insert title here

[serria]

I had a friend - no, not even a hypothetical, conversation-starter friend, a real one! - who chose titles before she had even started writing her story. I think for her, the title acted as a guide for her rough ideas, and she never wrote anything if the title wasn't already decided.

For myself, I am horrible with titles. They are very much an afterthought for me. At the same time, I'm really picky about them. Of course I want the title to reflect the work, but in a subtle way (without being overbearing). In fact, none of the three novels I've been working on have a title yet, even though they've been in the works for a long time. My fanfics pretty much always got their titles right before I hit the "submit" button, and my original short stories might've had a working title at best.

When do you choose titles? How do you choose them? Does anyone have any professional experience with submitting work, and getting any feedback or suggestions about titles?

Comments

[sarillia]

I used to despise coming up with titles but I think I'm getting better at it with practice.

My projects start out being named after the main character or if it's a work with a lot of POV characters I'll name it after the world. I wait to give it a real title until I feel like I've gotten to know the story. Sometimes this is during the planning stage, but other times I don't feel like plotting things out too much so it doesn't happen until after I've started writing.

Then I start picking out words that relate to the story. It can be an object that plays an important role or a mood or something related to the theme or something related to the story's catalyst. I mix and match them and see if I come up with anything that sounds good. The name of one of my current projects came from a mix of a dream that was important to the main character and a creature that plays an important role, so I came up with A Vision of Wings. Another one, One Voice in the Dark, was one of the story catalyst type.

If I can't think of anything I like then I look up quotes that have to do with the words that I listed and see if I can pick out phrases from them. I also like using sayings and idioms if possible. I've got one called Among Thieves based on the saying "no honor among thieves" and another called The Lion's Share that was an animal story about a herd of elephants having a problem with a lion pride.

[inevitableentresol]

I admire titles based on quotes, and they make me more likely to pick up the story, but I can never do it myself without feeling a little pretentious.

I've got one story in progress at the moment with its title based on a Shakespeare quote. I don't know if I can bring myself to use it although it suits.