Why can't good writers write good blog headlines?
I relegated every literature blog to the third tab on my Google homepage.
Why?
Because I almost never read their posts.
Why?
Because their headlines really stink.
I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that creative writers gloss over an essential part of getting people to actually read their work—namely, by choosing a good headline. I’ve written terribly uninformative headlines myself. But I almost never read lit blogs now simply because I have no idea what I might be reading.
The main thing creative writers need to get past, when it comes to blogs, is that the title is not part of the post. The title is almost always going to be viewed alone, especially when it comes to RSS feeds, so it needs to stand on its own two serifs.
Let’s compare the headlines of blogs I read a lot and lit blogs that I now read rarely:
Well-written headlines
From Wonkette:
“Rudy’s Son Sues College For Cutting Him From Golf Team”
“Pennsylvania’s Beauty Queen/Fake Job/Cigar Store/Car Sex Scandal”
“Obama Lies About His Foreign Language Skillz”
From Slashdot:
“Mars In 3D”
“The Death of Nearly All Software Patents?”
“Researchers Face Jail Risk For Tor Snooping Study”
From Brain And Consciousness Research:
“Aggressive preschoolers found to have fewer friends than others”
“Magic is the trick to understanding the mind”
“Team creates touch-based illusion”
Poorly-written lit blog headlines
From the Sycamore Review:
“A day in the life of a week . . .”
“The cinema of the theatre of the absurd”
“Show your working”
From Bookninja:
“I get to go to Vermin!”
“Since you asked (or not)”
“don’s fountain of health”
Even McSweeney’s:
“Way back when”
“Amazon vs. everybody else”
“High fashion out of fashion”
Since I’m not one to bitch without a follow-up suggestion, if you yourself have trouble writing good headlines, here are some great resources:
