So, titles are not my strong point. I’ve never given a novel a title I was particularly thrilled with.
My current project has a working title, but it needs a new one. My problem is, I know what I want the title to convey, but I’m having no luck at all coming up with a snappy word or phrase that conveys it.
The idea:
There’s this thing that happens in nature where prey animals kill their predators. Maybe they injure them during the chase. Maybe they’re diseased, and infect the predators. For this reason, snake owners aren’t supposed to feed their snakes live mice–the mouse can easily injure the snake in the struggle, even though it’s not likely to survive the process.
But there’s not really a good word for that, as far as I can tell. Counter-attack does not work. I haven’t been able to find anything else at all, let alone anything useful. Of course, it may just be that I don’t know where to look. Biology isn’t so much my area.
Another way to go would be to take a common saying about predators and twist it around into a good title. But all the ones I can think of don’t work. Cat and mouse, early birds and worms, etc. So far these all end up sounding like bad Agatha Christie knock-offs.
Yet another way to go would be something from an FPS, a word or phrase for being in a situation where you’re completely and totally surounded by superior forces and digging your way out. But if there’s a word for that, I don’t know it. Also, I wouldn’t want to go too far in the FPS direction, because while they play a role in the book, I wouldn’t want to brand it as a videogame book.
Of course, inventing a word is always a possibility, if it’s immediately obvious what it means. I’m not super good at making up words, though. This is one reason I stopped writing high fantasy.
Four months of thinking and all this conceptual work and I’ve got nothing.
It’s possible this book may never have a good title.
Any ideas?
