How to Title Your Book | Writing Tips
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ค. 2024
- These ~three-ish words will be the most difficult of your entire novel :) why :)
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☾I Will Never Tell You This - The Puritan: puritan-magazine.com/never-tel...
☾Solarium - Minola Review: www.minolareview.com/shaelin-b...
☾Barefoot - The Fiddlehead [print only]: thefiddlehead.ca/issue/282
☾Wishbone - PRISM international [print only]: prismmagazine.ca/2020/04/19/pr...
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☾Cherry and Jane in the Garden of Eden - The Puritan: puritan-magazine.com/cherry-an...
☾Hold Me Under Till I See the Light - The New Quarterly: tnq.ca/story/hold-me-under-ti...
☾Beautiful Animal - Room: roommagazine.com/issues/twine
☾Zugzwang - CBC [excerpt]: www.cbc.ca/books/literarypriz...
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:56 - Title from concept
2:58 - Title from line (cool title hack!)
4:08 - One word titles
7:16 - Double meanings
8:46 - Compelling contradictions
9:56 - My favourite titles
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Trying to compute the optimum Shaelin title from this...
You Too Can Be Wolves With Birds In Your Mouth
you see me more than i see myself
@@ShaelinWrites Also a good title! 😀
This is the most Shaelin title ever conceived. It’s like a Shaelin bot was created for this purpose.
Okay that’s weird and I apologize to you Shaelin, and honestly, everyone who sees this comment, now or in the future. Even a thousand years in the future.
And yes, I’m keeping this up for posterity.
this had me howling
That's make a great title!
I love it when you're writing your book and one of the characters says something and you're like "holy shit, that's the title". I didn't see it coming but there it was.
Yeah I love that thing as well! The *"When one character of the book itself says the book's title"* always gave chill. Idk, it's just weird parallel.
@@valhatan3907
I agree, it's very cool anytime there's a kind of synchronicity in the story telling, like a character's name and I look up the original meaning of the name and it's a perfect fit. That kind of everything fitting together is one of my favorite parts of writing.
@jackie Fair enough, but do you get that feeling when you read the title in a book?
I've since changed the title again. I've changed it like 8 times, but I think the newest title is here to stay. It paints a picture of the story in 6 words. I'm pretty set with this new title.
I wrote a short film called 'Flirting with Violence' and it's still one of my favourite titles I've ever come up with
I'm from Pakistan.
Can you help me in understanding English literature?
I'm student of English literature.
I will be thankful to you!
My book is called Rat Bastard Jack. I love it.
YYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
i have a short story that had some honey, waspish, bee-related imagery in it, and a theme of like gossip and backstabbing and social climbing and someone who attained success through betrayal, kind of. and the original title was 'queen bee' (bleh. not the worst title ever, but not great.) i ended up changing it to 'buzzwords' and the moment it clicked into place was like... hello, i have seen the light!! it very rarely happens to me but it's my favourite story title i've ever come up with
Okay we LOVE a pun title, that's brilliant!
“The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant” by Pablo Tusset certainly grabbed my attention. Two favorites that jump to mind are “Woman on the Edge of Time” by Marge Piercy and Ian McGregor’s “If No One Speaks of Remarkable Things.”
I always start with the title - it usually comes to me with the story idea.
"The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant" - I'd buy this book because it makes me think of the Vine "Stop... I coulda dropped my croissant!"
* Jon, not Ian (autocorrect sometimes baffles me)
@@DianeShugart Autocorrect is like the dumbest kid in class who's always correcting people smarter than them.
Shaelin: "And to those people, good for you."
Me: "Thank you Shaelin."
I was just thinking about "I have no mouth and I must scream" and you mentioned it haha
it's one of my favorite titles
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, All The Light We Cannot See, and No One Belongs Here More Than You are all books I've picked up solely because of the titles and to this day they're some of my favorite books
Those all have such memorable titles. A lot of people who haven't even read those books know the titles.
MY FAVOURITE WRITING TOPIC! been brainstorming some life hacks for titles since I love them very much and this video is inspiring me to finish off that list!
oh I need these hacks you are the title queen👑👑plz take your crown
As a chess player I love your title “Zugzwang”. Immediately I was intrigued by what kind of situation your characters are in that call for that term. Tbh your titles are always on point and share the quality of raising intrigue. Plus who doesn’t love titles that are like easter eggs and possibly lurk within the story somehow. You don’t get that with titles like “home”
For some reason I want to title my work “Let Me Eat Cake.” But then I debate over whether it’s dumb. I struggle with titles.
I think that's an excellent title myself - deeply relatable, as I, too, want to eat cake always.
You could retitle it something like "Drool & Cake." It contains the same concept but twists it into a something you're probably going to need to read. Feel free to use it if you like.
Haha! Good one! “Let Me Eat Cake” (And Have It). Also suggests what the Germans would call “Kummerspeck” hinting at some small tragedy in the back story…
I just now finished my second book and I’m so happy and excited about it! It’s just a first draft, and it’s a little under 73k words. I only have a joke working title for it: “Fruity! The Romcom” and I’m looking at it wondering when or how I’ll give it a real title. So that’s what this video is for! Fantastic timing lol
Haha I love hearing people's joke working titles!!
Among literary novels, these are ones that I bought primarily by the strength of their titles: "Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist" by Sunil Yapa, "We Ride Upon Sticks" by Quan Barry, "An Elderly Lady Up to No Good" by Helene Thurston, "How Much of These Hills Is Gold" by C. Pam Zhang
Granted I've only read one out of four, but it get books onto the reading pile! There's also a phenomenon of seeing a book that has such a killer title but the story just doesn't live up to it. I resent "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You" because I found it to be a mediocre book but I covet that title for myself.
I have a book idea I'm holding out for several years until I'm good enough to write it, and when happened for me was that I knew inside that it had to be one word, and something glorious and majestic sounding, as well as unforgettable and iconic. I strung together a couple root words, and after several hours over a couple days of trial and error I found it. Can't share it here, of course, but thats how I created a title recently.
That is also a really good technique for brainstorming titles!
ooh this is exciting! i have a lot of trouble with titles lol
They can be SO hard !
A title i remember immediately grabbing my attention was The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, it’s long but sets up so many questions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Canadian edition of Hamnet is called Hamnet & Judith and I actually like that title less; I feel like Hamnet on its own works better because it already has connotations because of the similarity to Hamlet, and adding the Judith part diminishes that impact and, to someone just seeing the cover for the first time, actually kind of presents more of a romance?
I agree with your assessment on Hamnet & Judith. Hamnet would just grab my attention more.
Awesome topic! I'm the same, titles just pop into my head. I try not to worry too much about it and trust that I'll come up with something good. The novel As I Lay Dying I think has one of the all time great titles.
I keep thinking about Akwaeke Emezi's forthcoming romance novel "You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty", after a lyric in a Florence & the Machine song!
Akwaeke Emezi is AMAZING at titles!!
Thank you for the video! I'm the kind of person that gets title ideas for novels or short stories and then never get stories for them. But some of my favourite book titles are:
1. Radio Silence, Alice Oseman
2. The Sun Is Also A Star, Nicola Yoon
3. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
4. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
5. This Song Will Save Your Life, Leila Sales
While making this list, I realised what you meant by how one word titles can be less impactful if the word itself is not very catchy. I'm scanning through my bookshelf trying to find a book with a good one word title, but can't. Pareidolia is a title I absolutely love, though!
Those are all so good !!
“We who are about to” by Joanna Russ is one of my all-time favourites. I think it’s so clever that it’s the phrase you automatically complete in your head that tells you something about the story. (I don’t really like the book that much though!)
I like titles that make you feel compelled to read the book just to see what the title is talking about lol. Like "If on a winter's night a traveler", "The catcher in the rye" and "Satantango".
My favourite titles are rather unrelated to the content, or only marginally related -- mostly songs, I feel they (un)relate title to content much better than books. One of my favourites is _What Sound Does a Mastodon Make?_ by The Fall of Troy. Mathcore in general had some very unrelated titles that just get me going so much better than descriptive or fancy titles. Both bird titles: _Delicate Edible Birds_ and _Mouthful of Birds_ are reminiscent of this. _Failure In The Process Of Identifying A Dream_ by Ion Dissonance is a magnificent title too, some other titles by them: _Oceanic Motion; The Girl Nextdoor Is Always Screaming; Shut Up, I'm Trying To Worry; You're Not Carving Deep Enough; Play Dead… And I'll Play Along; Lecturing Raskolnikov (Or How To Properly Stab An Old Widow); A Prelude Of Things Worse To Come_ (ironically this is the _last_ track in the record!); _This Is Considered Mere Formality; You People Are Messed Up; After Everything That's Happened, What Did You Expect?_ and so on and so forth.
The third book in my upcoming trilogy has a dual meaning that makes me smile. The MCs and cover art point to it meaning one thing, but really, you find out in the last sentence (epilogue excluded) what I was going for.
This was the best video on titles I have seen so far! So many helpful and practical tips that go beyond "look what's common in your genre". Thanks!
I love Christopher Paulinis title To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Ohh that's so pretty and lyrical!
Alliteration in titles ❤️
Paolini*
Thank you for this video. I think the reason why "Delicate Edible Birds" is so interesting is because it invokes 2 separate pairs of contrasting connotations. The first contrast in connotations is between "delicate" and "edible". "Delicate" implies that something should not be touched, let alone eaten, while "edible" carries the connotation of being easily consumed in the mouth. The second contrast is between "edible" and "birds". While birds are clearly edible, normally when we are referring to food, we would use uncountable food-nouns, such as "beef", "pork" or "ham". By contrast, the countable plural noun "birds" invokes the connotation of live, flying animals, which feels wrong to eat. Hence, those two contrasts of what the mind makes us imagine, makes the title interesting, similar to "Honey Vinegar" (sweet and sour at the same time). How do you find the title "Somewhere Between Light and Time"? It is a magical realism book.
I'm currently writing one called 'You Only Die Twice'. To give context, the main character dies on her way to a parallel universe and lives on as a ghost trying to get enough magic to get herself a body and go home. She manages to do so at about half the book, then realizes that she is losing everything she built a second time by changing worlds again and goes back. The title is significant for several reasons - first off, the world she arrives in and decides to stay in is much more dangerous than the one she came from, and even as a ghost she has to struggle not to die a second time - but also, she realizes that she was able to rebuild this time, but that losing everything again is not something she would recover from.
Shaelin, I wanted to thank you for your video on titling your book. What you said has tremendously helped me make a simple title that resonates with people and is easy
to remember and is short and sweet. I also finally realized that the title isn't about what I want but what the potential readers will be interested in based on what the title causes the potential readers to think of when they read the title in a quick glance. So thank you.
I also made a list of titles and everyone liked the same one title that I went with that is five words long.
Thank you so much for this video
That Raymond Carver story has absolutely ruined my life.
Out of all those wonderful books, my favorite is Satantango. Great compounded one-word title. And an amazing novel. I also like the title of his collection Seiobo There Below.
@@authorgreene absolutely agree!
How Hedly Hopkins Did A Dare, Robbed A Grave, Made a Friend Who Might Not of Been There at All And While He Was at it Committed a Terrible Sin Which Everyone Was Doing Even Though He Didn't Know It.
Real title for middle fiction book which has stuck in my head for a decade
I use to be soo good at coming up with titles some times I get so distracted when it comes to coming up with titles that I create a list, but now it's so hard to come up with them and now I just label my WIPs "Project: summarized concept" for example my current WIP is Project: Remember My Voice. And the core concept of that novel is "when a musician loses access to their music and nobody believes that it's their sound"
Umm remember my voice is a great title???
One of my favorite titles is a short story I wrote called Devon's Reckoning. It's about a guy who is having a very hard depressive episode and contemplates the nature of his own death, especially if self-inflicted
Yaaas love it every time you pull out our beloved History of Wolves. Not only is that a fantastic title but the way it manifests in the story is actually quite...irrelevant and throwaway, which makes me love it even more because it means there’s like, a double meaning or some kind of depth I’m missing at first glance
Honestly that title was such a power move on Emily Fridlund's part. She really said "I'm going to write a book called History of Wolves and the book won't be about wolves at all." Queen.
@@ShaelinWrites The audacity 😂 👑
@@leech1355 I have a story I’m working on called “The Audacities”. No clue what it’s about yet but I like taking a phrase (like “the audacity of some people” or whatever) and then cutting it off at a point that makes it hard to see after awhile not only what the original phrase was (even if it’s painfully obvious), but also what the original phrase could even mean, or even the operative word IN the phrase.
Some great advice here. The title for my book (see name) took me a long time. Thanks for making the video.
Favorite one word titles: HOWL by Alan Ginsburg. DUNE by Frank Herbert. FEED by MA Anderson. (Even HAMLET by WS is an unforgettable and unique title). I love children's picture book title MONSTER MAMA by Liz Rosenberg, Stephen Gammel. (Not what you're expecting for little kids). Ban This Book by A. Gratz. No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. Your Robot Dog Will Die, by A. Greenwood.
Those are all great one-word titles you shared there! And all favorite of mine to boot! I haven't ran across anyone who's read Feed in years, so that's also very cool. Someone above mentioned another favorite one-word book of mine: SATANTANGO by László Krasznahorkai. I really recommend it. Excellent book. Exquisite writing.
I'm on the team of titling before writing too much of it. It helps me wrap my head around the story, feels like something solid after I do.
I wrote a fanfic called Say Goodnight Before You Leave, and I can't remember why I titled that but it worked. My favorites of mine are The peculiarities of wrath, Death as Seen from Above, and Max is gonna die tonight. But I have a title dear to my heart that is just Hoverfly, even being one word since is not a very talked about insect, I thought it could stand on its own.
I personally love one word titles, i'm not sure why though it might be that they're more common in fantasy (which is almost everything I read). It could also be that it just feels more like a title to me instead of a sentence
In fantasy you get lots of super cool words so I can see why they'd work really well!
💜Thank you💜!!! For you're providing me with everything I need to know.
I didn't know Tanya Tagaq wrote a book, I will need to check that out!
It's incredible!!
Shaelin, I feel like titles are more important than book covers. The title of a book catches my attention before I take note of the cover design. The story itself may have some lovely
titles that can be used. My award-winning short story, Ambition and Rejection is titled the way it is because of the ideas the story explores as well as the hopes and fears that run along the journey. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a beautiful work of literary historical fiction and I love how the title directs readers to the symbolism in the story. The novel I am currently writing revolves around the power of nature. One of my favorite short story titles for a story that I wrote is The Tree of Exposure. I love you
The title is the cherry on top. I can never find the right one. But it looks sweet when it on top of the sundae when I do.
I am terrible at writing titles a lot of the time and works will sit, orphaned, because the titles suck so badly I don't want to risk them dying, unread. Someday, someday. (Maybe that will be my next title!)
I get turned off by titles more often than I am turned on by them.
The worst was "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg. I resisted that book literally for YEARS yet when I finally read it, I cried when I finished it and started over.
I think your "Honey Vinegar" is a brilliant title, by the way. New subscriber here, happy to find you!
The first title of a book I thought of was Tell the Wolves I’m Home and then you mentioned it! I think of this book all the time and a big part of it is because the title is so memorable to me.
The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven--Sherman Alexie.
omg I adore titles but hate titling my own work so I always put it off for as longgg as possible. but some of my fav titles are A RIVER DIES OF THIRST by Mahmoud Darwish and THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone :)
These are both SO GOOD
One of the titles that I came up with was when he night arrives. I love it
i feel like its worth noting that no one is looking up "betty" without putting book after it and when you do put book after it, it comes up immediately haha. amazing tips, that just made me laugh :D
Love your videos. I have a-ha moments with all of them. Thank you for spreading your knowledge
True story: I was really confident with my original title for a book I was writing, The Destined. The day after Shaelin posted this, I noticed how ironic it was how obsessed my book is with the themes of irony and paradoxicality and the title didn't reflect that. I retitled it The Scar Came from Destiny. The first half has been published on Amazon as its own book, and in fact the Kindle version will be free from Thanksgiving to November 29, 2021. Feel free to check it out if you're seeing this. You have plenty information already.
By the way, since then I've titled two short story spinoffs of SCD, My Fanged Screams and Die with Honor. I return to this video constantly for more ideas, and in fact I have three more spinoffs I need to title and I'll be sure to visit!
I remember the baby Shaelin video on Titles. We love to see growth 🖤
I like one word titles and consider it a lot in my poems and short stories: for example ¡¿WHY?!, Checkmate, Jesus, Skin and so on...
These are all really cool one word titles!! I love ¡¿WHY?!, I didn't mention it in the video, but I love titles that utilize punctuation in a creative way, since it's something you don't see too often. Like Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, or Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine.
@@ShaelinWrites Yes, U know, it´s like who doesn´t wanna know ¡¿WHY?!...
My two favorite titles among my own stories are Child of Spider Island, a sci-fi horror story, & Nobody was here, a story about an assassin whose name is Nemo, which means nobody, & who always leaves a calling card on the body of his target, that only says "Nobody was here".
I read Fruit of the Drunken Tree (bc of you lol) and I love the title! I also like Call Me by Your Name, i like how they both sound.
One of my favourite titles of a book I recently read was 'You Were Never Really Here' by Jonathan Ames. I haven't read it yet, but I definitely bought 'Sharks in the Time of Saviors' by Kawai Strong Washburn because of its title (it also has a gorgeous cover)
Some of my favourite book titles:
All the Light We Cannot See
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Till We Have Faces
The Once and Future King
The Remains of the Day
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Fire From Heaven
Funeral Games
A Fire Upon The Deep
A Doctrine of Labyrinths
If On a Winter's Night a Traveller
The People of the Dark
(I haven't read most of these books, but the titles always stuck in my mind)
I love titles so much I have a whole word document (subdivided by category) dedicated just to titles (that mostly come from poems). Sometimes I come up with a title that's so good it suggests a whole story by itself.
Titles come easily to me, but I have had a couple of them change based on how the story evolves. My favorite short story title of mine that was published is Asleep in Tall Grass. Others I like that were published are Dead Ends and Normal People.
I absolutely love the title of a YA novel that i read recently which was Frankly in Love because it has an excellent double meaning
Titles i've come up with that I like (for performance texts, or music, or whatever):
Termite
Back When I Couldn't Breathe
The Sin Garden
Unembellished Pixels
Titles of other people's books that i like:
Darkmans
This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You
The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Broken Monsters
Thanks for the excellent video :)
I write a lot of short stories, and I like titles that when you hear the title, automatically think you've heard it (maybe because you have, as some of them share names with other media, or common phrases). 'A Kiss Before Dying', 'The Last Moments Of Light', 'When It All Comes Down', 'Why Speak, I Have No Voice?', 'The Night You Went Missing', and 'Lilies At Dawn' are some of my favorites.
I always get so much out of your videos. Thanks.
“when i hear that as a title, i have no questions” thats a great way of putting it!! a title should make you at least think, “WHY is that the title? what does that mean for this story?” i was alway insecure about titling and whenever i ask for feedback on title options, i sometimes feel like if i have to explain why it makes sense thats probably not a good title on its own. but its totally the opposite-if a person whos never read my story doesnt have any questions about the title, why would they want to read it!
my favorite titles are from the gallagher girls franchise, since theyre just so clever and made me pick up the books! plus each individual title does relate to the story. like:
-id tell you i love you but then i’d have to kill you
-don’t judge a girl by her cover
-only the good spy young
they’re just the right amount of cheesy and intriguing to me anajkskskd
A long title I really like even if its so weird is: The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society. When I read that title i inmediatly wanted to know more about it.
My current book has a title that was drawn together by a lyric in a song. Since then I like the idea of taking a lyric from a song and turning it into a book title.
I was thinking about this a few weeks ago and I've started writing down titles AND COVER DESCRIPTIONS for books that I've come across that I had to pick up, if only to see what they were about (romance genre mostly): First You Try Everything, Rubbing One Out (lol), Badge Bunny, ...
I love the titles of Hillary Waugh, as "Last Seen Wearing" or "Run when I say: Now!". As for me, some of my projects have very specific titiles as "Crinoline" or "Siochan" /shee-han/ but there are others like "Why Us?", "Sea of glass", "Home of the Brave" or "This is Harp One"
this could not be more timely for me!
From other titles Cure for Wellness is awesome, The Silence of the lambs my beloved, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Horse and His boy from The Chronicles of Narnia, The knife of Never Letting Go. And a Brazilian novel that translates to The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (then titled Epitaph of a Small Winner).
Thank you so much for this.
My favorite title from my books is Christmas Train Home. It's my one book which gets sales yearly.
I love this channel so much!!
One of the best books I've read in the last couple years was "1979" by Val McDermid. For me the title was more than good enough to prompt me to carry the book to the cashier and buy it because I'm intrigued by the events, culture, writing machines and the general atmosphere of the late 1970s. This applies to songs as well...I love the song "1974" by Amy Grant...
I often have a title before I've finished the story. It's fun and fairly easy for me. Sometimes my titles are better than the story! If that's the case, it doesn't cross an editor's desk until the story meets the artistry of the title.
Some titles of my own work (only because you asked):
-Descriptions of Heaven
-Viagra for a Pariah
- Medea Naked on the Golden Fleece
-A New Kind of Mother
-88 “Spice Up Your Date” Shimmer Palette
-Aunt Phyllis is Yours This Christmas
- When the Dog Gets Ready to Die
-Beyond the Blue Curtain
All of these are published pieces. I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of them nonetheless, Shaelin!
I’m not sure what my favorite title of something I’ve written is. I have a short story called PTSA about a stewardess whose blind date is the man who hijacked the last plane she ever attended. There’s a novella I’m working on called The Zeroth Circle, which is an allusion to the Inferno with a story about demons helping a man overcome mental illness. I’m also drafting a one act play called Wanted, which takes on double meanings as the play is a western rom-com with a twist. As for someone else’s work, A Boy And His Dog At The End Of The World by C. A. Fletcher and The Translucent Boy And The Girl Who Saw Him by Tom Hoffman probably take the cake.
Reading through the comments, I've become transfixed on 'When the Wake of Tides' as a possible title for my novel. It doesn't make sense, and it's an unfinished question, but it makes you wonder... how does that show up in the story?
The current title is, simply, 'Essences', which is quite bland, but ties into the story much more overtly. But when I think of better titles, I can't, because the core theme is the essences within the people and their lives.
Love that title: “When the Wake of Tides”. Suggests that somethings will be laid barren and exposed in due time, like coastal soil at low tide.
the current working title of my verse novel is "A Brace of Sulphur Crests"; I've been through three or four as my story and style has evolved, but I think it's the closest to "right" so far
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman have some great titles. Good Omens, Guards! Guards!, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
I also love This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Maybe the best one word title I can think of is Pratchett's Thud! It's a good strong word, simple, effective, it suggests violence that could tonally take any form from brutal to more comedic, the exclamation mark is nice and attention-grabbing. It's the name of an in-universe strategy board game tied to the broader themes of the novel, so it's significant in that way, and it also shows up a few times in the text as a noun.
One of my favorites (and also my favorite book in general) is I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson! The title comes from inside the book and once you get to that part, you're like, "Ohhh, that's what that means!"
I love that book and that title!! I remember the title was the first thing that caught my attention!
"St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell is one of my favourite titles of all time. Even though it's a long one, I never struggle to remember it.
I don't know about you but recently I'm reading these two books, The Ephemeral:Breeder by Erica Gallegos and Bearheart by MMicheleWilly. They are my absolute fave 👌strong female character esp the first book and just I love Ericas writing along with her character arcs.They're on wattpad and even though you don't read there as often..if ever, try them out :)
All of Joe Abercrombie's books.... I mean, "The Trouble with Peace".... instant buy
I named my current short story project by it referencing the antagonist of the story
Ohhh very cool idea!
@@ShaelinWrites I am basing my story on the Monster Hunter games, since I always wanted to tell my own story with my own original protagonist within that fictional fantasy universe.
Lord of the Rings is this :-)
@@billyalarie929 I am thinking of naming my story "Amber Fangs of the Mountains".
I don't usually have a hard time coming up with titles. My own stories tend to be in the old adventure novel style because that's what they are.
"The mysterious ore" - The one thing all the parties want to get their hands on because it holds UNLIMITED POWER!!!
"The fall of Eldorado" - The story spawned by a throwaway line. I really wish I'd spent more care on the name of the Forbidden City. Which falls.
"The Rainbow Hunters" - Hints at Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior, but also at the names of two important ladies in the story.
"Fire from the Gods" - A reference to Greek Mythology.
And then there's my fanfics.
"The Therapeutic Use Of Pretty Girls In the Treatment Of Aquaphobia" - I made that specially to sound like the title of someone's scientific thesis.
"Nightly Shadows" - A series of people's thoughts in the night, a reference to "Die Gedanken sind frei." Which is about the freedom of anyone to think anything they want.
I don't always keep my first title. Unlike character names. Once I have them, they are stuck.
This is a novel I'm writing, but it's called "Hell Isn't What You Think", and without giving out plot details takes places in a time lots of people consider hell, high school. It also follows a group of various troubled youth who have been through "hell" in different ways, but they all see real Hell as a virus brings the dead back to life and they either got to come to terms with what happened or die, another one I'm writing is called Spread Amongst The Rain again without plot details volcanos from Antarctica erupt causing mass flooding, but due to the underground caverns being untouched for thousands of years slowly evaporate into the sky as lava slowly melts the giant ice continent and releases more ancient viruses into the sky.
Edit* grammer, spelling
I have no interest in mainstream YA as a genre, but I remember walking into a Barnes and Noble one day, spotting "One of Us is Lying," and immediately walking over to peruse the cover, without even thinking about it. One of the clerks was nearby and she actually said to me _"Everybody_ stops at this display! What is it about this book?" I kinda laughed and moved on - but then thinking about it, I realized it's the title. I can't think of any other book that has so much of the inherent tension and conflict of the plot right there in the first five words you see. It tells you exactly why you want to read this book without even getting to the blurb.
one of my favourite one-word titles is "Misery" and it could be so bad but it's perfect
my favorite way to title works is to let them key the reader into the setting of my piece. my favorite title of mine is for poem called “Somewhere on the Island of Andros”
I hate titling and naming characters. English not being my first language it takes the life out of me to name a character (I just go with normal names) and title is the worst, if I read those titles on a book even I won't read it XD lol. However, this helped me a lot so thank you very much. Btw, I Consider you my teacher as I have learnt a lot from you about writing and improved. Thank you for that because India doesn't have writing course.
I've changed the title of my novel four times, but I've settled on one that I like. My favorite novel titles are every book in the Twilight saga. Taboo titles with hidden meanings are fun.
Hi Shaelin have you ever had work published where they changed the title as a condition of publishing? Should one allow such a change with a work they want published? How hard should one fight for a title that publishers want to change? Thanks!
This has never happened to me, but I've never published a novel, only short stories, where I don't think changing titles is as normal! I did have one time where an editor suggested a different title, but I didn't really like it, so we kept the one I'd had before.
@@ShaelinWrites thanks! I work with just working titles because I expect someone might come up with something better.
OMG, I needed this video sooooo bad.
5:30, i could see a book called Apple or blackberry or something and want to find out why more that I would with a sentence as a title, but that might just be me
Great video!
My debut novel was/is named "Therapy is over" and it came just as I thought about the story. but I've been using it too much that has started to distort and I don't know if is a good title anymore lmao.
there’s some almost imperceptible quality that makes a really memorable title, and i think it has to do with specificity and imagery. for example, two of my favorite titles are “at night all blood is black”, and “paul takes the form of a mortal girl”. these are all instantly memorable, have clear meanings within the text of the book, yet aren’t too obvious. each word in these titles are pulling their weight. another title that i really like, “the scapegoat” is essentially one word but uses an interesting word to evoke the naming conventions of older works (the idiot, the trial, etc.) in a way that really interests me as a reader. however, i don’t particularly click with something like “all the light we cannot see” or “tell the wolves im home”, because they seem too vague, i’m not left with any questions. these titles each only have one or two “operative” words, and they’re pretty generic.
apologies for leaving such a long comment on a year-old video, but i’m happy to really figure out a formula for which titles i like and dislike. it’s intensely satisfying for me to vivisect titles like this. great video !!
As a native German speaker it's a bit hard to pin down titles I love (because most of the books I read are in German and have German titles, as are the ones I write). But one of my favourite titles is actually a one word title: Ghostwritten by David Mitchell. This title is so perfect in every way. First off: Why would someone admit right in the title that a book ist ghostwritten? And then, when you read it, you suddenly get the meaning: the title isn't implying that someone else than the author had written the book. The lives of the characters are driven by fate. They are ghostwritten. It's a one word double meaning title in your concept, I guess. It's a shame that the German publisher changed this to the much more plain and boring title "Chaos". They clearly haven't understood the meaning behind the original title.
Another great title is Jonas Jonason's "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared". There had never before been a title which intrigued me mor than this one. And all his books are titled in that great manner, too. There is another title concept here: Put your story in one sentence. It's true that longer titles are more uncommon nowadays, but I fell they would work wonders, if done well.
And you're right. "I have no mouth and I must scream" is a near perfect title (and a pretty heavy story ^^)
The favourite title of my own works would translate to "The Witnesses of the 9th Dimension" and I think I never put more thought into a title. I needed something to communicate the genre (science fantasy), the world (9 dimensions) and I wanted something that sounds like pulp magazine titles. I literally worked for weeks on this one.
i either have the title before i even start properly planning out the story and know what's going to happen or i'm scrambling last minute to come up with something as im finishing the story (and probably not having anything) and there is no in between
Titles don't need to be specific to plot, or anything really. The feel, concept or theme can be done by metaphors or similes
Watching this video rn because my current placeholder of "fantasy grape story" is not normal. (It's a grape metaphor in a fantasy story)
A few titles I like:
The Butt by Will Self
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Stranger Here Myself: Being the Life Story and Revelations of Mister Rab C. Nesbitt of Govan by Ian Pattison
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Hi Shaelin