Wednesday, June 28, 2017

False Equivalency in Titles

In the gender swap game often you use a title that's pretty descriptive, like Transformed Into a Whore is obviously about someone being transformed into a whore.  Another formula is From [something] to [something else] like From Head Coach to Head Cheerleader.  That's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it?  A coach is turned into a hot cheerleader.  More to the point, the two items are related, representing an inversion of status from the coach (person in charge) to a lowly cheerleader standing on the sidelines.  Or From Best Man to Flower Girl, where obviously a guy who was going to be a best man is reduced to the adorable flower girl.


Unfortunately you get some amateurs who don't know how to do this right.  What you want to do is to have two things that are related, not just two random words.  Such as this:


What do a clerk and a cheerleader have to do with each other?  Nothing.  It's like you just took two random words out of the dictionary.  I mean sure it summarizes the plot pretty effectively as a costume store clerk becomes a girl in a cheerleader costume, but without a logical connection it doesn't really have any rhythm.

This one is even worse:


This doesn't even make it clear it's a gender swap story or anything, which I guess is why it needs that subtitle there; otherwise you might just think a female lawyer got pregnant like that old Diane Keaton movie Baby Boom.  And really it's like the author thinks it's the 1950s and a lawyer can't possibly be a mom. Terribly sexist.

I just hate to see stuff like that; if an author puts so little thought into their title, how much thought are they going to put into their book?  Probably not a lot.

An honorable mention for this one:

Apparently the author doesn't realize that Robin is a unisex name, so the question posed in the title makes no sense.  Besides that the cover image is pretty lame; you typically want a sexy woman on the cover if you're advertising an erotica book.  It reminds me of a book I read and the character Lee was changed into a girl and her friends are like, Well, um, we'll call you Li now!  Why?  Lee can be a unisex name.  Duh.  At that point I knew I was going to hate the book, because if the author is that fucking stupid can you really trust them with plotting or writing effectively?

Of course I'm a little uptight about this stuff; other people are obviously not so discerning.

4 comments:

Cindy said...

Think of it this way. Less competition for you. Because those titles aren't interesting at all. The third one is probably the worst because of the cover.

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

I agree with Cindy. With less competition, you'll make more bank and that's always awesome.

PT Dilloway said...

You'd think so but no.

klahanie said...

You make a good point about Robin being a name for gals or dudes. The second photo down is not showing up. This might well be a good thing.

Gary

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...