Titles

[Katie-Ellen]

It took me three drafts to arrive at a working title that felt 'right' for my first completed novel. I chucked a few out in the meantime. With the new one in development, I have the working title already, but as with the first, I suppose it's best just viewed as a working handle, subject to change. Has anyone here started out with one title and ended with another on the suggestion of an agent or publisher?



http://www.novel-writing-help.com/novel-titles.html

 

[Marc Joan]

Alas, I have no agent of publisher, but I certainly go through multiple titles per project, sometimes going back to one I previously rejected, but more often wondering how I could ever have thought the lame title that I previously liked could have had anything to recommend it.

 

[Marc Joan]

On reflection, part of my problem may be that I often think of a title first and then build a story around it [yes, I know that's bizarre], only to find that the story takes over and no longer matches the title, so I have to think of something else.

 

[Carol Rose]

Yep.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I can relate to that. It needs to somehow distill the story. and that's hard to do till you have decided what the story really is. That can be surprisingly hard. It may change as it evolves, unless you've plotted it all out and have no changes of heart as you go along. With the first one, I've found out the story by writing it, but didn't clearly realize it on setting out. With the new one, I know the story, and the essence I want to bottle, just not all the pegging points yet. But if we have to be prepared to kill darlings, whether for reasons of art or commecial appeal, I guess that also goes for titles.

 

[Karen Gray]

My first novel was always going to be titled For King and Country. Book 2 started off as Bound by Blood but too many vampire books were too similar and it didn't really fit. So I changed it and it now fits PERFECTLY!! Books 3 - 5 are already titled and I'm fairly confident they won't change

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Yes, there's that to consider, too...whether the title already exists, and if it does, might it be a problem.

 

[Karen Gray]

I searched amazon etc for all my titles. There's 1 book with the same title as book 1 in my series but it's a non ficfiction book. All others in the series are unique as is the series name