Titles are so easy to come up with- what's your problem?

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WildScribe

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I title things very easily, but I have no idea if they're good or not. I've never had an editor change one, but I don't know if that means they're great, or if the editors in anthologies just don't care.
 

Little Anonymous Me

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I am so jealous of ya'll right now. Titles are hell for me. I have no idea what it is about them, but...it takes me longer to title the damn things than it does to write them! I've tried all the different methods that Google has vomited at me. I've tried to make my beta title them for me. I have an entire file of titles for things that haven't been written yet, but...nothing good for the ones I have. :cry:
 

LadyV

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The title of my WIP came to me immediately, and titles of some other story ideas came pretty quickly too. I also like to title my chapters. I title based on the main theme of the story.
 

Tezzirax

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I have had a working title for my book since the beginning, now that I am first draft complete...I am having a tough time getting past the working title to something which might be a better selling point for the work.

It will be something for my beta readers to help me with...once I have a good one or two.
 

CrastersBabies

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They come slower for me. I could settle for a laundry list of sucktastic titles that pop in my head ASAP, but the real one, the good one, is never instant.
 

wannabe writing

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A placeholder name is easy my first novel was called Genesis for most of it's first draft. An actual name tends to come as the story becomes more whole.
 

katci13

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I struggle. Sometimes I get close to the end or halfway through editing and I'm hit with something I think is great. This last time I had a list of 75 possible titles (and this isn't to be mistaken with them being easy to come up with--it's the result of me trying to get my brain to wrap around something so I wrote down everything I could think of.)

But I've experienced the whole gambit. From having a title before I even started, to still not having a title weeks after I've finished something.
 

blacbird

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Titles and character names I have no problem with. They seem to come easy, and I never get so invested in one of either that I'm resistant to changing it when necessary. But I recognized that my experience here is not universal. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously was awful with titles, which led to his publisher coming up with things that sound today like Soap Operas: Tender Is the Night, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned. I don't recall exactly what Fitzgerald's original title for The Great Gatsby was, but it had something to do with eggs and was hilariously bad.

BUT, I damsure do have big problems with other things, more important things, that many writers find easy and natural, so I ain't bragging here.

caw
 

CJ.Wolfe

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I don't usually try and title anything before I finish writing it - mostly because I'm a hopeless re-writer and I change my mind about things on a daily basis. While I'm WIPing, I generally just call the story by the MC's name, or a variation of it.

Although, in saying that, my current WIP is called ZombieWolf... it started out as some stupid idea that popped into my head: 'Hey, wouldn't it be funny to write a story called My Best Friend the Vampire Faery ZombieWolf Queen'. A friend thought it was a great idea... and so I started writing it. My Best Friend... etc, was too long and annoying to write, so I just shortened it to ZombieWolf and now it's stuck.

It may or may not change when I finish the damn thing, but normally I can't think of anything. And if I do they sound cliche and silly :p
 

Psychotic.Pink

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Most of the time creating a title for a story is pretty easy for me. However, there are a few I get stuck on, such as my current WIP. However, I think this time it's more of a case that I don't know enough of the story to be able to give it a title yet. It's more of an overall basic idea at the moment (one of those 'two characters are the only ones able to defeat bad guy etc etc' stories)
 

Ken

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... some have got a knack for this; some, a knack for that.
So long as you can pull it all together at the end, all is fine.
There's always going to be some struggle with something or other.
 
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lacygnette

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I"m title impaired. My current WIP has had 6 so far....BUT, I can come up with great endings to novels :) A trade-off I'm willing to accept! Of course, if an agent isn't attracted to the title (or the query, or the synopsis, or the first chapters), they'll never get to the end...
 

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My current project's something called Northstar, but that was originally only a working title. I think it's kind of stuck, though, since there's nothing else that seems to fit at the moment. I came to that name because, for at least some of the book, some of the characters are looking for something they call "the Northstar", and it just seemed like a practical title for the book.
 

Dreity

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See, I came up with the title for my first book easily enough (thought it up when I was about halfway through writing the first draft) but I haven't come up with a title for my second book yet. I think I'm overly restricting myself because it's a series and I want the titles to be all matchy-matchy. Because I'm like that.

A minor character in Book Two did just recently spit out an awesome phrase that fits the structure of Book One's title, but unfortunately it describes the plot of a future book and not THIS book at all. So now I have this really neat title that's going to be absolutely perfect...for like, book five or something.
 

Courier

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I usually come up with titles pretty easily. I'm not sure why a lot of "tips on writing a story" articles say to come up with a title last. If you think of a good title before you even write the story, that's great. No reason to save the title for last.
 

L.Blake

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Titles are harder than writing the novel for me. I can never think of anything that sounds good. I'm in awe of those who have titles to spare.
L.
 

Augsburg's Writer

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My trouble is that the title for the story keeps changing. As the story progresses, the original title didn't fit. The new "working title" seems awkward and cumbersome.

So, I am trying to decide what to do. Title isn't really the problem, it's deciding how to tie to whole story together with a title.
 
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