Story Titles

[browngirl]

I can't believe I never asked this before.

So, how do you title your stories?

amanuensis1 wrote a fascinating entry here about the process. For myself, I usually come up with the title when I do the story idea, are occasionally the title *is* the story idea When I don't, I usually go for titles that play on a theme for the story, but those rarely satisfy me as well as the more organic titles I arrive at with the idea.

Some examples:

"The Chief's Day" is an example of a story where the title is the story idea. I was thinking about an "ordinary day" challenge from ringprov, and came up with that.

"Dream Blossoms" is an example of a title that came with the plotbunny. I was riffing off of hobbit naming customs; if the reader realizes that, that fact plus the pairing will tell them what the story is about.

"While We Raise Our Hearts in Love" is a title I had to work to find, and it's longer and clunkier than the other titles above, isn't it?

Comments

[dreamflower]

Like others, titles sometimes come to me with the story; "A New Reckoning" was like that--I had always loved that phrase that JRRT used to describe the new date for the New Year after Frodo destroyed the Ring. "Neither Have I Wings to Fly" was another title that I had actually before the story--that phrase is from the song "The Water is Wide" just had Grey Havens *branded* on it.

Some of my titles are fun. "Pippin's Pack of Pickled Pipers" is one, and "It Takes a Took" is another that just tickled me.

Other titles are merely descriptive: "The Brandy Hall Incident" "A Conspiracy of Hobbits","A Conversation in Rivendell", etc.

When it comes to drabbles and very short pieces, sometimes the title is part of the "punch line": my drabble about Galadriel's tempting of the hobbits, "Test Results" is one like that, and so is "Heart's Desire" and "Third Thoughts"

Sometimes I'm reduced to asking someone else for a title; our friend with the stickses has named not a few of my stories.

I do think that the titles that come to me without a lot of thought are better than the ones I have to work at.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

"Pippin's Peck of Pickled Peppers" <--*giggle*

Thank you for sharing your creativity with e! And I know what you mean about the titles that are worked for vs the ones that just arrive.