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!
Nice way to do this one! I’d like to see more “water” titles too, actually! And I definitely agree with more non- dragon creatures. Where are the gryphons and harpies and… whatever ha ha? Oh and PArk of Glass does conjure up a nice image. :)
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:D Yeah exactly! Harpie, siren, phoenix… would make a refreshing kind of fantasy book. I’d read it, just because of the title. Park of Glass sounds almost like horror novel.
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Thinking about it… I come up with tons of titles that feature a ‘prince’, but the only princess is ‘The Princess Bride’!
‘War’… yup! I come across that word in a title so often. Probably because there’s ALWAYS some kind of war going on in fantasy books :(
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Exactly! We need more capable princess characters!
Haha true, but you can express it differently. Like George R R Martin gets extra points for ‘Game of Thrones’…it could as well have been ‘War of Thrones’ or ‘Battle of Thrones’ or something like that..
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That is true!!
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I would read most of those books if they existed XD
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I would too :D
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I’m told the big publishers use algorithms to decide titles that will sell best. (QED)
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They should create an algorithm that predicts these kinds of weird titles too, that’d be interesting!
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Great way to spin this topic! It’s amazing how overused some words are in titles😊
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It is. Like seriously someone should do something about it.
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I laughed out loud reading this list. I LOVE fantasy novels but I’m totally behind your list!
Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thanks!
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Now we only need authors who’d write a book on these :D
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I think all of the YA female titled royalty are Queens, hence not many princesses!
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/top-ten-tuesday-156/
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:D you make a great point…ugh but still. I want more princesses.
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Great twist! You make a good point.
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I love your take on this topic :)
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I love the twist you did! You are totally right about water, fire was my second highest word this week xD
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More water would be nice :D
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This post was very entertaining! Going to check the links out now, Thanks matey.
x The Captain
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Hope ye like th’ articles Captain! I thought they made mighty good points.
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I found both articles to be fascinating. I wanted to know where Tor got its data set. Did they take the top titles from their company, from a Google search, or what. My favourite part of Nicola’s post was the use of “of” in titles. Thought-provoking and fun. Thank ye kindly fer sharing.
x The Captain
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