Naming Stories?

Kallithrix said:

I came up with a title because my agent wanted to shop it, and she said she couldn't send off 'untitled ancient Egyptian novel' to editors, lol.

I was so stumped tho, I really could not come up with anything remotely worth having. She eventually suggested naming it after one of the key locations in the story. I suggested adding the word 'conspiracy' on the end, just to indicate what kind of story it was, and we considered it job done.

.

Click to expand...

The Nile Conspiracy? That sounds like a Robert Ludlum thriller. I guess Moses would replace Jason Bourne and the dead assassins get mummified.

As for naming stories? I don't see why you need an ultimate title to push you forward (assuming you already know what the story is about) A working title is fine. The MCs name works if you can't come up with anything else. I'm sure some writers are forced to change their titles anyway. So why waste your time coming up with something like that?

It's possible your title is burried in your final paragraph. But you'll never know because... well, you didn't write it. You were too busy trying to come up with the perfect title...

Lillith1991 said:

Oh Froggy! Did I ever mention how much I adore you?

Click to expand...

Yes, just now, in fact.

Now, I have no clue what the heck to call my Scifi, interplanetery lesbian retelling of Romeo & Juliet.

Click to expand...

If it was my story, it'd be 'Star-crossed Lovers' and I probably would be feeling pretty clever. (No 'the', that's cutting-edge story-naming for me, right here!)

Friendly Frog said:

If it was my story, it'd be 'Star-crossed Lovers' and I probably would be feeling pretty clever. (No 'the', that's cutting-edge story-naming for me, right here!)

Click to expand...

Very nice - I like it! Can I be even more cutting-edgierer? I'd delete 'lovers' (the quote is so well known, that part it implied anyway) and just leave it as 'Star-Crossed'.

For anything remotely related to romance sub-genres, consider checking out other people's titles on AllRomance e-books. It covers hundreds of publishers and thousands of self-pub authors, all of whom have had to name books. In fantasy, look at back issues of online magazines like Tor.com and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, for evocative ways to make standout titles.

I'd tend not to use 'Star-Crossed' simply because it's a common quote and (I suspect) a common title. I see many titles duplicated, especially in the romance genre, and especially if it's a one or two-word simple title.

Not a disaster, but it can lead to catalog confusion. I remember hastily changing my first-written novel's title from 'The Dragonbone Flute' to 'Silk over Steel' around the time Tad Williams published 'The Dragonbone Chair'. Mine still never got published, and probably never will.

Compound titles can help. 'Star-Crossed and Scorching' could be one example.

Another way to title is to look again at the main characters' goals, motivations, and conflicts, and build titles that reflect that.

You kinda had me at 'sci-fi, interplanetary, lesbian, and Romeo & Juliet'. Hope you find a title, and a home for it.

Shadow_Ferret said:

I'm horrible at titles. And if I sat around waiting for a title to appear, nothing would get written. There are many times (like someone mentioned upstream) where I'll finish the story and it still has "Title Here" on the first page.

But I have trouble with titles even after the story is competed and edited and I'm ready to send it out.

Click to expand...

I don't wait for titles. They come to me all the time. I try to kick them out of my head. Damn them. One just came to me now as I was writing this and I want to lock it in the cellar. In me dungeon.

Jamesaritchie said:

Have you tried the Ray Bradbury method? I don't wait for titles to appear, I create the titles. It only takes a couple of minutes using his method.

Click to expand...

Maybe I'll have to look into that too. My stories don't get titles until they absolutely have to, ie when I'm about to submit them. Until then the files get names like "necromancer" or superhero team" and that's how I refer to them - "the necromancer story," "the superhero story" etc. I hate trying to come up with titles, and I'm never happy with the results.

I'm always really impressed with people who can manage it just as a matter of course. It seems an impossible skill to me. >.<

It's a skill, like any other. It took me a lot of time and titles (alas, mostly hypothetical) to learn how and when to title stuff.

Kallithrix said:

Very nice - I like it! Can I be even more cutting-edgierer? I'd delete 'lovers' (the quote is so well known, that part it implied anyway) and just leave it as 'Star-Crossed'.

Click to expand...

Feel free! I like it. Very advanced titling, that! At least for me.

Filigree said:

I'd tend not to use 'Star-Crossed' simply because it's a common quote and (I suspect) a common title. I see many titles duplicated, especially in the romance genre, and especially if it's a one or two-word simple title.

Click to expand...

Oh, I agree. Once you're contemplating publication, you usually have to have another look at the title whether it's still suitable. And your publisher may yet change it anyway. But for naming a WIP, the common tropes can still work as long as they fulfill what you want from a working title.

I SUCK at giving titles to my work. Even articles I'm writing are "weather story," "the school board thing," etc. until I'm finished and have to give them a title. I usually call my WIPs by my MC's name until I have to have a reason to title it for a contest or formal betaing. On here, I just call them WIP#1, WIP#2, etc. or use their characteristics ("the one about football" is my most recent descriptive phrase on here). My betas call them by the MC's name also.

Even though WIP#1 has a working title since I'm submitted the first chapter for a contest, the title doesn't seem to make it real. Everybody who knows I'm writing stories knows it best as "Megan and Jacob," my MCs. It really hate titling things!

Titles aren't super important to how I go about writing. I have to save the files to my computer as something, so it usually ends up being named after the MC(s) if I have no better working title. I got about halfway into my latest full-length novel before coming up with a title. Previous to that, it was called "Charles and Archibald Daniels.doc". And the novella I dashed off is complete but still has no title. It's currently just "Hamilton Gray".

I can almost understand the feeling that without a title, it isn't a serious project. But you gotta get over that. A title isn't always going to be there for you. The important part is to just write.

HOWEVER, consider this: are these projects uninteresting because they don't have a title, or is the lack of a title a symptom of the fact that the projects aren't interesting enough? Maybe the title is just part of the reason you can't get into these projects.

jaksen said:

I don't wait for titles. They come to me all the time. I try to kick them out of my head. Damn them. One just came to me now as I was writing this and I want to lock it in the cellar. In me dungeon.

Click to expand...

Me too. Except for the dungeon part.

I just... know. Magically.

I'm also halfway decent at naming novels I beta, or read blurbs for. I'm on another forum that has a "name the novel above you" thread -- we don't have one here, do we?

Yet.

It's fun.

I knew The Dark would be named The Dark the moment I started the Word document (though I did toss around renaming it Allegiance for awhile there -- the Divergent series squelched that wandering thought).

Star-Crossed is pretty awesome.

Just remember to google your tentative name somewhere along the way.

I may be the worst person at creating titles. They almost always come out absolutely awful. I often just create a name that relates to the topic of the novel, sometimes it just adopts a creature name or a theme.

I'm fond of using a line from the story itself either as a placeholder or a permanent title. Sometimes I get really good results from this. Others...well they work for placeholders

tylermarab1987 said:

I usually don't have this problem because I plot before I write. If you don't plan your stories, try it once. It's easier to come up with a title when you know what the story is about.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it seems to come more organically that way.

Most of my titles tend to be clever references to songs or to the thematic significance of what's going on between the lines, but lately I've been toying with the idea of reading my complete Shakespeare collection and seeing if any lines stand out to me that I could use as prompts and sources of total inspiration for a short story. This idea stems from finding out DFW, Faulkner and John Green used lines from his works to title their own material.

I've written a book that had no name, and managed to get to about 200 pages of it, before I decided it was unpublishable without the mother of all rewrites. Then again the novel I have had published always had a name and still took more than a decade to finish.

I can understand what you mean though. It doesn't quite seem like a book or a story until it has a name you can call it by. I've always just written and when I find the name for it, great. It doesn't usually stop me writing the story, since to me, that's something separate.

Stringer Greenbrier said:

Most of my titles tend to be clever references to songs or to the thematic significance of what's going on between the lines, but lately I've been toying with the idea of reading my complete Shakespeare collection and seeing if any lines stand out to me that I could use as prompts and sources of total inspiration for a short story. This idea stems from finding out DFW, Faulkner and John Green used lines from his works to title their own material.

Click to expand...

I cant read shakespeare.

Stringer Greenbrier said:

DFW, Faulkner and John Green used lines from his works to title their own material.

Click to expand...

And Aldous Huxley (Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow) and John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent) and Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes) and . . . . . .

caw

I don't plot out my stories extremely. I just start with a basic idea and just roll with it. Makes it difficult to come up with a title though.

Gunzen said:

I cant read shakespeare.

Click to expand...

Why not? It's some of the best writing this world has ever been blessed with, and reading it is pure pleasure. Every writer should read a good part of Shakespeare, and, more important, go watch his plays.

But how about this brilliant sonnet for a writer:

Sonnet 76


Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

I either have a great title from the get go or I use a placeholder which--sadly-- almost never get's replaced. (Not from lack of trying :\ ) I always feel better about a story when I have a good title though. It does make it easier for me.

Also:

I also have a story about a human woman who finds a female orc after the Orc's clan has been killed by orc hunters. They become friends and eventually fall in love. Titles for those two? Nope, unless you count the swearing that happens when I attempt to work on them.

Click to expand...

I would totally read that. =]