Do you name your story before or after you finish it?

This is an issue that has peeved my brain for days on end. For most of my life, I've chosen the basic plot for my story and then given it a name and started writing. But then I started thinking, maybe all these years I was doing it wrong.

P.S. Please let me know if I put this in the wrong group!

 

i don't think there a wrong or right way to do it. before or after, what's the difference, as long as the name fits the story well i guess.
personally, i struggle a lot with naming stories so even if i'm 20 000 words into my novel (with the whole plot written down) i still have no idea what the title will be.

 

I don't think it matters. I name my stories when I come up with a good name.

 

If I ever do name my story, it is usually before.
The title/name is usually found in the story again.

 

I usually name my stories at the start with the name of the protagonist. It helps me figure out what's what.

 

I always come up with a title before I start writing, but sometimes it doesn't stick as the story evolves.

 

I often have a title to start with, but it usually changes somewhere down the line. I need a "working title" so I can refer to my story, even if I only talk about it to myself. But by the time it's done, I have to have a real title.

 

I have a tentative title when I start. More often than not I change it when I am done.

 

Very often the title and plot are born at the same time for me, like "Titan" I named because it takes place on the moon of Titan, or "Unknown", because it's about a group of people called Unknowns. But each of those example are umbrella titles, each of the individual chapter/issue titles I almost always name beforehand. I think about what I want to happen, I come up with an interesting title, and I shape the details around that title. The titles often change from the original names.


I was in the shower once and the phrase "human pirate" literally just popped into my head from nowhere. So I wrote a story about it in the following minutes, "The Human Pirate." a couple months later it's now like, 6 stories long. So.

Yeah I'd say the title usually comes first for me.

 

I gotta go with this.
For the sake of an answer, I personally name my stories whenever I think of a good name, which is usually when I've had a dream about the characters/story itself. Names come to me pretty easily

 

i always start with the basis of an idea in my head, from there i move on to giving that idea a title

and then i start writing the story

 

i almost always have a title in mind before i start...

 

I always come up with a working title before I write the story, but only when I have a good idea of what the story is truly about. I often rename the story after I'm done.

I'm horribly bad with interesting titles though.