Just curious as to how you guys go about naming your novels, short stories etc. Do you start a project with a name in mind, go with a main focal point from the project such as the town the characters are living in, maybe you wait until the project is finished before coming up with a name for it? I'm interested to know as I am six chapters in and have recently been trying to think of a unique and interesting title for my novel.
I start a project with my characters named. The title is usually something I develope as I work deeper into the piece.
All depends. One of my pieces here is named Untitled road trip thriller - and when I first jotted it down it had an odd temporary title. Since then I've dubbed it Vulture Bait - which was taken from a line in the book. Most stories I keep things simple. They are what they are - John's Thumb is a story about a man trapped in a storage tube in a spaceship.Unable to escape he cuts off his fingers in order to animate them with experimental cybernetics so they can sneak out through a crack in the space tube and press the restart button. Optical Meltdown was about a man who names lipstick colors for a living having a breakdown during a night out. Big Bad Zoof was a play off Little Red Riding hood. Now the Worms of Wicher-Woo, I have no idea how I came up with that one. But I like alliteration. Try things out see what you like. Don't worry about coming up with the perfect title, though. Temporary titles are fine. Plus, you'll learn not to get too attached to a title because sometimes they'll need to be altered to boost sales.
I just come up with whatever that relates to the actual story and sounds pleasant to me. The title could be a pun, named after a character or character's title, or even a key event or item. Usually, the name just comes to me as the story develops.
I have a working title in mind, but I almost always change it at the end. Sometimes I don't even have a working title; in that case, I use something like "Untitled Story" until I come up with a better title. Don't worry about the title in the beginning stages. The more important thing is actually writing and finishing the piece.
I hate having things entitled "Untitled". Unless it's a short story, or a piece I plan on turning into a story later. If I start working on a novel, the title usually comes pretty early on along with the basic concept and isn't usually that hard to come up with. If my characters don't have names, I can't write it until I do. I've tried before, and the further I get into the story the harder it is to name a character who has spent the last seven chapters completely nameless.
I pick something that's relative but not dead-set. Doing anything that should be done post-write (just my Opin), like designing the cover or deciding on a name kills my projects for some reason. Right now I stick Sandwicheer onto everything and cut straight to the planning/writing.
Sometimes I start with a story's or a novel's title from the beginning, which survives to publication, but I always have a working title. In some way the titles relate directly to the story/novel.
When I absolutely cannot think of a name for something, I call it Project _____ (name of some random ancient Greek figure that has nothing to do with the project). e.g. "Project Epicurus".
I tend to have lots of small story ideas on the go at once. I name them after the date that I began writing them - 07/03/14 for example. As the name of the file is unrelated to the subject matter of the story, it can easily morph and not have to live up to it's 'birth name'. This also means that it's a bit of pot luck which story I open, if I forget which date correlates to which one! But that's a nice surprise if you want to write something fresh. The eventual title of the story is usually the last thing I add, and comes out of what the story has become, rather than what it will be.
