Writing Exercises for Crafting Catchy Titles and Headlines

Writing for newspapers, magazines, and blogs requires coming up with good, strong headlines. If you’re writing an essay, article, or book, it needs to have a catchy title.

Today’s writing exercises ask you to compose headlines and titles that make people want to read your work.

Headlines

Magazines use enticing headlines prominently displayed on the front cover to entice customers. Newspapers use them to draw readers into a story, and bloggers, as many of you know, use them to generate buzz, links, and tweets.

The best headlines and titles are alluring. They impart a teaser about what a reader can expect to find within the content. Therefore they engage the curiosity of the target audience. They are also often memorable and include familiar phrases. Here are some starters for popular headlines:

• The Top Ten…
• How to…
• Fifteen Ways to…
• Everything You Need to Know About…
• The Twelve Best… Ever
• What [someone] Never Told You About…

Other common strategies that are particularly effective with headlines include the use of words and terms that quickly capture people’s attention. Examples include sex, money, lose weight, and a host of celebrity names, especially the names of anyone who’s currently in the spotlight and generating a lot of news, or rather, gossip.

Titles

Titles, like headlines, should entice a potential reader and make them want to read the entire piece. An effective title piques a reader’s curiosity and tells a little bit about what the story or poem will be about. It rouses curiosity and often includes trigger words that engage a particular audience.

Some authors use titles as part of their brand. Sue Grafton is working her way through the alphabet with her Kinsey Millhone series (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc.). Many romance novelists use word like kiss, love, romance, or dance in their titles. In the sci-fi realm, anything associated with space is fair game: galaxy, universe, Mars, and stars. And a well placed mythological term, such as dragon clearly marks a fantasy novel.

In addition to book titles, many authors have a separate title for a series. This allows the author to use two different titles on a single piece of work. New readers will be drawn in by the book title while existing fans will gravitate toward the series title.

In poetry, titles are far more creative. In some cases, the title may seem irrelevant to the poem. Many poets take a word or phrase from the poem and use it as a title. Others will use a title that works with the poem itself, which almost functions as part of the poem. The best poem titles invoke an image and gives the reader an indication of what the poem will feel like.

Writing Exercises

You can learn how to write good headlines and titles with the simple writing exercises below. In time and with practice, your headlines and titles will become great.

Instructions:

Write some compelling headlines and titles. Wait – there are a few details…

Write at least three headlines each for five different publications.

• Focus on newspaper and magazine headlines.
• Identify your target publication for each set of headlines.
• Include at least one publication that you would never read. If you’re a swinging, childless, single person, write headlines for a parenting magazine. If you’ve never left your home state, write some headlines for a travel rag.

Write at least three titles each for short stories, poems, and novels.

• Ask yourself whether short stories and novels have different requirements for titles.
• Should a poem’s title come from the body of the poem?
• You can use famous or obscure novels, poems, and short stories (rename your favorites) or you can use your own. However, be sure to title real material rather than nonexistent.

Come back and post a few of examples from your headline and title writing exercises in the comments section.

You never know, maybe one of those headlines will kick off a new writing project.

Keep on writing!

Do you have any writing exercises to share? Did you find these exercises helpful? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

This post was originally published in January, 2008. However, it has been updated with new content and republished for your reading (and writing) pleasure.