How To Title a Novel

I started writing this story some three years ago and from the start the working title A Good Man guided me. Now that I’m near a finished manuscript, I thought I should put some time into how to title a novel.

The story is a blend of a road novel and addiction lit, and tells the story of Cowboy—a twenty-year-old full of agitation and wanderlust—who leaves behind his turbulent childhood to ride freight trains across the country in the 1980s and 90s, seeking freedom and adventure and finding instead despair and depression, drugs and addiction.

His hardscrabble journey takes him from small town Nebraska to drug hotels on Colfax Avenue, rail yards and hobo camps, a Catholic seminary, prison, a 90s tough-love rehab program, and eventually the Chickasaw Indian Nation in Oklahoma. Cowboy leads a varied and daring life before accepting that sobriety is his only choice, and the family he was escaping offers exactly for what he was searching.

Told from Cowboy’s point of view as an older, wiser and sober man, it is his chance to reflect on his life and try to determine if he’s redeemed himself, atoned for his sins? Is he finally… a good man?

Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and infuriating, the story is interwoven with journal entries from one of his sisters and is a story of family, self-discovery, honesty, and forgiveness and explores the contradictions of having a home or wandering, belonging or being free.

Best practices for how to title a novel say offer a hook, intrigue, and help the reader understand the genre and/or story to come. Double meanings or hidden layers get you bonus points.

I also happened across this article about novels that borrowed their titles from famous works, such as Birnam Wood and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I started considering books my story was similar to and might join on a table in a bookstore or books with similar themes of wandering and freedom yet also belonging and home. I also researched country music song titles, which already title each chapter of the novel, to see if any best defined Cowboy’s story. (Merle Haggard was hands down the winner.)

These are the best novel title alternatives to A Good Man that my brainstorming has come up with so far:

• Nowhere To Go but Everywhere (line from On The Road by Jack Kerouac)
• Circle Home, Cowboy
• Out Among the Stars (Merle Haggard song title)
• Ramblin’ Fever (Merle Haggard song title)
• Sing Him Back Home (Merle Haggard song title and a nice link to each chapter being named after a country song)
• Lonesome Whistle Blowin’ (Merle Haggard song title)
• On the Rails (a situation where you are operating successfully, especially after a period of difficulty AND a nod to On The Road by Jack Kerouac AND an allusion to riding trains)

And then, while researching hobo slang to see if anything there resonated, I came across an article about the origins of the word hobo. While there is no definitive answer—ideas abound from migrant workers in the Great Depression carrying hoes (Hoe Boys) to homeward bound Civil War soldiers—here’s the one I love best: some believe the word hobo comes from the Latin Homo Bonus, meaning good man.

So, I’m sticking with A Good Man. (Until a publisher tells me to change it (which happens a lot!) and then I’ll suggest On the Rails.)

Which novel title most hooked you?