3.  Titles to Avoid

Judging from the titles of many dozens of scripts that the writers have seen slipped into the “stamped addressed envelope enclosed” and sent back to amateur photoplaywrights, one of the greatest mistakes that the young writer makes in his choice of titles is in making them commonplace and uninteresting.  When an editor takes out a script and reads the title, “The Sad Story of Ethel Hardy,” would he be altogether to blame if he did put the script back into the return envelope utterly unread, as so many editors are accused of doing yet really do not do?  To anyone with a sense of humor, there is more cause for merriment in the titles that adorn the different stories that a photoplay editor reads in the course of a day than is to be found in a humorous magazine.  Yet it is as easy for some writers to select a good, attractive title for their stories as it is difficult for others.

Do not choose a title that will “give away” your plot.  The title should aid in sustaining interest, not dull the spectator’s attention by telling “how it all ends.”  To quote Mr. Harry Cowell, writing in The Magazine Maker:  “A title is a means to an end.  The end of a story should justify the title.  If the title gives the story away, the writer may have to give it away, too, or sell it for a song, which is bad business.”  Let the title suggest the theme of the story, by all means; but keep your climax, your “big” scene, safely under cover until the moment comes to “spring it” upon the spectators and leave them gasping, as it were, at the very unexpectedness of it.  Avoid titles beginning with “How” or “Why,” for they are prone to lead in this direction.  A good exception is the well-known play, “Why Smith Left Home.”

If you use a quotation or a motto for a title, be sure it is not overworked.  Variations of “The Way of the Transgressor,” “And a Little Child Shall Lead Them,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Honesty Is the Best Policy” are moss-covered.

Avoid baldly alliterative titles, such as “The Deepening of Desolation,” “Elizabeth’s Elopement,” and “Tom Truxton’s Trust.”  Had not the three elements mentioned in the title, “Sun, Sand and Solitude,” practically made the story possible, it would never have been used; even so, it is really too alliterative.  Usually, the over-use of alliteration is artificial and suggests a strained effort to be original.

For more than one reason, names, as titles for photoplays, are not very desirable, especially for original stories.  To entitle a photoplay “Andrew Jackson,” or “Jane Shore,” if the plot is chiefly concerned with either of those two personages, is, of course, the proper thing; but the class of historical stories indicated by these or similar titles is usually turned out by the film company’s own staff of writers.  Once in a while, however, it happens that an original story of modern life is written around one character who so completely dominates the action that the name constitutes the very best title that could be given to it.  Two good examples of stories having names as titles are “Mickey,” in which Mabel Normand played the title role, and “Innocent” (the name of the heroine), produced by Pathe and featuring Fannie Ward.