Wednesday, May 4, 2011

What's in a title?

Man, I love the blogosphere. In the past two days especially, I have read some real thought-provoking blogs. One of those blogs was from Adventures in Children's Publishing. The author wrote a blog on my biggest headache in writing. 

Nope, not character development, tropes, prologues, or editing.

Coming up with a book title. (Dun dun duuuun!)

I encourage you to check out the blog, but you might want to take notes about the whole PRISM thing. Or maybe that was just me and you all have a solid idea on your story's title. If that's the case, then I'm super jealous.

I started looking at books in my genre and noticed a trend. MG books seem to use the MCs name in the title. 

Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Jacob Wonderbar (Congrats, Nathan!), Ramona Quimby and even Nancy Drew!

So why would I try to do something different when it is already so widely accepted to use the main character's name? My wip working title is lame. I came up with it; I can call it lame. The past two days I've been thinking about how I can make my story's title more dynamic and I think I've narrowed it down to a short list.

While thinking about title, naturally, I've moved over to considering cover design, but I'll save that topic for another day. I think it will involve cartoon images, whimsical drawings, and project a light-hearted theme but I'm still trying to break out of a deeper, more mystical, YA-type image, so there's some reshuffling that needs to be done in my head. Like I said, that's for another day.

4 comments:

  1. ugh, i have this problem too. Titling a short story? easy. Titling a whole damn novel? IMPOSSIBLE!

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  2. I know, right?! And I thought I had a "great" title until I read the blog I linked to above, and then I had a mini-freak out moment. Back to "untitled" because even that is better!

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  3. I end up with a lot of anxiety over naming anything. I can't imagine the panic attacks i'd have if I ever had to name a kid. It took me a year and a half and two drafts before I named my previous zombie novel.

    I will definitely check this blogger out. Thanks for the heads up!

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  4. Sommer, I found SO many helpful links on the left hand side of that blog. Just the worksheets alone were amazing! An hour later, I looked up from my computer, my head swirling with questions and ideas. It's a fabulous site!

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