Just how bloody hard it is to come up with a satisfactory title. Anyone else have a similar problem? Better yet, anyone have any tips for overcoming this obstacle.
This is one problem I'm not having (I have plenty of others). Go into your most dramatic or important scene, what words can you combine from there to make a title? Or objects and/or individuals that are important to your world? "Lord of the Rings". Or "Breaking Bad" Spoiler: Breaking Bad spoiler how a chemist teacher turns to crime after a cancer diagnosis. Taking an example from one of my own works. One of my short stories revolve around a city built around a black hole. In it a planet is thrown at the city from one point and travels through the city and near the black hole in a slingshot maneouver to appear beneath another part of the city, destroying sectors of it. I decided to name the story Black Meridian, due to the black hole and how I imagined the planet traveled. Meridian also has more meaning to it, like great prosperity, which the city is in. So the title can have many meanings. It may not be a great naming, but it gives you an idea. Other names I came up for that story: Black City, Dark Meridian. Other names I could have given the story based on its current and future content (still editing): The City of a Billion Stars, Mass Convergence, Dark Opulence, Masters of the Void, Dark Architect, Black Mass, etc. There are many ways to name a story. Would you be willing to share your elevator line with us, perhaps we can come up with a name for the story based on that?
Oh, I like that idea! I've never made an elevator pitch before so you'll apologies if I don't quite nail it: A Private Detective is approached by a former journalist turned mystery podcaster. She wants him to investigate the death of her friend, convinced what was initially written off as an accident, was actually a murder. There's one hitch, the dead woman was found alone in a locked apartment.
Some titles that spring up: Draping News Hinted Broadcast Behind the Door Covert Steps Dead Speaker Decaying Disclosure Detective Report Locked Woman/Woman Locked Apartment of Tales Aparment Nr X (x= apartment number) Dead Inside The Detective, the Podcaster, and the Dead Deathly News Deadly Report The Apartment above Street Name I could go on, but that may give you some examples. Basically take what is important in your story, some words/locations/objects/people and mix and match, see what you may come up with.
Oh, it's the worst! Whenever I hear about people naming their chapters I'm gobsmacked - it's hard enough for me to come up with a title of the whole book, let alone one for every single chapter. I'd rather give up writing all together. I'm so bad at it I even crowdsourced the name of my second book here on the forums! I had a working title that I hated, and figured anyone could come up with something better. And I was right, LOL!
By the pitch it sounds like a mystery/thriller. Nothing particular is coming to mind as a real example, but sometimes they end up with a very particular name that doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with the scenario. I'm imagining something on the mantel or nightstand, some tacky thriftstore knickknack that's surprisingly captivating to the detective, or even just a conversation starter. Then you might end up with Carved Orcas Never Tell or The Porcelain Witness. Something along those lines. It doesn't have to be a knickknack, either, it could be a particularly queer phrase uttered by someone in the book, or something else unique: She Always Liked Silence or A Shock and a Shame.
What do you mean when you say crowdsourced? I had thought about using some imagery to do with the apartment/locked room but I feel that might give too much away.
I really like She Always Liked Silence. Not as a title for mine, just in general. There's something quite captivating about those words.
I literally made a post on here that gave a brief synopsis of my book with the working title I had, and then asked people to come up with something better because I felt like mine sucked. Link to post: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/i-hate-my-books-title-help-me-think-of-a-better-one-to-propose-to-my-publisher.150587/
Truly, figuring out titles is one hell of a tough job. I practically always write a story or a chapter and then struggle to figure out a title for it and then just give it up and let it sit for a day or two, and then I would eventually come up with some kind of a more or less satisfactory title. More recently, I've been getting better at it. Practice, I suppose. As for novels, writing them takes so long that a title is bound to occur to me sooner or later. I have learned not to sweat it. If I can't think of a title now, I don't try to push myself. I know it's hopeless.
Yes, it can be hard when you want to be more creative than "A War in the Magic World" or "Collision of Civilizations". I hope you will come up with a great title someday at a moment when you least expect it.
So, here's the thing, for me personally anyway. I had a book and I changed its title three times, all while I was editing it because I honestly didn't know what else to do. No matter what I though of, it all seemed shallow. But in the later stages of editing and revising, when the story and its themes and what it was really about started coming together, coming up with a title was a walk in the park. All I did was make up a title that referenced the huge plot twist towards the end of the story, and its irony. In sort, my character went through an adventure she was really proud of, but it turned out that none of it actually happened for various complicated reasons. So, what do I call the book? I call it The Ultimate Lie. But it was also not much of a lie, because my character still learned a lot about herself, so it was also true in a way. That's the irony For me, if I know my story really well, then it's easy. But I also gotta have a name for the project when I'm working on it, so much like tech companies, I give a code-name that will never see the light of the day. Kind of like how Windows Vista was code-named Windows Longhorn during development, rather than Windows Vista. It didn't get that name until it was released. I hope this helps.
I thought I had the perfect title. (I know I have the perfect title when i have no other names/thoughts in mind). I never even considered changing it.... until I was told recently that the title screams "YA" when the content is not. So that's one thing I never considered: the title reflecting the maturity of the content....
