The Importance Of Titles

A science fiction editor, Neil Clarke for Clarkeworld and/or Forever magazines, recently took about 50,000 short story submission titles and fed them into a Wordle generator to see what the most common story title words were used.

Came up with a doozy of a list.

Upon further examination, I have used some of these words.
Last
War
Blue
Day

I'd have to re-read my short story anthology to verify.

On the bright side, I don't see the words Grapefruit, Welcome, Snipe (or Hunt), Hero, Cleanup, Protocol, or Banging.  So I *am* making serious efforts to be original with the naming conventions.

But let's be fair.  Science fiction relies on specific imagery, specific tropes, and because of that the title(s) of stories/novels have to convey as close as possible what the point of the story will be.  I guarantee you a word count of mystery/thriller titles will have Shadow, Dead, Night, Fatal, or other menacing noir-ish words in play.

To Writers Looking at Self-Publishing

Seriously: get an editor.  From Penny C. Sansevieri:

People ask me all the time, "How can I be successful?" Well, aside from the usual stuff, like show up and keep promoting, the one key to success is to publish a book so good, your reader can't put it down. But to take it a step beyond that, I would say publish something that has been edited often, and by someone who knows how to edit a book and isn't afraid to tell you the things you may not want to hear.

I'd also add "hiring an editor who has a shovel and an egg timer and is unafraid to use either."

/dithers over NaNo work