What makes a good story title?

[Claire]

(...) but I'm not convinced a title like 'The Petite Girl Rape Hunter' wouldn't have gotten more hints.

It might have. But does that make it a better title? Some of the most viewed stories in the public stories board have titles I don't like a lot. You can probably get a lot of people to click a story titled "Cheerleader gangraped" but I doubt that you will often find a memorable experience behind a title like that. For example, I'm not surprised that "The Most Delectable Game" has a rating of 25 despite its relatively low view count of only 1600 after being published half a year ago.

[HistBuff]

(...) but I'm not convinced a title like 'The Petite Girl Rape Hunter' wouldn't have gotten more hints.

It might have. But does that make it a better title? Some of the most viewed stories in the public stories board have titles I don't like a lot. You can probably get a lot of people to click a story titled "Cheerleader gangraped" but I doubt that you will often find a memorable experience behind a title like that. For example, I'm not surprised that "The Most Delectable Game" has a rating of 25 despite its relatively low view count of only 1600 after being published half a year ago.

I'm learning as a writer that numbers and the quality of a story are two different things. If I wrote a story on AO3 where ICE agents get ambushed and most of them killed by Minnesotans serving in the National Guard, and then the surviving female ICE officer, a staunch right-wing racist, gets dragged to some empty wharehouse where she gets brutally gang-raped for hours on end, with some of her rapists being blacks and Latinos, the story would get a LOT of feedback because this topic is hot in the news. Does it mean it would be an unforgettable story? No. I could describe repetitive scenes with all the bad tropes I can think of and it would still be a smash hit, because so many people would read it. The title could be "ICE officer gets filled up in Minneapolis" or "Revenge!" It doesn't matter, at all! I would get both praise and hate. I'm not writing it because this is not what I truly feel like writing.

Writers who are after praise and popularity get really good at knowing what kind of story will be a hit. They write the right story at the right time to get maximum feedback. That's the heart of it. A descriptive title helps in this. Back in October 2023, I was tempted to write a story about Palestians gang-raping girls during the Nova Festival attack, but I absolutely refrained from it on moral and humanitarian grounds. That's partly why I keep to long gone events. The most recent I ever did was a story happening in 1999 where a French reporter gets beautifully gang-forced by Serbian troops in Kosovo. It even had images in grainy texture suggesting long-past events. If Claire still has the files from Ravishu, I will be happy to re-post it here. This and my Roman Gladiator story, because I somehow managed to lose the files, my bad!

You know you have a good title when it keeps taking new meaning as you advance in your story. "Red Sunset" refers to red Bolsheviks and the sunset of the dying Empire of Russia, from the start. It also reflects the blood since the grand duchesses will be raped at "that time" of their month (Olga and Tatiana only in the version here). Red is generic, but the context gives the word strength!