I never understood Breaking Dawn‘s cover…

So, by following that analogy, up until then she’d just been Edward’s pawn?

Um, um. What do you think of the Series of Unfortunate Events titles? The Miserable Mill, The Austere Academy ,and such? _{That weird space wasn’t intentional.}

I was going to mention the a nice title, but I can’t remember it anymore.

They sound, erm, unfortunate.

I’m bumpan this thread, since it is a good idea.

I would also extend it to chapter titles, if you brook that sort of nonsense. I do, and it is hard. My first chapter is now titled “Terminal Inertia,” but I’m not all that pleased with it. For one, it’s probably too scientific-sounding for the setting, and for two, it could just as easily be read as “moving too fast to stop” which is the exact opposite of what I want it to.

I’ve got a chip-shot for chapter two though, which will probably be the earth-shattering cliche of “The Man in Black.”

I’m not even worried about chapter titles because I can’t get anything for the chapters themselves.

Probably a good idea. I didn’t even bother the first time through.

Are the titles you’re discussing for your samurai wip? If so, ‘Terminal Inertia’ is definitely not the right tone.

Yeah, it is bad and I should change it.

And I just used the three there/their/they’re variants correctly in a sentence.

What’s sad is that this is legitimate grounds for bragging these days.

I use chapter titles if i can come up with good, consistent titles
Otherwise… Chapter One, Two, Three…

I don’t use chapters as much as PoV shifts.

The way George R. R. Martin does it is just name the chapters “Jamie”, “Jon”, “Arya”, etc.

I don’t name my chapters, the “Chapter I, Chapter II, Chapter III” suits me just fine.

Flashdance

Uh…no.

But I do like ‘Pictures of the Floating World’ and ‘Reflections in Falling Water’.

Also, ‘Outlaw Star’ doesn’t seem to fit your samurai theme- makes me think of the Wild West for some reason.

In that case, never mind.

Outlaw Star’s an animé, right? And what’s a swordsaint?

Yeah, Outlaw Star is an anime. I’ve never actually seen it, but I think it has a cool title, and it fits the chapter in question.

A swordsaint is pretty much a fancy title for an especially leet swordsman.

Oh, also I’m also gonna use “The Magnificent Three.” Even though, as a relatively obscure Futurama reference, it would be wildly out of place if you know its origin, it’s a personal in-joke I can’t pass up. Also it makes its own sense in context of the chapter.

Chapter 3 is now Dividing Wind, which is a really lazy title.

6. I don’t know, I like Chanbara better than ‘Swordfight’ even if I didn’t know what it meant

20. Yes, I like The Magnificent Three better, though I don’t know what reference you want to make

29. That one you could probably change

21. is okay, I guess. I’m just neutral about it.

22. I like.

23. is potentially spoileriffic.

25. By Honeymoon do you mean that someone’s getting married and now it’s their honeymoon, or just that the moon is a particularly golden color tonight? (This confusion came up because of titles like Cicadasong and Cloudburst.)

27. sounds like it should be near to the last chapter, not in a place where there’s still story to get through.

Yeah, it helps to see why certain chapter titles are named how they are. In that case, keep ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘End of the Road’. Maybe ‘Words with Friends’ could be changed to ‘The Friendly Words’ or something?

Chanbara it is, then.

Oh, and I really like the title “Reflections in Falling Water.”

Hurrah, it’s probably my favorite title and my favorite chapter, and the title just happens to be wildly appropriate.

The first and last chapters are pretty parallel in terms of events, now that I look. In the first scene the female lead is hanging around on a castle balcony when the male lead shows up, and in the last scene she’s hanging around on the balcony of a different castle as he leaves(she jumps down to talk to him in the latter scene, though). I just haven’t thought of anything catchy that flips into something similarly catchy yet.

That sounds extremely interesting then…

It’s basically the leads sitting in a little cave behind a waterfall and talking after a near-death experience.

Anyway, I showed my cousin these(he was my first beta reader), and he jokingly suggested I name a chapter RETRIBUTION: Manifest of the Soul’s Lament. I’m not going to use that because it’s profoundly stupid/pretentious-sounding, but I laughed too hard not to include it somewhere. I decided instead to use it as the title of a currently running stage play none of the characters are interested in seeing.

@sansafro187

It’s basically the leads sitting in a little cave behind a waterfall and talking after a near-death experience.

There’s just one problem: waterfalls don’t reflect.

Fortunately, the two leads are probably sufficiently reflective that the chapter name still makes sense.

Yeah, but they aren’t in the falling water.

Yeah, but they aren’t in the falling water.

Maybe they run through it at one point. It could spray them.

“Reflections Behind Falling Water” doesn’t sound as cool though, and sounding cool is a key goal.

True, true.

Here are my book titles, with a few short story ones as well:
(this is the series in one world)
The Black Galloper
Elwen
Thiswold Thyster
The Jewel of the Northlands
A Path Less Traveled
Nimdor
Sunset Sky
The Outcasts
I haven’t decided on all the short story titles yet, but here are some of them:

A Defiance of Flame
Aldan and Sara
Thardwel and Halla
The Great Race
The Blue Riders
Taming Black Ghost
A Heart for Any Fate
The Battle of the Ford
The Falcon Rises

And these are the other series titles:
The Broken-Fingered Magician
Terreha
Wielder of the Twisted Sword
Fire-bright
Like a Firebird.

‘Elwen’ and ‘Thiswold Thyster’ are the only ones I’m working one right now. The only other ones already written are ‘The Black Galloper’, ‘The Great Race’ and ‘The Battle of the Ford’.

Thanks. Its the name of the charismatic, revenge-obessesed, and altogether compelling villain. He kind of carries the story, so I thought it was appropriate that his name be the title.
You could try listening to songs, or reading poetry. I’ve found some titles that way. Victors in the Midst of Strife is from the hymn “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”. A Company of Angels is from a Christmas song. Fire-bright is from a Switchfoot song, and “A Heart for Any Fate” is from Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”. When in doubt, I fall back on a character name.

Argh, I’m not very good at titles. XD;

I do have (in some cases tentative) titles for the three stories currently on my mind, though (and which I really should work on…):
Dragon Candle (originally No More Dragons before I decided to change it; it’ll probably get changed again by the time I finally finish it)
Nameless (both because I couldn’t think of a title for the story, and because the main character has no name)
The Firecat’s Charge (old short story that I’m thinking of reviving and revamping to a more comic-ish thing…which, considering how my comics go, means I will probably never finish it even if I do start it)

I feel like I’m getting into this a little bit late, but I’m always late, so…

I don’t have many good titles. Right now I have Bits and Pieces, which is going to be a story about this one day in my life that happened in 2008 (In which I had to clean bits, and my heart got torn to pieces); Give Me A Sign, a backstory of the future of another backstory; and I have a couple horse stories named Charismatic and Hooves of Fire (Just made that up, actually.)

I’m really proud of the titles I came up with for this one series though They all fit together, in a way, but the 1 and 4 have the same Main Characters, and 2 and 3 have different ones (though the setting doesn’t change and I think the time overlaps):
Fire and Water (Because one of the characters can control fire, one is named Rainfall, and it rains a lot.)
Past Reference (In which the new main characters free something from the past)
Present Failures (The main characters come up with a play to defeat the antagonist, but it fails. Epically.)
Shadows of Yesterday (The old main characters learn a crucial part about their past, and one of the main characters can control Shadows.)

They don’t sound as cool now, but oh well. They make more sense with the whole plot.

I like titles with themes, or ones that at least pertain to the book somehow. I also don’t like books where the main characters name is the title. Not doin’ it.

A few of my short story titles are

The Girl in the Silver Mask (yeah, I didn’t rip off Willow at all. o.O)
Touch
Life’s Like That
Distraction
That Kind of Day

As for the longer ones, most of which are still in the planning/draft stage:

Don’t Try This At Home
All Anybody Ever Thinks About (I need to change this one: I like it, but it could be very easily recalled by a reader as something else)
Done Running

And like I said to you then (you have to reply to that email, sometime, PLEASE!!), it’s a perfect title and you can’t copyright a song title, so there’s no issue there.

As for your WIP, I can’t comment since I haven’t read most of it.

As a joke a friend and I came up with an idea for some titles of a novel series. It shall be called “The Novel Series” with each book being called “Book 1”, “Book 2” etc

That would be awesome.

I’ve got two new titles I’m thinking about:

1. Everyone Dies but the Cat

This would be a hilarious title.

2. Penciled Cats

This is in reference to a character who is incredibly poor and tries to make a living drawing cats. But he isn’t the main character, so IDK If I’ll use it.

Here’s a few of mine.

For an Arthurian series (originally a trilogy, but I decided to add in another book between the second and third), I decided to go with place/battle names that serve as major events for each story. The first is Tintagel (Uther’s story), the second is Badon (Arthur’s rise to power), and the last is Camlann (the end of Arthur’s reign). Not sure about book 3, but maybe Camelot? Or is that a bit cliche? Thoughts?

I’m also working on a series of fantasy/comedy short stories that I’m calling ‘The Novice’s Guide to Adventuring’.

For an Arthurian series (originally a trilogy, but I decided to add in another book between the second and third), I decided to go with place/battle names that serve as major events for each story. The first is Tintagel (Uther’s story), the second is Badon (Arthur’s rise to power), and the last is Camlann (the end of Arthur’s reign). Not sure about book 3, but maybe Camelot? Or is that a bit cliche? Thoughts?

That sounds really cool. Personally, I like Camlann better than Camelot, not just because it’s cliche, but I like the word better.

That sounds really cool.

Thanks!

Personally, I like Camlann better than Camelot, not just because it’s cliche, but I like the word better.

Well, I’m planning on Camlann being the fourth book in the series, with the title referencing the battle of Camlann, where Arthur kills and is killed by Mordred. Book three would cover everything between Arthur’s continental campaign (against the Roman empire, of all things) and the breaking of the Round Table by Mordred.

Why not A Thousand Whispered Rumours?

Because that sounds even more like a shitty Oprah-book-club memoir.

Damn, you’re right. :P

At the same time, I don’t want to fall into the cliched fantasy title-mould.

That’s pretty much anything with sword, quest, dragon, wizard, etc. etc. in there, right?

Why the hello am I worrying about titles at this stage? I need to write the thing, and then worry about what to call it.

Because titles are fun to think about? :D

Unfortunately, they are also difficult. Maybe if you write it you’ll find a phrase that’s important enough to use as a title.

I’ve always wanted to write a big parody/science series, with the first book called ‘The Dark Reactions’, the second ‘Balanced Equations’ , and the third was something cool that I forgot. It’d be called The Calvin Cycle. My bio teacher thought that it’d be great, but I have no idea what it should be about.

I would love you for ever and ever if you wrote that. Caveat being it must be awesome.

In sharp contrast to some of you, I have titles galore! My pet novel project has regular chapter titles and alternate chapter titles. The regular titles are of the normal type. The alt titles are more humorous in nature. Things like “Letters to the King” or “Operation Desert Sock” and “Letters from the Overlord” or “Dear Sock Thief…”.

The alt titles are always fun to come up with since I get to let loose with a lot of puns and irony. Mmm. Delicious irony.

My short story titles tend to be short but revealing of the story. “Wolfskin” is a tale about werewolves and wardrobe changes. “Glompy the Slug” stars the eponymous Glompy as he quests to heal his tail and protect his mutant garden home from humans. “The Dragon Stone” is about a giant diamond in the middle of a river delta that is rumored to summon dragons, the efforts of a king to acquire it, and the dragon that guards the stone.

@ Inspector, woot! But there’s other stories higher in priority and like I said I still dunno what the books would be about, especially a whole series of them.

The cat stuff sounds interesting. And I dunno anything about Athurian stuff.

Seeing as this thread has arisen from the dead just in time for Halloween, here’s the new set of titles I’m working with:

I’ve always wanted to write a big parody/science series, with the first book called ‘The Dark Reactions’, the second ‘Balanced Equations’ , and the third was something cool that I forgot. It’d be called The Calvin Cycle. My bio teacher thought that it’d be great, but I have no idea what it should be about.

Similar to this sort of thing, the first book will be Lysogeny (the process of viral reproduction/spread), the second book will be Dissolution (one substance dissolving into another), and the last book will be Cytolysis (process of cellular explosion by overwhelming internal pressure). SDtill centred around the one city, but in stages through its inception, expansion, and inevitable collapse.