Saturday 7 January 2012

Titles

I have really got into research this time, hoping it will spark off ideas that I can order onto a book plan (in theory). All this is fine, and I have character names (which are SO important) but I can't think of a name for the book. The first draft of Borrowed Time literally sprang from the title but I can't get behind anything at the moment. How does anyone come up with titles, anyway? You see some really clever plays on words but most books have 2-3 word titles, and I'm lost. It's my weakest skill in poetry too, the title can be the key to unlock a poem, or a wonderful scene or mood setting device. Unfortunately, I wrestle through the whole process or writing a poem, rewriting, thinking about it...my poems often accumulate different names as they go through drafts. This makes them difficult to track down in the folder on my hard drive!


I'm presently toying with ideas, but as I'm taking this book as a 'new' first book than following on from Borrowed Time, which I'm seeing as a good starting exercise, I'm not tied to linking them into a series. Using the BT world, I'm trying to write a better story to start with - more of a ghost/detective story. So I don't have to link the title in any way to Borrowed Time, thank goodness, as it's hard enough to come up with a name anyway. I may have to do a random trawl through the internet, looking for interesting phrases or names. Any ideas? By the way, this is the book with my favourite title of all time...

2 comments:

  1. Does the title of a work in progress really matter, I wonder. It strikes me that (even with a plan) theme develops through the writing, the expansion of ideas etc, and the title 'arrives' by itself in the process. Only when the book is written and you are ready to start sending it off should you worry about the title - it's a bit crucial by then!!

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  2. I find a summary of what the book's about, compressed down into a title helps - even if, as you say, it ends up just as a working title along the way. But three years ago I worked on a book for 6 months, and never did come up with a title, working or otherwise!

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