Whenever I am writing and come across a question I’m not sure how to answer I turn to Google, which leads me to blogs. In my internet perusals I usually jump back and forth between suggestions and pages until I come up with a twisted mixture of advice that leads to an idea. So my idea was that if I thought about it long enough and hard enough I would come up with an awe inspiring title that would knock my socks off, and I have nothing. I have a swimming mass of thoughts that is producing no usable ideas. I even briefly considered naming it “Porpoises on Pelican Reef” even though none of those things are in my book. I found a blog that essential suggests writing down every word that could ever be associated with your book and mixing and matching.
I started doing that and mostly came up with words of titles I already considered using, and then I came up with the brilliant idea to thesaurus all those words which would presumably at least double my word options
skedaddle is in there because it makes me smile
In doing the above I came up with words and ideas that I hadn’t thought of before so it was definitely positive and helpful.
Another suggestion in that article that I found particularly helpful was to go to amazon and look at other books in your genre to see how they are titled. For my book I was considering “Adventures on Tiger Island” because its an adventure book set on a place I call Tiger Island. The problem is when its compared to other Young Adult Fiction Adventure Sci/fi titles it looks the title of a children’s book, and it is not a children’s book. So mental note, not a good enough title.
I imagine that people with thought evoking and amazing titles are just better at writing than I am at the moment. Which is not meant to be a slam on me but a nod to the fact that it takes time and what I consider some brain training to get your mind to automatically think in a way that is catchy in creative.
Has anyone else had this trouble?? There must be more of us because there are a ton of blog posts out there about this but let me know your thoughts!
Feb 08, 2013 @ 07:01:45
I see what you mean. For me, the hardest part is the title; finding a way to sum up a book in just a few words.
I really wouldn’t worry too much about it though. After all, some of the most popular books these days started out with different titles originally. ‘Twilight’ started out as ‘Forks’ and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ started out as ‘Master of the Universe’. I read that the author and literary agent helped to shape the title together after the novel was accepted (though I’m not sure how true that really is).
Either way, it’s the rest of the novel that matters to an agent/publisher; the title can always be changed.
Hope that helps, but, then again, I’m still quite new at this (I just like discussing)!
Feb 11, 2013 @ 03:42:18
Thanks for the response! I am sweating over it so much because I am looking to self publish it, so for the moment it’s down to me to come up with something.