Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and found a new home with That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This week’s topic was ‘Frequently Used Words In [Insert Genre/Age Group] Titles’ and I thought I’d twist the topic a bit and go with Not Frequently Used Words In Fantasy Titles.
1.Light:
It’s all very dark and shadowy…What about Queen of Light, His Light Materials? Sun and Day are not too popular in titles either.
2. Water:
And earth. Fire and air seem much more popular. Don’t even get me started about fire. Now what’s wrong with some water?
3. Princess:
The Little Prince, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Clockwork Prince, Prince Caspian, Prince of Thorns, Nine Princes in Amber, The Vampire Prince, The Cruel Prince.. Seriously. Where are all the princesses?? We do have a ton of queens for some reason. And Daughters. Do they just evolve from daughters to queens?
4. Title with a mythic creature that is not a dragon.
It can’t be that hard.
5. First …
Since it’s always Last of something, why not first unicorn. Or first dragon. Or first vampire?
6. Peace.
So I did a Goodreads search. There are about 30 000 hits for peace and 170 000 hits for war. Just saying. You could combine with something dramatic like ‘Broken Peace’ or ‘Shadow of a Peace (I ruined the idea didn’t I…)
7. Gun… or maybe a bomb?
It’s always a sword, knife or a blade. A storm of guns? A storm of bombs? The Assassin’s Firearm?
8. Office. Or maybe a park.
Office in the Air? The Dark Office. Park of Glass?
9. Lullaby.
Well since it’s quite often a song, how about a lullaby. Lullaby of Darkness. Lullaby of (Ice and) Fire…I mean Lullaby of Water.
10. Fact.
Knife of Facts? Facts of Gods and Monsters?
While doing some backup work for this post, I stumbled upon two great articles: https://www.tor.com/2011/03/11/best-of-the-decade-data-common-words-in-titles/ &
https://thoughtsonfantasy.com/2014/06/30/judging-a-book-by-its-name-10-common-trends-in-fantasy-titles/
Check them out! Happy TTT!