Hey, no problem! And thank you. Good luck to you as well. <3

postpunkbookclub:

Titles are important, sure. They’re the first thing potential readers are going to see when browsing in the local bookstore, or on the Amazon Kindle store, along with the cover art, reviewer quotes, and - in some cases - a short tagline. They’re what makes people decide to pick up the book and check out the blurb on the back, and then the blurb is what probably sells it in the end. But to get them looking at the back cover, you need a good title.

That said though, this isn’t something you should stress over too much until you’ve either finished the novel, or you’re a good bit of the way done writing it. Assign it a working title, by all means, but don’t settle on a final title until later.

When you’re just getting started, perhaps name your novel after your protagonist, lets call him Hiro Protagonist. Or name it after some significant event in your planned story. Or name it after the setting in which it is based. If it’s a sequel, name it Hiro Protagonist/Event/Setting 2. I’m not saying that if you have an awesome title idea right off the bat, you shouldn’t use it. Or you might even form an idea for a story based on a title, maybe a phrase you heard, or the name of a song or something. If either one of these is the case, then go right ahead and use that title as a working title. But don’t get too attached, especially if you derived your idea from the title to a song or something. And don’t spend hours agonising over giving your story a title before you’ve even started.

Once you’ve got your story written, you’ll probably want to do an edit. At this stage, while you’re reading through what you’ve written, you should keep an eye out for possible title ideas to replace the one you’ve been using while you’ve been working on it. Maybe a particularly meaningful line of dialogue, or an object or place of importance that has become central to your story, maybe there’s a motif that’s come up in the story as you’ve written it and it seems like it would be a cool idea to use a play on words that matches that motif. Some examples:

Dialogue: ‘Game of Thrones’

Object or Place of Importance: ‘The Eye of the World’

Motif: The Belgariad by David Eddings features a chess motif - ‘Pawn of Prophecy’, ‘Queen of Sorcery’, etc.

My main point is, the title is supposed to be able to represent your story in shorthand somehow. So you’re better off waiting until you’ve actually written that story, or a good portion of it, before settling on the title. That way, you’ll be better equipped to decide on the best possible name for your story. It might be that the one you start with is fine, or you might find a better one as you write. Just don’t set your mind on one title from the get-go. 

I don’t have much else to say on the subject that hasn’t been said, so I’ll bid you good day until next week. See ya.