McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Titles!

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Dom:
I don't think this one has been asked here before.  How do you guys make up titles for your works?  Do they come first, or last, or does it depend on the story, or are you going to leave it up to your editor (if you eventually get the thing finished, out there, and nibbled upon) because they'll just change them anyway? (a la Jim's Semiautomagic => Storm Front or Jacqueline Carey's Elegy for Darkness => Godslayer and Banewreaker)  (Semiautomagic and Elegy for Darkness I think both rock as titles, so I'm unsure why the editors in question changed them!)  Do you follow a set procedure for making them up?

Me, I like titles, but they come very haphazardly.  Some stories I make have titles early on, some take some dedicated brainstorming.  One thing I do try to do however is make the feel of the title fit the story--ie, urban fantasy needs urban-fantasy-like titles.  Epic fantasy needs to be a bit more epic.  :D

Here's a few of my titles...

Daughter of Lilith, Son of Eve - This is a riff on C. S. Lewis's "Son of Adam, Daughter of Eve" phrase in his Narnia series.  The story basically has two major characters that are half demon, one that's more humane than the other (Son of Eve).  Lilith, in mythology, is Adam's first wife, the one who would not obey his commands and was punished by being turned into the mother of demons, a large number of which are slaughtered by angels over a certain amount of time.

A Mother's Sins, Sin & Hex, Hexagramicon, and Baphomet's Icon are four titles in a dark urban fantasy series I'm working on.  They all sort of came at once, after more than a year of wrestling with an unflattering working title for the first story.  The first one refers to the fact that the main character's situations are mostly the direct result of his mother's prior actions.  And the second two refer to a hex that plays a major role in those two books.  Fourth is there just because I think Baphomet is cool.  I had a fifth silly one of Baph Water but...it's silly.  So.  Not really a title.

The Dragon King's Wife sounds sophisticated, like my Dragon King, less like an urban fantasy, and is directly about who the book is about--his wife! (This story is actually science-fantasy coming from the fantasy side of things)

The Dragon King's Daughter follows the same layout.

I have several other stories that just haven't dredged up appropriate titles yet...one of those stories is 12 years old!  The Dragon King's Wife came pretty much with the start of the story itself.  Daughter of Lilith, Son of Eve took a couple of years.  So I don't really have a set anything when it comes to titles.

How do you guys work it?

Drew:
Last.  I find it is one of the hardest thind to write.

Tasmin21:
Titles are the bane of my existence.  Both of my current works have "working titles" but I hope that someone cooler than I can come up with a title for publishing, when/if the day comes.

Though, I did think up a REALLY great title the other day.  Now I just need a story to go with it. ;)

CrazyGerbilLady:
I am TERRIBLE with titles.  Just awful.  LOL

BjustaB:
I do think titles can have a lot of power when it comes to attracting (or dissuading) readers. I don't think I would have read Semiautomagic.  The title makes me think of guns; not a subject I would choose to read about.

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