If they’re not right, revise.
After the title has attracted the interest of potential readers, you depend on your subtitle to entice them to begin reading your text. But these second-most important words you write don’t always come automatically. Sometimes your subtitle needs a second opinion … or a third.
For the Model A Ford magazine I produce, I just edited an article about a group’s tour through rural, eastern Oregon. The author provided this subtitle: From small towns to Nowheresville … and back again.
One word posed a problem. Nowheresville communicated a sense of where they’d gone. But it was a mouthful. And not quite complementary. The –ville ending gave a sense of the Beatnik language of the late 1950s and ’60s. But most of the readers are in their 60s, 70s, or even 80s. For the draft layout I sent to the writer, I didn’t change the word.
The writer, in turn, sent the layout to someone in his club who had planned the event. The guy liked the rest of the article, but stumbled over Nowheresville. He felt, understandably, that it disrespected a beautiful region. He suggested a more specific term for the region: Chief Joseph Country.
The magazine, however, has a national audience. I feared that Chief Joseph Country would resonate only with people from that region — or those deeply grounded in Native American history.
I found the answer for the subtitle near the article’s conclusion. The text says, “Our lunch stop came after motoring more than an hour to cover 36 miles to where the pavement petered out in Imnaha (population 178).”
Now the subtitle subtitle conveys to all the magazine’s readers, without any insults, a sense of where the group of Model A Fords traveled: From small towns to the end of the pavement … and back again.”
If your title or subtitle give you second thoughts, there’s likely a good reason. Wait a while, revisit those key words, and brainstorm a better solution.
