Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop ✒ Writing Tips

Lesson 6: What should be the title of a fanfic?

This lesson was requested by readers and I will try my best to help you all with it. We will be discussing ways to find out the perfect title for your fanfic.

***

What is a title?

A title is what you use to name your story with. It should be short, interesting and able to hook a reader. But that doesn't mean you are going to summarize the whole story in the title.

Ever since stories like The Bad Boy Stole My Bra and The Bad Boy Hit Me In The Face With A Baseball Bat got famous, this thing of having long titles became a trend.

Of course there are many stories with long titles and there's nothing wrong with it but what I am telling you to do is to refrain from choosing really long titles.

You should never give the whole story away in the title because it isn't really appreciated when viewed from the literary perspective.

What titles you should avoid?

Consider some examples.

I'm Percy's Fiance But I Love Bill.

I'm Albus Dumbledore's Granddaughter But I Go To Beauxbatons/Durmstrang.

Oh My God, I'm A Potter But I'm In Love With Tom Riddle/Draco Malfoy!!!

The Weasleys/Malfoys/Grangers Adopted Me.

I'm Voldemort's Daughter But I Fell For The Chosen One.

And basically a lot such titles like that which are not only tacky but also give the reader an idea on what to expect.

Why not to use the above mentioned titles?

The first impression these titles create is that of lack of maturity. Then comes the obvious thought that clearly the story is going to involve all the cliches as mentioned by the screaming plot line exposing Title. And definitely, most readers are going to just skip over because they have already seen a lot of stuff like that and are not interested.

It is a very immature style of writing that you just scream away the main point of the story right at the beginning. So please, don't do that.

The only books which are capable of carrying long titles are those of the genre Humor or Random and obviously, Fanfiction is not categorized under those specific genres.

How to choose the title for your fanfic?

There are many other types of titles you can consider rather than these exclamatory sentences.

For example, first you think out the theme of the story and then you choose a word that matches the theme.

If the story is about two people (out of which one is obviously an OC) who used to be lovers sometime in the past but due to circumstances they drifted apart or broke up something and then after years they meet again and want to start all over again. Then you can name your story Rekindle or Awaken or Second Chances or something like that so it matches the theme.

Or the second way is that you look up lyrics of a song. And PLEASE do not insert the whole lyric, just a few keywords will be enough. Or rather just use the name of the song. I'm stating some examples below:

The Other Half Of Me

Chasing Cars

Part Of Me

Dancing In The Moonlight

Enchanted

Bad Reputation

And obviously the list could go on forever.

Then you can also consider idioms or proverbs or similes like:

Sharp As Glass

Once Broken, Never Mended

Yup, a few of these titles are long but they do not shout out your plot. Of course these titles give the reader an idea what the theme would be but really, the theme is what hooks the reader so that's quite necessary.

What are other ways to think of titles?

Alright, so this is the method I use when it comes to naming my fanfics. English titles work well but if you really want to go for uniqueness and originality, you should try using other languages for your title (but it should make sense with the plot).

Latin:

For Harry Potter fanfictions, the language, apart from English, used in titles of fanfic is Latin. Latin works very well with Harry Potter fanfics because it does have a connection to the original books. Such as the schools's motto is in Latin, most of the spells used are in Latin and some prestigious families have Latin inscriptions on their family crest.

If you can recall lesson 2, you will remember that I had mentioned an idea of a fanfic on Remus Lupin in which Damocles' apprentice helps Remus by smuggling wolfsbane to him a night before the full moon.

Now, we are going to decide what title it can use. Simply naming it The Apprentice of Damocles or Wolfsbane might seem tempting but not so much.

Try using Paracletus as the title. Latin is a language which gives a mystical touch to even the simplest of terms, and this word which I have used as the title simply means a helper or apprentice. And when you go deeper into the context of this word, it also means protector which in a sense is fitting since that apprentice provides Rem with wolfsbane to protect him as well as anyone who may unfortunately cross paths with him on a full moon.

French:

The other commonly used language you can consider to name your fanfic is French. And it works specifically if your fanfic is about Beauxbatons or any of the Delacours. Consider the following words that can make beautiful titles:

coquillage – seashell 

écarlate – scarlet

éclatant – brilliant, dazzling, gleaming

empêchement – a last minute difficulty

éphémère – ephemeral

étoile – star

luciole – firefly

pleuvoir – to rain

sirène – mermaid (fem.)

soleil – sun

And the list could go on forever.

***

Hope this chapter helped. There are a lot of books on Wattpad which give you ideas on how to title your story and then there are also books that give the titles randomly on a list and you can choose whatever fits your story.

See you in the next chapter!

~Imaan.