How NOT to title your novel

I found this amusing and insightful, for those of you revising and in the title-ing phase (I dunno about you, but I write first, title later):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/19/how-not-to-title-a-novel

That's pretty funny.

I find titling my books the hardest part of writing. Out of four books, I didn't decide on the title for three of them until after they were completely written. And I'm not so married to any of them that I wouldn't let an editor suggest something else.

Haha, oh man, that was really funny. I actually like some of the 'bad titles' he mentioned, but the stuff he says rings true regardless, which is probably part of why I find it so humorous. I remember finding a satirical title generator about a year or so ago that said the perfect title for a teen novel for girls would be "The [insert word ending in -ion here] of [insert slightly odd/unique female name here]" ending in titles like "The Ascension of Harlow Massey" or "The Abduction of Aisley Pierce." I really wish I could find the page again; it was pretty funny.

I still haven't titled my novel from last November, but I'm confident I'll come up with something eventually... =D Hopefully it'll be something unique enough to catch people's interest.

hehe "At Least They Left Us The [A PIECE OF OFFICE MACHINERY]"
why do I feel the urge to write something just so I can title it "At least they left us the stapler" or something...

When I'm titling, I just think about the message of the book. Sometimes I know right away (my very first terrible novel was called Francisca Means Free and was about modern day human trafficking, and the slave was called Francisca) Other times, I have a working title (Let Go) don't like it, so I change it (Never Give Up) end up realizing that's not what the book's about, and then if all else fails (Written in the Stars, Beyond the Stars... getting closer) I think about the inciting incident, or what sets the story in motion, over simplify it, and call it... "When the Stars Fall"
(The star's actually a creature called a Caelestis that comes from another land and it falls on my main characters to take them there)

My titles always come out of the book in some way. Kinda like you're always looking for the title of a movie in the dialog of the characters.

"The Seraphim Protocol" was so dubbed because the main character was subjected to the seraphim protocol to turn him into a biological weapon.

"Advent Overkill" is the working title 'cause I got nothing else . . . yet. Once the book is done, I'll have something in the text that stands out.

"Unnamed book" well, I got nothing for this one yet.

I always choose titles that describe what the story is about in a nutshell.

I try to find a title that fits the mood or theme of the story. Sometimes this means using a song lyric or a line of poetry, sometimes it's just a certain phrase that gets mentioned in the story, or a concept.

Lyrics or poems are definitely one of my favorite sources. I have a tendency to go for Robert Frost poems.

My story from this past year ended up with the title "Cardinal Virtues", which only sort of fits, and comes from something I had to memorize in college. But I had one of my main characters attending my alma mater, so... yeah....

man, you got good titles even as working titles....
Mine are as follows:
Felix I
Felix II
Lily
(and then there was a Beth before the computer died...I did back up, but who in the world still uses as Zip drive...)
Found the 1st chapter of another epic work:
Rikon
and I hammered out 2 chapters of 'Variana' out before the muse left me....

Hmm interesting, it makes you wanna check your own titles.

The Metal Maker series just decribe the main character's profession. Very simple.
Faustian Bargain is about demons and such, though the title makes it sound grave and solemn, it's really not all that serious.
The Three Brothers Farrow also describes the main leads and their relation to each other.

interesting...

My only published novel is entitled "For a few Gigahertz more". It was my idea and the publisher never tried to make me change it.
The genre is space opera. The book virtually has nothing in common with Sergio Leone's Dollar trilogy. But it's fun, with a lot of geeky counter-culture references, so the title itself is a nod to the reader and it just fits the rest of the story.

To be honest, though, the publisher and I usually refer to it as "GHz". The actual title is a little bit long.

I'm really picky about my titles, actually. XD They might not seem like they're all that original, but in reality the one-word titles of my stories have been carefully picked to fit a few criteria:

1: The word must pass as both a noun and a verb. For example, my 2011 NaNovel is titled "Risk," (In the sentence "A risk like that is stupid" it works as a noun and in "I can't risk it" it works as a verb) and

2: The word must somehow relate to the book and/or its theme, whether literally or figuratively. As an example, "Focus", my 2010 NaNovel, refers to my main character's magical ability to sharpen her focus and magically give herself "tunnel vision." Another example would be "Bloom," which refers to the friendship that 'blooms' between my three main characters throughout the course of the story, and also the the nature magic belonging to one of them.


I feel that it's a somewhat clever way of naming my stories, even if it's only interesting to me. XD

Well, I was intending to name mine 'The Forever Drug", because it's about a drug that makes people Immortal.

Then I found out that that title was copywrited.

So, it's now just "Forever". I don't like it, but I can't think of another one.....

Hmm.. very funny article!

1. Lady Dragon: Possibly changing it to "Imicke - Story of the Flaming Star"; or "Imicke - Lady Dragon". My original idea was Dragon's Child, but then I found M.K. Hume's King Arthur Dragon's Child novel and just about had a heart attack. Then I realised it's Imicke's story, really, not the Child's. Maybe I'll find a better title when I come to (eventually) rewrite.

2. Deirinna: Currently named 'Deirinna' for the main character but I'm toying with the idea of changing it to somelike like 'Secrets', or 'Half-Truths', or maybe 'Hidden Truths' as the secondary title line is 'Secrets, Lies, Half-Truths'. I think the secondary title line (what IS the proper term for that? Subtitle?) may make a better title.

3. Phantom of the Opera-esque story is as yet untitled. I may call it La Divina because it's the character based on Christine that's the lead, rather than the Phantom (the masked dude who brings down the chandelier in the show).

Brilliant article!!!
Almost finished up my book (started about six weeks ago) and now I don't know for sure what to do with the title. All this time I have saved the document under the name 'Keep counting ' since it's about a girl with OCD who has the habit of counting things all the time. The thing is that I have two story lines and keep counting doesn't have anything to do with the second storyline. Really annoying since it's the first time I came up with a title that I actually like...

My working titles suck. I think the novel I'm writing now is called 'Prologue.' One of my previous novels was referred to as 'The girl moved through the undergrowth' and I've got files labeled 'He said' and 'She woke up'.

Trying to find things I wrote in the past is a lengthy, confusing and traumatic experience.

And @Skyuni123: Are you sure it's copyrighted? I was reading copyright law a while back (and I am DEFINITELY not an expert) but the way I understood it, you can't copyright titles.

I'm kind of settled on the title for my first novel but the second is something that's just there until I think of something better. XD The first is Breakwater and the second is Wired. As you can probably guess Wired is a sci-fi novel involving androids. It refers to the behaviour of the main character and how his actions were wired into him from creation, but really, I need to think of something a lot better. XD

Breakwater is a steampunk fantasy about the collision of two people's lives, a human girl and a mer boy, and how it has a devastating effect on their world. Yes, it's probably very cliché and one person has told me I should change it, but I've grown quite attached to it. Still, I'll see if I can think of anything better for that too. My titles are awful. ^^;

I suppose that I can't title it 50000 words for real! like it is saved on my computer... I thought the title was extremely motivating though for November. :)

Honestly though, I hate coming up with titles. You need something original and stands out but you don't want to make your novel sound dumb. It's just so stressful.

I chose Absolution for my title. No one gets absolved of anything, it just sounded cool.

My 2007 / 2011 nano novel setting still has no official title. 2007's placeholder title was "Morphosis", but another title I have on placeholder status is "Empravi".

Mine is currently titled Threads, but who knows if that'll stick. It's a YA fairytale/fantasy about a fashion student who can travel to a fantasy world when she wears a costume sewn on a magical sewing machine. The main themes are about repairing and creating relationships as she has been pretty antisocial for a number of years. I think the title gets both the plot and the theme across, but I'm not entirely convinced yet.