Why you chose option #3

And a hint for bloggers…

Thank you for all of you who responded to my request for help choosing a subtitle for The Black Swan Effect–the book on women I’ve been compiling. With all the numerous possibilities, it’s been a daunting task. You’ll be interested to know that more than 70% of you picked the same subtitle–the third one, “A response to gender hierarchy in the church.” The question is why.

And here’s where it becomes fascinating.  A few days ago, I was introduced to a site that helps analyze the emotional impact of headlines. Type in your headline and  it comes up with a percentage score. A good copywriter averages a score of 30-40%. A gifted copywriter has a score of 50-75%. I checked out my past blog headlines, and sure enough, not exclusively but in general, I would say that the posts that garnered the most interest had also scored well on the site.

I had perhaps 25 to 30 subtitles that had been suggested over the months. I tested all of them with the site. The vast majority were very mediocre, several even scoring 0%.

Back to the drawing board.

As I played around with the subtitles, I began to find words that increased the score. I had decided on the patriarchy headline which scored 63% when several people told me that they weren’t sure that everyone would understand the title.

I was just about to send out the last post when I decided to give the site one more try. Which is when I found that “A response to gender hierarchy in the church” scored 100%! So almost as an afterthought, I added it to the options.

I know that we need the Holy Spirit to breathe life into the title, and that we are totally dependent on the Lord for how he uses the book, but in the face of innumerable choices with no clarity even after prayer, it was invaluable to have some help!