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Enlightened

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I play a lot of trivia online. I think that sort of thing, with playing a lot of adventure/puzzle solving games over the years, allowed me to derive fun chapter and book titles. I created quirky characters from messing around with words.

I use any tool at my disposal for finding fun titles and characters. I use Google Translate, where Latin is a favorite of mine. I search synonyms, antonyms, and the like. I think making something unique helps your book(s) stand out more. This is true of song titles, and what not. At some point in my research, I went as far as checking discographies and all song titles of all albums of about 200 bands. I was able to generate some fun titles and characters because of this work.

I'll start my first book this month. I planned it to be a series, if the first book does well. I have more book and chapter titles than I can use, but I had fun doing it.

For me, it's about separating myself from the herd, as best I can. Setting, characters, and plot are all important, but why not try to offer that extra bit of interest for someone to consider buying the book?
 

flarue

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What's working for me at the moment: For my title, I played around a bit with a pivotal piece of dialogue from my story. For chapter titles (if there are any), I like to try to give a hint to something that happens in that chapter. Sometimes a title doesn't come to me immediately, so I just use a place-holder or something of the theme, if I've figured it out. I have a bit of a quirky sense of humor, so some of my chapter titles can get a bit tongue-in-cheek at times.
 
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ikennedy

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For my trilogy, I chose the series title "Broken Cosmos" because I wanted sound epic space saga but also rather dystopian and cyberpunk. It took a lot of thinking to work that out.
For the books in the trilogy: Florida Station, Martian Flight, Neptune's War, I focussed on main parts of the book. In book 1, the space station "Florida Station" is very important and the story starts there. In book 2, "Martian Flight", the characters are escaping to Mars. In book 3, "Neptune's War" a fleet has mobilised from Neptune to fight the invaders into the outer territories from the inner planets.
I can't say it was easy to come up with those titles. It took ages. But if you focus on pivotal moments, scenes, items, locations, while keeping the length of each title roughly equal across all the novels, it should be a good title.

One thing that pissed me off so much was that I had decided on Neptune's War and told my cover artist about it months before publication. I had checked on Amazon that there were no duplicates of that title, and I finally published only to find that the same title of a book (totally different series though) was published ONE DAY before I published. And I could not change the title of mine because that would have required redoing a whole lot of work with ISBNs, covers, reconverting, promotion and all that. And Neptune's War was a perfect title for my work. Oh well, I guess there are duplicate titles out there.
 

blacbird

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I've gone through several titles several times. I don't consider titles sacrosanct, but I do recognize that they are important. For my bestest unpublishablest novel, I had a great title initially, but it would have required getting a copyright permission, and I decided that would be too much trouble. The thing has chapter titles, and I took one of those that worked for the entire piece, and changed it to that, then retitled the chapter. I thought about a third possibility, but it was too cheesy.

For my second bestest unpublishablest novel I started with a simple title that wasn't really too bad, but then came up with another that is a reference to a somewhat obscure work by a 19th century travel writer, and I've stuck with that. But I might change it back.

Point being, don't get hung up on titles.

caw
 

Snitchcat

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I'm eight books into my s---a---g---a

How close to completing the saga are you?

I would suggest not worrying about the titles until you have the whole series. But if you've already published the first seven, then perhaps, finish writing the eighth then look for a title? Sometimes, the title is clear when you have the entire book in front of you.
 

P.K. Torrens

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Open your favourite Shakespeare’s work. Then choose a three- or four- word quote. Boom.
 

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I came up with my title before I had a story or characters. It's the premise of the book: what would happen if a mail-order bride was sent C.O.D. and payment was refused? So the working title is just C.O.D. The problem is I don't think anybody knows that acronym anymore. Do they still have those commercials where they ask you to send check, money order, or C.O.D.? Anyway, even if you know the acronym, it's not clear what the book is about. Right now I'm thinking International C.O.D. and relying on the cover to convey the bride part.
 

BonafideDreamer

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I came up with the title by combining my main character's nickname and a single-word representing her situation.
 

flarue

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I play a lot of trivia online. I think that sort of thing, with playing a lot of adventure/puzzle solving games over the years, allowed me to derive fun chapter and book titles. I created quirky characters from messing around with words.

I use any tool at my disposal for finding fun titles and characters. I use Google Translate, where Latin is a favorite of mine. I search synonyms, antonyms, and the like. I think making something unique helps your book(s) stand out more. This is true of song titles, and what not. At some point in my research, I went as far as checking discographies and all song titles of all albums of about 200 bands. I was able to generate some fun titles and characters because of this work.


I'll start my first book this month. I planned it to be a series, if the first book does well. I have more book and chapter titles than I can use, but I had fun doing it.

For me, it's about separating myself from the herd, as best I can. Setting, characters, and plot are all important, but why not try to offer that extra bit of interest for someone to consider buying the book?

Sounds fun. I would probably get a kick out of seeing some of your work. 🙂
 

Enlightened

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Sounds fun. I would probably get a kick out of seeing some of your work. ��

There will be a lot of humor for sure. I hope to have a first draft finished by sometime summer 2018.
 

BenPanced

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My current WIP has a couple different meanings to its title. Quick And Deep refers either to emotional and/or physical scars plus people falling in love.
 

rusoluchka

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I tend to start with a title knowing I'll change it. The first title will be directly tied to the book, maybe the name of character or piece of equipment (love my SF), and then the title will change as I get closer to subbing and understand my story better. And also, even if I love it, I know publishers change titles ALL OF THE TIME. So I'm not married to even my finished title. Although it is pretty bomb.
 

Harlequin

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If you aim for traditional publishing, then the names will be flexible anyway (per publisher input). Just mentioning that for anyone who is (I realise OP is going self pub.)

'Anchor' just... was. Before I had character names, I had the concept in my head, and already knew that the people in it would be called anchors. I never spent conscious effort on it.

For the other MSS (tetralogy) I wrote out an outline for all four after completing most of the first one, and devised names from that. Totally planned.


But in both cases I can't self publish so any of that will be subject to whatever an agent or publisher wants, assuming I'm lucky enough to get either.
 

JFitchett92

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Sometimes I get the title first and mould the story around it, other times it's the other way around. Silver Linings was quite easy as the story is about people who have auras, and at the time my favourite album was Black Clouds & Silver Linings by Dream Theater (still very firmly in my top 10 too).

Animals
is more of a working title as it's about a teenage boy who has mind-controlling pheromones, much like what is found in the animal kingdom. The original story was much more savage, but I've kept it purely because I need something and it still kind of fits.

Using a short quote from the story works well too. I'd say stay away from matching titles if you have more than a trilogy otherwise they start to sound lousy and forced IMO.

Good luck!
 

The Black Prince

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I never worry about titles. I just have a basic working title and know that as I get towards the end of the draft the perfect title will suddenly explode in my head. It's happened every time so far - although a couple of times I realised just before publication that there were other books that had already used the title - including (similar to ikennedy) one that come out one month before mine. At least it was in a different country. Of course, there's no copyright in a book title - in Australia at any rate. Is that different anywhere?

As for chapter titles, I nearly always take a neat phrase from somewhere in the chapter which encapsulates the chapter. Works very well and I even (once) had some fan feedback on how much that person liked my chapter headings. Odd sort of thing to contact a writer about but I'll take it.
 

Enlightened

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I've completed 7 books (and no title has become clear...), am working on the 8th, and it will be 10 in the end. (Until last night I thought it would be 9, but... oops.) None are published yet.

Because they are already all plotted out, I could go ahead and name all 10 -- I just don't have the first idea for ANY of them. Music is a big theme, so I've thought about playing on words like Beat, Rhythm, Harmony, etc. Just don't want to corner myself by titling books 1-7 like that, then thinking of the perfect non-musical title for book 8.

I've been writing this thing for a year and have failed to come with a single book title that's stuck. I'm definitely not having chapter titles because that's another 200 or so titles to come up with!

Just curious.... What are you doing to keep the continuity from going bad (e.g. character maps, literary bible of facts, series grid, other)?
 

kwanzaabot

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Mine's called Children's Crusade.
It's inspired by the actual Children's Crusade, where kids from all over Europe attempted to take part in the Crusades, but ended up dying in various horrible ways along the way.

Basically, my story has child protagonists on a heroic quest, and I'm trying to say, hey, maybe that's not such a great idea, kiddos.
 

Aggy B.

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I usually just have a working title - main character's name or the world name or something that will remind me when I'm staring at the folders and files on my laptop which story/book it is - because I'm trying for trade publishing. But, once I get finished with a MS I usually brainstorm to see if I can come up with something more effective. I consider if there are any words or phrases that really capture the book (something I usually can't do until I'm done with it). I consider the tone of the books and therefore what kind of title it needs to have. (FREX: The first SparkleGoat story - Jacquelyn and the Sparkly Emo Vampire Goat - was based on a particular comment that's part of the yearly SSSFFSS over in the SF/F part of the forum, and is a humorous fairy tale retelling so it needed max ridiculousness. The Southern Gothic novellas on the other hand contain clues about my protag's arc across the series- Touch (the series title): Of Lips and Tongue, Of Shade and Soul, Of Flesh and Bone - and reflect the Southern Gothic/horror tone of the books.)

Usually, if nothing springs to mind, I make lists of words and phrases that seem to reflect the book, then work and rework from there until I find something that I like. Sometimes it doesn't take long. For one project it took several years (while I was repeatedly revising the MS) until I found something that worked.
 

Rosanna Banana

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For my current WIP I've been using a working title but after one afternoon of writing (I'm about half way through) my title just came to me. I kind of figured I would find a line or part in my book that would inspire my title after I completed the ms but it just so happened during the process. I was literally lying in bed, thinking about what I'd written that day and possible titles and boom! it came to me!
 

cbenoi1

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To get the title out of the way of the writing I choose a one-word nickname from mythology. They all represent the Opponent in some way. They are also the name of the files so I don't have to rename them all the time and screw up my backup and revision system.

Ex: Succubus, Chimera, Pandora, Juno, etc.

-cb
 

indianroads

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The Dark Side of Joy - came from a dream.
The Last Dragon - came from something that was said to me back in my late teen years.
Departure - (first of the Extinction series), is what the story is about.