I have a 69% chance of being a best-selling author*
A blurb in this week's Newsweek pointed me to the Lulu Titlescorer, which takes book titles and analyzes their chances of becoming bestsellers. If you're like me and have occasionally dabbled in attempting to write the Great American Novel, you should try it. It's kind of fun.
I was pleased with the fact that I have apparently gotten better at coming up with titles since I've grown older. For example, my awful 100-page "novel" Halloween Eve, a story about a battle between teenagers and werewolves, zombies, etc. that I wrote when I was 13, only had a 45.6% chance of becoming a bestseller. By comparison, my pet projects of the past two years both scored in the mid- to high-60s: Standards of Learning, my tale of high school seniors caught in the apathy and confusion of their last two months of school, got a 64.8; The Rightfielder in the Pumpernickel, a novel I've started and restarted many times with many different plots and premises, scored the highest of all my endeavors, with a 69. Which is good, considering I always imagined it would be my chef d'oeuvre if I could ever get it rolling.
Naturally, this scoring method is flawed, primarily because it essentially judges a book by its cover. Consider that one of my favorite novels, the classic Catch-22, scored only a 23. Still, it's an interesting way to test if your titles have any mettle. My hope is that eventually I'll find the time and inspiration to help one of my ideas live up to its title-based potential.
Song lyric of the day:
"Too much of the same stories in our lives
I think it's time for change, don't you?"
- Trapt, Stories
* now all I need is the writing talent to back it up
I was pleased with the fact that I have apparently gotten better at coming up with titles since I've grown older. For example, my awful 100-page "novel" Halloween Eve, a story about a battle between teenagers and werewolves, zombies, etc. that I wrote when I was 13, only had a 45.6% chance of becoming a bestseller. By comparison, my pet projects of the past two years both scored in the mid- to high-60s: Standards of Learning, my tale of high school seniors caught in the apathy and confusion of their last two months of school, got a 64.8; The Rightfielder in the Pumpernickel, a novel I've started and restarted many times with many different plots and premises, scored the highest of all my endeavors, with a 69. Which is good, considering I always imagined it would be my chef d'oeuvre if I could ever get it rolling.
Naturally, this scoring method is flawed, primarily because it essentially judges a book by its cover. Consider that one of my favorite novels, the classic Catch-22, scored only a 23. Still, it's an interesting way to test if your titles have any mettle. My hope is that eventually I'll find the time and inspiration to help one of my ideas live up to its title-based potential.
Song lyric of the day:
"Too much of the same stories in our lives
I think it's time for change, don't you?"
- Trapt, Stories
* now all I need is the writing talent to back it up
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