I’ve been playing with titles of a book this week and trying to find something that works. Of course, titles are marketing tools, designed to catch an audience’s imagination and get them to pick up the book and look inside.
I thought carefully about the audience, then started making lists. The first list was boring and inappropriate. So, just as a way to think of more, I looked up the 100 most famous movie quotes (just Google it) and used it as a jumping off point to write another long list. For some odd reason, a series of words caught my attention and I began to look for adjectives that begin with a hard “k” sound. Another list. Lots of list of possible titles, many of which I knew were bad, but maybe they’d have a spark in them.
Finally, I sent the lists to a couple friends and had them tell me their favorite three. Amazingly, only one title came out that everyone liked, and I added a subtitle from another title.
The process of finding a title is sometimes easy, sometimes hard. When it doesn’t come easily, I don’t leave it up to marketing! I make lists and get feedback and search for the one that fits the content best. I know my content better than the marketing people and would prefer to do this myself. As a friend advised, I’ll live with the title for a couple weeks and see if it sticks.
How do you find/create titles for your books?
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Not very well. I fail at titles.
—L.
I think about the most important character. I always write series, and the main character is, of course extremely important. I try to incoporate their name in some way when giving my stories titles. A story I’m writing, who’s main character is Ashe, is titled “Feather & Ashe” and then each book has a subtitle such as “Rebirth” or “Suffocate”. I think about who and what is most important to the storylie, and then the speific plot to each “chapter” of the main character(s)’ journey.
I’m always quite lucky with titles, it seems. I think about the characters, the story, and at some stage during the planning process, the title just pops into my head. I’ve nothing published yet though, so who knows if my way works? ;-)