How do you decide what to call your book? For some of us, this can be almost as difficult as actually writing the story. This matters to me, because I frequently tweet about the status of my WIP, and it helps me tie those together if I know what the title is going to be.
I suppose one thing that might help is to walk through a bookstore and see what kinds of titles are being used. You can also search online, of course. Certain trends will jump out right away.
Currently, there are a lot of book titles that are some form of “the Thing of This and That.” For example, the popular series, Daughter of Smoke and Bone. These kinds of titles have an interesting flow, but there are so many using that format already that I wouldn’t want to go that route.
There also are a lot of titles that are just one word. Jaws and the YA novel Crank are both strong one-word titles. There might be two words, as in The Firm, or three (including ‘the’ as a word) as in The Dragonbone Chair and The Dark Tower.
Some are like, “The Thing’s Thing.” The Ranger’s Apprentice is a well known juvenile series. There’s also my own The Magister’s Mask. Then you have “The Thing of the Thing,” made famous by The Lord of the Rings.
For me, I really want to have a strong rhythm, while at the same time saying something accurate and engaging about the book. The Seven Exalted Orders is one of my favorite titles. For my current WIP, I really only know the location of the story, a place called Fang Marsh. So I’m tweeting about Fang Marsh, but ultimately I think I’ll need a little more than that for a title.
Anyway, I’d love to hear what you think makes a great book title, and how you create good titles for your own work.
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My background in poetry really comes in handy when selecting titles. I’ve trained myself to see metaphor and imagery. That really helps when creating titles. Sometimes, I have titles even before I start writing. “Owl Dance” and “The Astronomer’s Crypt” were both titles I had in mind before I wrote, which actually allowed me to write to the title. Every now and then, that goes awry. I have a title, but when I finish the book, it no longer works, then I have to think of a new title, but again, I look for a uniform idea and work to express it succinctly in the title.
Sorry for the double comment, but thanks for finding and approving. It occurs to me that reading poetry can also provide good inspiration for titles. The Science Fiction Poetry Association has a free online poetry journal of science fiction, fantasy, and horror poetry you may want to read. Just search for Eye to the Telescope.
This one came through without me intervening, so it looks like we got this fixed. Weird that after years of allowing your comments it suddenly decided you were spam earlier this month.
My background writing poetry really helps when creating titles. It allows me to see a common metaphor or image in my writing and express it concisely as a title. In fact, titles of longer works often come to me while I’m writing or even outlining. Sometimes the title I come up with doesn’t quite work for the finished work, but most of the time a minor adjustment will put it back on track.
Sometimes I don’t get the title until I’ve actually finished the story! So I may have a wait ahead of me…
I don’t know that I have good titles. I try to make them fit the story inside. Mine are usually pretty short. Some have a title before I start writing, and others don’t have a title even after I finish the draft.