL TITLE: How I Discovered That My Children’s Neurodiversity Is a Gift
MAKING IT WORK: The key word gift makes the title focused on the positive, not the negative, which works better to draw in readers by showing a benefit.
ORIGINAL TITLE: An Astrologer Returned My Dad to Me
FINAL TITLE: I Thought Love Was Lost to Me Forever, Until an Astrologer on New Year’s Eve Gave Me a Way Back
MAKING IT WORK: The emotional stake is clear now, and the solution was about her love life, not her father.
ESTELLE’S EDGE: If you want to see your byline in a particular publication, model the titles the publication uses.
Now that you have a great title, when you are submitting, make sure you add it to the subject line of the email to the editor. Let them see your craft before they even start reading your work—and it will get noticed.
Estelle Erasmus (EstelleSErasmus.com) is author of Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published, and host of the Freelance Writing Direct podcast (EstelleSErasmus.com/ podcast). She teaches journalism classes at New York University’s School of Professional Studies and for Writer’s Digest University. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @EstelleSErasmus for publishing and writing advice, and sign up for her Substack focused on craft and publishing opportunities at EstelleSErasmus.substack.com.
5 WAYS TO HOOK READERS WITH POEMS
Poems are such versatile things. They can be as concise as a well-written line but also long enough to fill an entire book. Poems rhyme except when they don’t, and they follow rules except when they won’t. Poetry is beautifully chaotic.
While I agree that poetry doesn’t easily conform to a formula (even with poetic forms), I also believe there are a few obvious and maybe less obvious places poets can “hook their readers.”
The Title
The title of a poem can serve many purposes, and for some poems, it is the first opportunity to hook a reader. For instance, these titles hooked me before I read the first line of each poem:
• “My Mother Dreams Another Country” by Natasha Trethewey
• “Us, Like a Bad Mix Tape” by Jillian Weise
• “Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats” by Kaveh Akbar
• “Don’t ride the mechanical bull” by Megan Volpert
Of course, a poem with a strong title still has to deliver an equally strong poem, but it could also be what draws a reader’s eye when scrolling through the table of contents of a collection or anthology.
First Line(s)
This may be the most obvious place poets think to hook their readers, and it’s true that a strong first line or stanza can get someone to read the entire poem. The opening of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” sucked me in from the first line, and like a catchy song lyric, they continue to roll around in my head at the most random (and maybe not-so-random) of times. As with a strong title, an incredible opening has to be supported by the rest of the poem, or there won’t be a reason to return to it. Consider your own favorite opening lines and think about what makes them so appealing to you.
Compelling Image
Many poems have hooked me over the years with a compelling image often juxtaposed with an interesting title.
For instance, Donald Hall’s “Adultery at forty” is a three-liner focused on a drop of water. Patricia Fargnoli’s “The Undeniable Pressure of Existence” follows the image of a fox running through a developed area. In both examples, the poem only needed one compelling image, though it’s definitely possible to pack in more than one—as in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Ending a poem on a strong image can provoke readers to jump back to the beginning to figure out how they got there.
Strong Sounds
When I talk music with some people, they’re focused almost primarily on the meanings of song lyrics. Other folks focus on the sounds and really don’t know what the song is about— some even make up song lyrics that don’t actually exist. While I don’t think those extremes exist in poetry, there is a reason so many poetic forms use end rhymes and internal rhyme schemes. Sounds can definitely hook readers and meaning can bring them back for more. (Check out the September/October 2023 issue of Writer’s Digest for more on playing with poetic sound.)
Interesting Structure
Poetry is one of the few literary forms that can hook a reader with how it is presented on the page. Some poems are visually interesting before a single word is read because of how the lines and stanzas break, especially if they employ varying line lengths, indentations, and other structural experimentation. Such is the case with poems like Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City” and Bob Hicok’s “A poem with a poem in its belly.”