Hello, So I am working on a story and I already know what it's about. So I will tell you and you can tell me some titles for it. The one I made up for it is Birthday Picture. If you have any better ones let me know. The story is about a girl called Kate and she takes pictures on her little sister's birthday and when she looks at them she spots a ghostly figure in one of them. So what can i title this story?
"Birthday Picture". In all seriousness, there's no information here that would help us come up with a better title. You'll need to provide a lot more detail. Who is the ghost? How does the story end?
I agree with Naomasa that we'd need a lot more info or even excerpts to help out with a title. But going off your logline, something like "Birthday Picture" is too direct and obvious. I personally like coming up with titles that have some ambiguity, but are still related to the story itself. Maybe something like "The Rendering" or "Don't Blow Out the Candles" would work here.
Depends on what age group the story is and what the genre and tone is. Do you want the title to reflect spookiness, humor, suspense or mystery?
The unwanted gift. Happy haunting Picture Opaque The ghostly gift Gifts and ghosts Happy haunting Developing memories/a nightmare etc (depending on the nature of the story) The uninvited guest The uninvited
I wouldn't recommend putting the word "ghost" or "haunting" in the title unless you want to give the story away.
Worst. Present. Ever. But seriously, as others have said, write the story then let the title come out. Untitled #1 should do for now.
A Ghost for your Birthday Spectral Holiday A Photo Phantasm Happy Ethereal Birthday A Ghost on my Cake Candlelight for a Spectre
Plus-one For Whom Extra Invitation A Shy Guest The idea is that one of the guests at the party invited the ghost.
As a general rule: I like single word titles as they can give a title a hard hitting punch with brevity. If that does not work, sometimes alliteration can also gave the book title some punch. I am not coming up with anything for you specific in this case, but as an example, "Fouled Photos" would be an example of alliteration. Plug in some words on Microsoft Word, then use the thesaurus to come up with some variations to come up with something better.
For me, I give my WIPs let's say 'project titles' instead of actual titles. For instance I have Beach Story, Western Fantasy, Tragic Super-Siblings, and so on. They make sense to me, but am I actually gonna publish them under that name? No way! But they work for now, and that's the important part. I'll worry about titles later. Maybe it'll be more helpful to you to give it a basic title like 'Ghost Pictures' for now until you've got it written? Then you might come up with a better title because you'll have more information about the story to play with!
As a former bookseller, I highly recommend not doing this. It is very difficult to find one word titles and the marketing is harder. Unique is better and easier to find on search engines.
What should a title do? I think it should do more than summarize the work or give it a handle to identify it by. Birthday Picture sounds like a working title, a label that you put on a manila folder while you're still working on it. When you finish your work, you'll dig deeper to find something that not only captures the spirit and identifies your work, but seizes the attention of readers and passerbys.
