A good comp title1 is a thing of beauty. Or a horror show of dashed expectations. Or both at the same time.
Consider this comp, spotted last week on the Twitters:
The cover is excellent, the title is cool and unexpected, and the cherry on the sundae is that comp ā āFarscape meets The Great British Bake Off.ā
Itās a perfectly designed lure for a certain kind of SF fan. You like space opera? You like messy, muppety, funny space opera like the late-and-much-lamented Farscape, which was better than Battlestar Galactica yeah I said it, come at me nerds!
But the āmeetsā smashes you right into a whole other realm. GBBO? A show soooooo many people binge-watched over the last year, our ears glorying in the ways various British accents cradled the word āsponge?ā A show thatā¦ has nothing to do with space, right? Unless I missed the Great Lunar Bake Off Christmas special?
Itās a compelling comp because it associates this book with A) stuff you already remember fondly and B) does it in a way that scrambles your perceptions and forces you to think about how those two pieces fit together. Interstellar catering? Anti-matter cream pie fights? A gang of rogues and scoundrels competing with one another to raid the Lost Kitchen of the First Civilization?
Itās like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Little Women!
See, now you want to learn more. That seems to be a goal of a great comp. Two great tastes that taste great together! Or at least intriguingly weird!
On the other hand, Iāve been wildly disappointed by comps before. If your comps are Aristoi and A Million Open Doors, you dang well better live up to those and blow my socks off.2
Iāve got comps on the mind because I am winding up edits on a *cough* novel *cough*.
As someone with no agent, that means Iām going to be making a long list of potential comp titles for the query letter. The comp is not the most important part of the query, but it seems to be de rigueur these days.
Itās like Little Fires Everywhere meets 2001: A Space Odyssey!
There are multiple ārulesā to using comps in a query letter. The first is that you donāt have to use them, but tell an anxious author that something is optional, see what they do.
Other rules I have seen at various times: Donāt use books that are too famous (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones), donāt use books that are too old, donāt use TV/movies/videogames, donāt use books that flopped, donāt use books outside your genre.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets The Devil Wears Prada with a dash of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead!
Almost all comps that Iāve seen break one or more of these rules.
Consider the Cat Rambo comp ā two TV shows, one of which is DEFINITELY in another genre, and the other is more than 20 years old! Thatās at least three no-nos right there!
You can always avoid the āX meets Yā formulation, of course. The other common templates are:
Like X book, but with Y element! (Like Beauty and the Beast, in SPAAAAACE!)
X meets Y, starring character from Z! (Frankenstein meets Murder on the Orient Express, but starring Dorothy Gale!)
Will appeal to fans of X, Y, and Z! (If you liked The Phantom Tollbooth and The Blind Assassin, youāll love this!)
One now-dead comp style I miss comes from cop movies and sitcoms of the 1980s, the Wunza formula. You know, āOneās an absent-minded nuclear physicist, oneās a Mormon alligator wrestler ā can they get along in the big city?ā3
Speaking of wrestling, Iām wrestling with whether I should include comps at all when I hammer out a query letter this spring.
Stranger in a Strange Land, but during a zombie apocalypse!
Iāve got a swashbuckling secondary world city fantasy just about put together. So what do I use as comps?
The Princess Bride? The toneās close-ish, but the setting is very different, and will agents expect a frame story? Guards! Guards! is a possibility, but too comic? Perdido Street Station? Tone is off again, now in the other direction, and what if the agent prefers The Scar? Sorcerer of the Wildeeps? Might get across some of the post-modern worldbuilding elements, but that setting is more mythic!4 The Iron Dragonās Daughter? Groundbreaking, but is it ātoo oldā now?5 The Prisoner of Zenda? A century old, probably too obscure, almost certainly problematic in ways I have forgotten since I last read it.
Screw it.
āOneās a dirtbag disgraced swordfighter, oneās a demi-god accountant. Can they save their city from a smug pop star wizard?ā
Self Promotion Corner
If I was to comp my latest short story (The Acheulean Gift, out now in the March/April issue of Analog!) I would probably say itās Lumberjanes meets Quest for Fire. Yes, I know how stupid it sounds. But is it intriguing stupid?
Short for comparable title.
By the by, those would have been great 1990s comps for Arkady Martineās A Memory Called Empire, and it lives up to them.
Alternate ending: āThey fight crime!ā
Letās be honest, Iāve never had a terribly good grasp on what āpost-modernā means.
It is not too old, go read it again.