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Post by lhasa on Jan 16, 2010 21:07:31 GMT -5
Choosing a title for a story can be a hard thing to do. It's one of the things readers will find memorable and a catchy title can set a story apart from others.
How do you choose the titles for your stories? Is it a long process, or do you just choose whatever pops in your head first?
For me, it's one of the hardest things to do. I'll sit there for days thinking of something that's both meaningful to the story and catchy at the same time. Usually, I just settle for the 'meaningful' part.
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Post by mdpthatsme on Jan 16, 2010 23:13:19 GMT -5
HAHAHA! I was just about to post a thread about titles! You were one step ahead of me. ;D Titles are very easy for me....they're not usually catchy though...something I need to work on, yet rather plain. Like The Gang, simple enough title. It's about...well...a group of friends, of course. The Shadow is about a Shadow Being (though originally I was going to call it just "Nova"). Nonetheless, there's also my Christine Jones's story, Forever Yours in Darkness. It has meaning within the storyline, which I'm not going to spoil for readers. three meat pizza
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Post by thelunarfox on Jan 17, 2010 1:20:34 GMT -5
I am horrible when it comes to picking names for stories and stuff. I try to grab something out of the text for the names if I can. If not, I'll go ahead and try tossing around words or pulling out a thesaurus to find words for the title.
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Post by laura on Jan 17, 2010 11:16:37 GMT -5
I also just pull a word or phrase from the story for LH updates or short stories. It's hard naming the whole series though, when you're just getting started, especially if you don't really know what the later stories will be about. Some advice I was given for longer works, and which I used for my novel, is to take the most frequent image, or physical item that appears in the work. It worked out nicely for me, because this thing is both a physical item, but also wonderfully metaphorical at the same time. (I don't want to post the item/title here, but I'll tweet it or post it on my blog if anyone is curious, lol!) I also just did this same thing for a short story, and it worked just as well
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Post by laura on Jan 17, 2010 11:21:18 GMT -5
Ah-ha, or something else I've been doing more recently for LH update titles, is taking a word or phrase from the soundtrack song instead of the actual writing. Though, usually if a song has inspired an update enough to get to be a soundtrack, I'll usually work in a slight allusion to the song anyway, and thus, the title would appear in both.
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Post by heredoncove on Jan 17, 2010 12:59:08 GMT -5
I try to pick something that fits the tone or theme of the update. I usually don't get a title until I finish writing the update too.
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Post by Monday Morning on Jan 18, 2010 18:00:23 GMT -5
I sometimes name my stories before I even write them. I'll just think of random titles and say to myself that that sounds like a title of story I'd want to read. But otherwise, I try to create titles that have meaning in the story, as MDP said. A series of stories I've been itching to write for about a year or so is based on the cities in and around my hometown, Phoenix. So each title corresponds to each of those cities.
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Post by girlyesterday on Jan 18, 2010 18:28:35 GMT -5
Good question! I don't really know how I name my stories. I guess, I just usually given them the name of 'Untitled' and come back to it later. Usually, the title has something to do with the story itself but sometimes, it really is just what pops into my head and then the story revolves around the title.
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