Hello! I'm working on a story and I want to start thinking about some titles. I know titles are usually the finishing touches, but I've got the entire plot written out in detail (about 60 pages) and I want to start thinking about titles. I'm still in the beginning of actually writing the story, which is only 5,655 words thus far. The characters' names are Raiden, Kenji, and Emery. (This is the same story that I posted a couple of chapters from on here.) Raiden is a poor but spirited farm girl, Kenji is a little rebel who becomes Raiden's best friend, and Emery is a hired killer who struggles internally with his moral values. Kenji and Raiden meet fairly early in the story, and Emery comes into it later, when he is hired to kill someone that Raiden and Kenji are looking for. Emery recognizes Raiden from an old job offer, which was to deliver her somewhere alive. Emery takes this opportunity and kidnaps Raiden, but halfway through their travel Raiden convinces him to join her and Kenji and the group they belong to. Then the three of them go on a grand adventure and save the world, blah blah blah. It's kind of hard to explain the situation without revealing the entire plot (what's the fun in that?), but any suggestions for titles would be great! I know it sounds cheesy in this post, but I promise it's not as bad as it sounds! If this is just totally confusing, send me a message and I'll explain it a little better. Thanks!
Right now, what you really want is a working title. The title you finally choose is the least of your concerns. So, identify the central theme or concept of your story and use it as the working title. Issues like titles are the kinds of things that typically distract beginning writers. Just pick a phrase with which you are comfortable and can work with. You may stumble across a proper title while you are writing, or you may not come up with one until the very end, when you are doing your final edits. One other thing - don't ever feel you have to apologize for the idea you have for your story. The idea is not the key thing, the story is. As Cogito is fond of posting here, any idea you have has been done before in one form or another. So, just concentrate on making your story the best you can make it. (And btw, your idea doesn't sound bad at all). And good luck.
What about The Grand Adventure as your working title ? It doesn't do any harm to be thinking about it as you go through. I wish I had more with my first book it has had a gazillion titles - I still don't like one and have had to fill in an author questionairre sending it off with three titles I hate.
Use a meaningful phrase or piece of dialogue from the text or the name of an object that is of some import to the protag.
don't even think about a title till you get to the end of your story/novel... by then, something should have occurred to you...
Not necessarily, Maia. I'm useless when it comes to titles (apparently being from the James Cameron one word school of titling things). It's not unknown for me to sit for hours at a time reading and re-reading, looking for a title in dialogue before plumping for the easy, safe choice. But then, I write mostly short stories - and certainly nothing with 60 pages of planning! There'll be something you can use in there, tristan.n. Don't worry about it for the time being, just concentrate on getting words on paper and writing as best you can.
A possible working title could be "The Story of Three". It doesn't mean much, but I'm just suggesting it as a working title. ChickenFreak
I think more information is needed to come up with a title. If the main point of the series is the adventure they go on together to save the world, the name should probably come from there. But you haven't revealed anything about that part. If the main point is their friendship, I have one idea: "Killing Friends"
Working titles can be helpful in making the story feel like it's something real that deserves to be finished. Once my stories get to the point where I'm seriously far along in them, I try and give them names besides just "current horror novel," "dystopia WIP #3" etc. With that said though, it's only a working title -- you'll never truly know the best ultimate title from the end -- you might come up with some spontaneous, symbolic scene you'd never planned until the second before you wrote it, and maybe your title will come from there. And "killing friends" was a good working title suggestion.
