Hello all, when and how did you come up with a title for your novel? I have an idea that I have been mulling over for a long time. I had a title, but then realized that the title had already been used (by a well know author, of course). Now I am having trouble thinking of another. My current working title is The Winter of My Adolescence. (but I don't really like it). Right now, I have been listening carefully to songs, and reading other stuff for inspiration. Who knows, maybe it will just hit me someday...
This will be my first time doing NaNo. Sounds like just the kick in the butt I need!!
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50,194 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 14 51
Ooh great topic. I'd love to hear some tips/advice on this as well.
It's not just that I suck at titles, it's that I can't tell they suck. My last book went through about 3-4 titles (and at least a dozen possibles that never made the cut), one of which was actually inspired by a line in a Van Halen song.
The first one I picked, my writer's group warned me sucked. No no, I insisted, it's really good. Then I got feedback from someone I'd queried that said it was the lamest title ever (except nicely). So I changed it to the Van Halen one. When I finally got an agent, he hated that one. He also hated the first one (yeah, that's right, I pulled it back out). We finally landed on a new one, but if he sells the manuscript, I'm sure the editor will hate it, and we'll come up with another new one, and marketing will hate that. :)
No clue what I'll name this next book. It's always the last thing I manage (poorly).
And welcome to NaNo, Breezyday! It's a blast.
9,311 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 15 06
I always choose a title after I finish writing. Once you're done, you just sorta know
----------I am an Arms Dealer
Fitting you with weapons in the form of words
Don't really care which side wins
As long as the room keeps singin'
That's just the business I'm in.
50,009 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 15 21
I haven't thought of a title for my NaNo yet either, but I just want to tell you not to sweat it. If you want to someday get something published, the chances are pretty good that the title's going to get changed along the way.
Maybe wait until you have a bit more of your plot worked out and see what hits you.
----------http://dragon.ycp.edu/~lmarsden (last updated 12/21)
I do free websites! PM me!
NaNo 2006: THE BLACK HEART - YA urban fantasy - WINNER!
NaNo 2007: THE WITCH BOOK (working title) - MG urban fantasy - WINNER!
50,113 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 16 04
I don't think you are alone. I am revising a YA novel at present and I still havn't hit the title yet. Like teacake.girl, my book has had a number of titles that suck. I have been going through the book looking for the key scene or a phrase that stands out to evoke the readers interest. No luck yet I'm afraid...
Good luck with your tital search and welcome aboard. This is my first NaNoWriMo too.
30,387 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 16 33
I always have this moment for this flash of lightning comes down and hits me in the head with the idea for the title. It's weird. Like for my Nano this time, I had no title and wasn't even worrying about it, and then I thought about something for the story and the title randomly came.
50,058 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 19 18
Titles usually come to me after plot/characters/etc. The title for my to-be-written NaNo novel came from an event that should be in it, since it's the reason I wanted to do NaNo in the first place.
Are catchy titles more important than titles that fit with your novel?
----------"I'm all for keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." - Solomon Short
5,550 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 19 33
Hm. I come up with a title whenever I can, whether it be at the end or the beginning. I like coming up with a title at the beginning, just to file it away in my compy and such, but it's kinda hard. I have trouble with it. Currently, I want to title mine with the title of the song that inspired it, but that'd be copyright infringement, not to mention I did that with a random drabble I did before... meh. I hate having to come up with titles xD
50,076 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 20 46
Sometimes I think of a title and form a story off of that. Sometimes I can manage to extract a title from a story idea, but currently I'm failing at that -.- Oh well. Just avoid anything similar to "Shadows of Doom". There is actually a book called that, and it is the most cliche title ever and one of the most cliche books seeing that it is pretty much a re-write of Lord of the Rings. Down to the sword that glows blue when orcs are near. XD
I like themed titles. For instance, the second Warriors (cat clans--anyone else here read them?) series has titles such as Midnight, Dawn, and Starlight. Guardians of Ga'Hoole has titles such as The Capture, The Journey, The Seige, The Shattering, The, The, The... I often find that things like that kind of help tie series together. That is just me, of course. ^^
My favorite of the titles I've come up with is probably Some Kids and the Search for Sanity... I'm currently writing Some Kids and the Need for a Plot (same idea, different... plot? Um...), although I've been busy lately and so it is on hiatus... and then there's NaNo. Whoo!
----------Hmm. Some Kids and the Amulet of Doom comes close. :P
17,654 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 21 26
I just....do. Some are good, some suck.
----------This one is just 'meh' but 'The Land Between The Seasons' sounds a lot better than 'Untitled 34234234523534645756745341'.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
NaNoWriMo 2007: The Land Between The Seasons
Genre: Youth/Young Adult
NaNoWriMo 2008: Beer Flavored Kisses
Genre: Young Adult
55,943 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 21 45
It's always different.
My first NaNo, I didn't have a title or even a working title for a long time, but I held faith that at some point the perfect title would occur to me. And it did.
My second NaNo, the perfect title came to me while I was planning out the story. It was so perfect there was never any question.
This year, I'm stuck dithering between a couple of different titles, unsure which one is really best. The people on my LiveJournal friends' list were no help, preferring by a fairly large margin a different title than the one I liked best. Harrumpf! Now I'm all confused: do I follow my heart, or listen to a non-representative sampling of people who aren't in my target audience anyway? :-)
For my someday novel, one that is grand and epic and will never fit into 30 days, I thought of the genre first, then a title popped into my head, and the story itself flowed from the title.
So it's always different. But don't sweat it. I promise you that at some point while writing the story itself, the right title will sneak up on you and sing out "here I am!"
----------Wiry Fellows
A lively tale of adventure on the Pony Express trail. Because the mail MUST go through, no matter what.
56,009 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 21 49
I've got titles. I need a trilogy name to tie them all in. It's really hard. I want to pay someone to do it for me. (Only, I can't afford very much.)
Good luck finding titles! Someone already said that once you find the right one, you just know. I completely agree.
----------Nerd Fighter
~*~*~
2004 - "The Fall of Autumn" *winner*
2005 - "Le Roman du Mauvais" *winner*
2006 - "Mistaken" *winner*
2007 - "The One that Worked" *winner*
50,076 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2007 - 22 21
But you've got all these wonderful people here who could help you for free. :P
----------50,213 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 05 00
I hate titles. :) But I have found that my working title usually jumps into my head when I start thinking about what I'm going to write and start planning the plot/characters. Working titles are always subject to change but that's okay - I like having a title to work with rather than calling it WIP #whatever.
----------2005 - Surviving Thirteen (YA/MG) - WINNER!
2006 - The Montegris Experiment (YA) - WINNER!
2007 - Don't Touch Me! (YA)
50,194 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 05 05
It is my understanding (read: this is what I've heard other people say on other forums) that titles cannot be copyrighted. But if the line is in the song, that's part of their copyrighted work, and you would need to get permission to use it, unless of course it is also a common phrase.
50,358 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 11 50
For me, the title usually comes first and my story evolves around it. However, my NaNo novel is the odd duck out. For some reason, the plot is here, but the titles(yep, it's been renamed 3 times) stink like a five-day-dead, maggot-filled skunk! My novel is supposed to be humorous, but the only title I even remotely like makes it sound like a Discovery Channel documentary. Yikes!
----------~Lex
121,007 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 12 39
Some people have said that they only come up with the titles after they've finished their stories completely, and though I've done this sometimes, I have to say that it's not always the best way. NaNo '05 my story was titled "Lark's War' and I wanted so desperately to skip around to other chars' points of view but the title reminded me that this was really Lark's story, not the other characters'.
Last NaNo my title was "The Passion of Resentment" and though the title's a bit clunky, it reminded me not to turn it into a freaking love story - because the characters HATE each other. Yeah.
This year my title is "Cenotaph" after a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem. I <333 the poem and I'm sort of molding my novel to fit.
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NaNo 2005: Lark's War (51k)
2006: The Passion of Resentment (50k)
2007: Cenotaph (finished! 121k)
26,000 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 13 06
I look at the first and last sentences of my novel first. Then I go through the manuscript and look for interesting word combos or key phrases that could become titles.
___________________________________________________
----------HIGH JUMPS AT COLLINS ACADEMY, fall '08 from Aladdin MIX
http://jessicaburkhart.blogspot.com
http://www.jessicaburkhart.com
http://www.myspace.com/writerjessicaburkhart
TAKE THE REINS, Jan 2009 from Simon & Schuster's Aladdin M!X
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http://www.myspace.com/writerjessicaburkhart
http://jessicaburkhart.blogspot.com
[IMG]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o20/jessicab_87/TTRtiny.jpg[/IMG]
25,789 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 13 15
Remember, of course, that a name can always be changed! Just like parts of the story, a title of the book isn't permanent until its out on book shelves. So don't be shy to use a certain title and then change it later on.
----------I love my Humanity.
68,802 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 13 19
That's interesting. I'll have to see what those are once I start writing.
5,550 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 14 46
Thanks for the advice, teacake! I'll take that into consideration.
56,200 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 17 50
I generally pull a phrase out of the novel itself while I'm writing it.
----------In this case, however, I got the title out of a note I was writing to my friend while I was in Spanish class. I was venting to her about how no one is going to use half of what they teach us in Spanish in real life, and I referred to it as "useless junk". Hence: Useless Junk You Can Learn in Spanish.
NaNo '06 | Serenity | 50,020 words
NaNo '07 | Useless Junk You Can Learn in Spanish | 55,800 words
NaNo '08 | Let's just say my brain has imploded
50,194 / 50,000
Oct 18, 2007 - 18 18
I love the first and last sentences idea, Jessica, thank you!
50,371 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 00 49
Meh. I suck at titles...that's why last year's NaNo novel doesn't have one.
----------Proud carrier of a bejeweled broadsword...
5,513 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 03 27
Oh my one last year= horrible, lame and stupidly obvious that just made me not want to even look at it ever again.
Haha.
I'm actually a pretty big fanfiction writer, and I usually have song lyrics as my titles.
And I model my stories around the title I choose.
This year I saw an add in a magazine for a babies clothing store and loved the name of it.
So thus I have my title= Lulu and Me.
:D
50,042 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 04 20
What's startling to me is that I'm really good at titles, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out a title for my book.
I knew what I wanted the series to be called "The Age of Adventure" but I think I got caught up because I wasn't sure of the initial "quest" of the first book. Once I figured that out I had the title "The Signet"... which may turn into "The Ring" now that I think about it.. but The Ring sounds way too much like Lord of the Rings... and its not that kind of ring.
Maybe "The Signet Ring".. but I don't know. I'll have to think about it when its done.
But when it came to writing my audio drama scripts and short stories, the title was almost the first thing I would write down!
J
52,546 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 04 28
I very rarely have a title until the book is almost over. It's usually a line I liked in the story. My novel this year, Angel's Art, is based of a short story I wrote with the same name. It's possible by the end of the novel, however, (actually very likely) that the title will not be relevant in any way.
50,031 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 06 45
I have no idea how I come up with titles. Sometimes it just comes to me randomly, sometimes it's a phrase somebody says (of course they don't realize that it causes me to have an epiphany while they're saying it).
But, on the subject of titles, I know of a fun little thing at
www.lulu.com/titlescorer
It's a scientific rating of how likely a title is to be a bestseller. (Not sure how accurate it is though...some Harry Potter titles came out at about 14% :P)
50,193 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 09 15
The title I'm working with now just jumped out at me from a song! I was trying to find a title earlier and it just wasn't working, so I'd suggest you stop looking and just wait, one is bound to fall into your lap.
Good Luck!
50,193 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 09 15
The title I'm working with now just jumped out at me from a song! I was trying to find a title earlier and it just wasn't working, so I'd suggest you stop looking and just wait, one is bound to fall into your lap.
Good Luck!
56,009 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2007 - 11 32
:D Good point! But then I might have to give away entire plot information that hasn't quite been written yet. Oh, and I'm currently in the process of getting book 1 represented. It's a vicious circle, eh? ;)
Ooooh, maybe I could be vague enough to get some ideas? ..... I'll think on it.
----------Nerd Fighter
~*~*~
2004 - "The Fall of Autumn" *winner*
2005 - "Le Roman du Mauvais" *winner*
2006 - "Mistaken" *winner*
2007 - "The One that Worked" *winner*