Title Card
One thing I talked about was the title. It took me a long time to come up with the title of this book, and I went through several working titles that were mostly terribly bland. For awhile it was just "Caden and the Nouns," which was the eight-year-old's suggestion and honestly no worse than most of what I'd been using.
The title of chapter 2, though, "Situation Nominal," I was very pleased with. "Nominal" means both "satisfactory, according to plan, as good as possible under the circumstances" and "having to do with nouns." I love puns. So at some point, 4156, the person who introduced me to Nouns and who's been so thoughtfully helping me through the process of organizing my proposal, suggested I make that the title of the book. I liked that idea a lot, but it didn't quite work for me. I wasn't sure why, at first, but after awhile it occurred to me that a lot of kids might not know the word "nominal," which would mean I'd be relying on the rest of the title to be interesting to them. And, let's be honest, "situation" just isn't that dynamic a word. It doesn't exactly scream excitement. Once I'd clarified that, "The Nominal Hero" came to mind: even if someone doesn't know "nominal," they'll look at a book called "The [something] Hero" and recognize that it's probably an adventure-type story.
Plus, this way I wouldn't have to rename chapter 2. Coming up with titles is so hard! Even chapter titles! It always seems a bit unfair to me that musicians can call something "Sonata #32," and poets can use "Untitled" or be indexed by first line, and nobody minds if chefs put "number six with broccoli" on the menu, but novelists are supposed to come up with not just a good title for every book, but also multiple internal titles as well. (This is how you know one of my projects is actually going very well: I am complaining about problems that are, in fact, already solved for this project. Seriously, I am so happy with how this book is going, it's great.)
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