Oh, Those Crazy Titles

Ah, those tricky titles. Why does the thing with the fewest words in our book always seem to be what we fret over most?

I tend to not worry about titles until the end of my editing phase. I name drafts after the main characters and, by the time I wrap up edits, an actual title usual emerges. I also get a kick out of playing with chapter titles - some of my books have only numbers, others have phrases. I know some folks use quotes, too.

So, here are a couple "You Tell Me" questions. What do YOU think about books titles and chapter titles?

Novel Titles


Chapter Titles


*UPDATE* Looks like the Blogger twilight zone duplicated the poll answers. So, here are the actual choices for Novel Titles, if you care to see 'em. I left the old one up so people could see the tallies, too.
 

Novel Titles

11 comments:

  1. Aargh! Titles are one of my least favourite things about writing too. I don't usually have anything for the whole draft either, and then what I do come up with never sounds snappy enough.

    Cool poll. BTW, your options are the same for both - I was a bit confused! So I just voted on the chapter one. From the POV of a writer, I voted for who needs chapters. My fave author, Terry Pratchett, hardly ever uses them, and that's the way I write too. I just divide it up afterwards because I'd rather stick to convention as a new writer. But I like when the story can just flow and flow.

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  2. Sometimes I struggle with a title. I want a unique one, but can't always find that. Lol

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  3. Sometimes titles come straight away when I am writing, like with my current project, the title was actually the second thing I knew about the story. Other times I have no idea and do the same as you, name the draft after the main character.
    Chapter titles are trickier, cause most of the time I usually just use numbers, but occasionally I use actual titles. When I do though I struggle to start a chapter if I don't have a title for it, it's quite frustrating.

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  4. I had to have fun with the voting and say "Who needs chapters anyway" because separating my manuscript into chapters is the last thing I do!
    Titles are difficult. The titles for my second and third books came from my publisher because I couldn't think of any.

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  5. it depends...
    adult books dont need them, but game of thrones tells who each chapter is about and i like seeing when i get to read about them again... chapter titles are also good for younger ages

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  6. During this rewrite, I found that I was a little stressed over the chapter titles, then I stopped...and just wrote the word "chapter" and then went back and added names.

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  7. What I usually do with a story or novel is give it a title that will remind me of what the story is about. This is so when I save it, I know what it is when I open it. I don't worry about coming up with a real title until later on in the process. At that point, it usually just comes to me at some point while I'm working on it. I hope that always continues...haha

    I don't name my chapters. I don't even divide it up until the very end!

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  8. I'm not so good with the titles. I've worked on stuff for a year or more with only "untitled.doc" as a file name. I tend to like chapter titles that hint at something in the coming pages, but for some reason I never do this. I think because it's one more layer of work for me to do. :P

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  9. Maybe I'm weird (OK, I am) but I *love* coming up with the titles and the chapter quotes!

    Maybe it stems from my former days as a beat reporter - I had to come up with 3-5 titles (or headlines) per day :)

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  10. I've never even *tried* to title things, because I can't think of anything that sounds even remotely title-like. I usually just use the name of my main character for my documents...

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  11. I love coming up with Titles! I believe I'm pretty good at it! :)

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