Writer's Digest

Titles

Let's start with this topic. 

There are two things that a writer may experience while creating a title. First, it will be easy. If you don't think about it critically and creatively, then it'll be very easy. Second, it will be pain in the ass to figure out. If you are dealing with the first situation then congratulations. Please stop reading and be contented with your life. But if you are in the latter category, don't fret. Pete's here to make your life more miserable. Kidding.

The first thing to remember is that, you don't need to tile your title right at the start. If you have is an outline and a few chapters, slow your roll. But there's a really good chance of a perfect title would come to you at some point in the writing process. You got planning a time to figure it out. But if your book is done and you still got nothing, kabahan ka na.

Kidding.

Don't panic. We can fix this.

I will share with you the six steps I learned to implement when naming a novel.

Step number one. Look for keywords and names.

All novels serve a significant purpose to the story. They could be the names of characters, or cities, or species, they could be the powers that the characters possessed or the villains they fight. Find the key words and write them down. Write them.

Sometimes the keywords are going to be really easy to find. Take for example, Hello, Shi*t Face. Another time it's going to require a little bit of digging. Afterwards, take a look at the themes and symbols in your story. Things that might not necessarily keywords but serve a deeper meaning. Try to read that story and you'll know why the title is, "Hello, Shit Face." It's not hard to know why. Another one, The Hunger Games.

Step number two. Take those keywords and symbols and make them into titles.

Sometimes it will be easy. One of your keywords on its own might make the perfect title. Other times it will take a lot more effort especially if your keywords are really common like werewolf or magic, whether you got easy words to work with or hard ones make a list of titles. Even if you think you found a perfect title, make more than one because the next few steps are gonna knock a bunch out of the running. It might kill you.

Step number three. Eliminate any misleading titles.

Even the plotline is relies heavily on blood, so it would make sense to have blood somewhere in the title but a lot of plot lines rely on blood like murder mysteries or horror stories and especially vampire novels. When I see blood in a book title, I tend to assume that it's about vampires and if your book has nothing to do with vampires it's probably not the image I wanna portray. When titling your book try to take a step back and ask yourself, "Does it sound right?" Even if the keywords are indicative in the plot, you want to make sure the title creates a right image.

Ilang beses na ba akong nakakita ng 'blood' sa title? What are the over used words or phrases for a title?

-Ms. _____ meets Mr. _____

-Ms. _____ vs. Mr. ______

-Diary ng ____

-Blood

-Hell

-Evil

-Nerd

-Gangster