Microfiction Tips: Create a Stand Out Title
The title is the first thing a reader reads: Make it Stand Out
First Sentence
The first sentence in any story is the most important. Make it boring and the reader will go elsewhere. Make it interesting, intriguing or appealing and your reader may read to the very end on the strength of that starting sentence alone. In other words, they are hooked, just like a hooked fish that is eventually landed. This is true of every story, not just a Microfiction.
But how does a reader get to that first sentence?
Title
Faced with the contents page, of a printed or online magazine, what story do you read first?
The one that stands out.
Or, more correctly, the Title of the story that stands out.
How to get a Stand Out Title
Alas, there is no easy way to get that Stand Out Title, it seems you have to Sweat That Title. Meaning, brainstorm the title by listing a minimum of ten, choosing the couple you like and listing more and so on and so on, trial and error fashion until you come up with something that is catchy or interesting or stands out in some way.
Like all brainstorm sessions nothing is too silly and all candidates should be listed. Thinking outside the box is the order of the day.
Things to bear in mind when choosing the Title
Faced with a list of twenty or thirty titles choose the one that best suits the story and Stands Out.
Primarily it should describe or sum-up the story in a few words. If you can also foreshadow or hint at some plot point even better. But, it shouldn’t have a spoiler, we don’t want to give the game away and negate the reason to read it.
Song titles, quotes and well known phrases can be catchy ie Perfect Day and A Trick of the Light. Also, sing-song or rhyming can be good, Stan The Man Gets It When He Can. And, suggestive Special Patient and intriguing Beyond the Snail Graveyard just begs to be read. Something eye catching.
A word of warning: The title really does have to have something to do with the story that follows, otherwise the reader will feel conned and cheated.
Long Titles
Long titles can work well, though I would never use one myself, consider:
A One-Word Yet Possibly Longer-Than-Necessary Personal Essay Dedicated to My Soon-to-Be Ex-Boyfriend Who Doesn’t Believe Me When I Tell Him I Can Write Something This Short That Sums up Everything There Is to Say about Our Relationship, Our Future Together, and His Allegedly Legendary Sexual Organ — by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Read the full story here — winner of the second prize of the 2016 100-word competition (National Flash Fiction Day[UK]). Ingrid Jendrzejewski is good at winning prizes, and her story titles usually stand out, so have a head start.
But that’s not all on Medium
To read a whole story the first sentence needs to be good. Normally, to read the first sentence the title needs to be good and eye catching. Here on Medium the first thing a viewer sees is the image associated with the Title and the Story, so the most important thing on Medium is the image.
Where are these Images Shown?
There are various places the Image you select for your story will be seen.
- In the New from your Network list are the latest stories of all the people you follow. Just like you read catchy titled stories first, your eyes, and probably mouse click, will be drawn towards the most interesting Image first.
- At the bottom of every story are previewed three other stories. If you have an eye-catching image or title, you may get a random person reading your story.
What Image?
For fiction, I prefer to have some connection to the story behind the image, but, you don’t have to, and it is usually difficult for non-fiction. There are only so many books or bookshelves or pens you can have before they become boring. Also to state the obvious:
A story needs an image. Stories without an image are usually ignored.
Where to find Images
There are many libraries full of images, my personal favourite is Pexels as they have a good selection and some photos are covered by the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license:
- Use all photos for free for commercial and noncommercial purposes.
- Giving credit to the the photographer or Pexels is not required but appreciated.
- You can edit and adapt the photos as you like.
Attribution is required by some publications, so, it can save time to automatically attribute everything.
The “edit and adapt” clause is particularly important to me as I like to resize images, to make them more widescreen, and images can be flipped (see above).
Other similar libraries are Pixabay and Unsplash. There are many others available and each can specialise in different areas, just do a search in your favourite search engine.
Every time you use an image from one of these libraries you need to check that you are allowed to. On Pexels seeing that it’s CC0 makes it real easy.
Portrait or Landscape?
My opinion is only use Landscape Images.
Often Portrait Images have to be scrolled to view the top and the bottom. You could click on it to see the whole image but because it is that little bit smaller detail is lost. Often images are a portrait of a person and inevitably any preview shows just the middle portion cutting off the head!
With Landscape Images it is possible to see most the image whilst starting to read the story. I would go further and try for a Widescreen Image, if I could, because it is possible to view the whole image whilst starting to read the story. This is why the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license is particularly useful, as it gives you permission to crop the image however you think best.
What is an Eye-Catching Image?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so the next ten times you read a story make a note of why you clicked on that particular story/image to influence the next image you select for your story.
Summary
If you are a known writer, your readers will seek you out, but, if you are not, it can be assumed that on Medium the most important component that might result in your story being read, is the image.
On Medium the image is the first thing a reader sees of your story. Choose it badly and they will move onto the next image. Choose it well and they will usually click on it to open and read the first sentence of your story, and if that is good they may even read the whole story.
