Hey guys! Sorry that this post is a day late. Yesterday was so fun and crazy that I totally forgot about it. So today I’m going to write on choosing titles.
I’ve never really had a specific way to pick a title and I don’t think people should. If you do then all your titles will follow the same sort of pattern and unless your content it really really good people will loose interest in your books quickly. A title is one of the very first things a reader sees when they see your book on the shelf. If the title doesn’t attract their interest, then they won’t pick up your book to find out what its about. (The picture above is a great example of a title of a book that I would read.) Sometimes choosing a title also depends on the genre or title trend that’s around at the moment. For example, a title trend that was around for a really long time, that’s still sort of around, is the one word one title. Many books during this time where published with just one word like Hungry by H.A. Swain. People still publish their books with the one word one title mentality but it’s much less prevalent than before.
One of my favorite ways to pick a title is a premise. I love having my titles allude to the plot while also seeming interesting on a shelf. Some of my favorite book titles from my books or author authors are premise titles. My very first experience with a premise title was a book named Horimiya. It was a Japanese comic about an adorable couple and all the little daily life things that happened around them with their friends, their family, their school life, and (of course) their relationship. I didn’t quite understand the title (I thought it was something in Japanese) until I started to learn about ship names from one of my friends. If there were two people that you thought should be a couple you combined their name to make a new name. The boyfriend and girlfriend in Horimiya where named Kyoko Hori and Izumi Miyamura. The title was their ship name Hori from Kyoko and Miya from Izumi. Horimiya. I thought that was a very clever premise title. One of my titles that uses premise is my book Thieving Heirs. The book is about a prince named Asher whose father is killed by the Prime Minister and then the Prime Minister attempts to murder him. He escapes but has to enlist the help of his best friend from his army days, a scared soldier boy, and a deranged thief to steal his throne back. Thus, the title Thieving Heirs, while sounding interesting, is also an allusion to the basic premise.
Another fun way to do titles is by using the novel generator process. I heard about this process about a year ago and when I’m really struggling to come up with a title I will use this process for help. This process can be found at the bellow link but I will also give a quick overview of it. http://graemeshimmin.com/how-to-choose-a-title-for-your-novel/
Basically this website is a post about what I’m posting. It’s a list of ways to come up with titles starting with the easiest kind and working their way up to harder to create titles. With this process you can create a title even when your creativity is at an all time low. This is what I turn to when a title is not forthcoming for a book that I am writing.
Another way to pick a title is the very fun, very hard way to do it. Pick a title and then write a book………………………………………………………………………. Everyone’s always confused when I say that so let me explain. On any writing site you can find a title adoption forum. In this forum people spend hours generating titles and just leaving them there for authors who have a harder time coming up with titles. Sometimes you can find a title there that actually fits with your book and other times you can’t. But one of my favorite ways to use a title adoption forum is to find a title that sounds interesting. One that you would pick up and read and then adopt that book title and write a book using the title as the base. These aren’t always effective but they sure are fun to do!
My last bit of advice for choosing titles would be to keep this in mind once you have one. If I saw this book with this title on a shelf between two of my favorite books does it compare? Would I pick up my book if it where between two of my favorite books on a bookshelf? Would it catch my interest enough that I would pick it up and read it for myself? If not, it might be time to choose a different title.
So that’s all I’ve got for this week! Sorry that it’s a day late but better late then never! So next week my plan is to write on why I write what I write. Finals are almost over so next week’s post should be on time. I have all the posts planned till the end of June so we’ll see how the next couple months go. Always write and enjoy what you write. See you next week!