How Do You Title a Novel Without Losing Your Mind?
Seriously. If you know, please email me
I’ve finished four full manuscripts and numerous stories that aren’t complete, and I still think titling a novel is somewhere between “naming your child” and “picking your last words.” You want it to be punchy. You want it to whisper genre and tone like a literary sommelier. You want it to stick in a reader’s brain like a pop song, but preferably without rhyming with Baby Shark.
Meanwhile, you’re just staring at your document going, “Okay but what do I call you??”
I once read that one-word titles are the gold standard. (Think Inception, Run, Dune, It.) Sounds smart, until you try to find a single word that:
a) matches your theme,
b) hasn’t already been used by twelve other authors, and
c) doesn’t sound like a discontinued energy bar.
It’s the literary equivalent of trying to name a rock band in 2025. Every good word is taken. Every bad one is ironic. (Although I do keep a list of band names. You never know.)
Titles are a lot like first lines, deceptively small, agonizingly important, and statistically almost never the version you started with. I’d love to see a survey on how many writers actually keep their first sentence from the first draft. I’d wager the percentage is smaller than confirmed Bigfoot sightings.
My last book? The working title was Perfect Working Order. I thought it was elegant. Subtle. A little mysterious. I think that is the 6th or 7th title. The editor I pitched it to gave me the professional version of, “That title is NyQuil in book form.” She asked if I was “attached to it,” which I now know is editor-speak for “If this title were a font, it would be Times New Meh.”
Is that actually a thing? Are authors that attached to the title?
I’ve joked before that I’d happily rename the thing Explosions and Murder! if it helped sell copies. That’s not even a joke, really. If you’re in this game to be read, and not just to fill notebooks with tortured genius, you eventually have to let go. Kill your darlings, especially if your darling is a title no one understands but you.
Now, every once in a while I fantasize about a secret society of elite book-namers. People who read your manuscript once, sip an espresso, and go, “It’s called Blood Geometry. You’re welcome.” Where are these people? Why don’t they have a service? A hotline? A TikTok?
One trick that’s helped, pulling a title straight from the manuscript. A single line that captures something essential about the story. It doesn’t have to be poetic, it just has to feel right. And if readers hit that line in the book and go “ohhhh,” even better. Of course, that only works if your manuscript has that kind of line. And if it’s not buried on page 412 of a 240k-word behemoth.
Another solid strategy is the ultra-obvious title, Toy Story, Fatal Attraction, The Exorcist. You know exactly what you’re getting. Straightforward, on-brand, no guesswork. But it’s a fine line between clarity and cliché, and sometimes you don’t know which side of that line you’re on until it’s printed in hardcover.
So, no, titling isn’t easy. Don’t expect to get it right on the first try. Or the fifth. And definitely don’t let it stall your writing. If your book is about identity collapse, solar colonization, and vampire love triangles, calling it Space People might not get the nuance across.
Although, to be fair, brainstorming fake titles is a phenomenal way to avoid your word count.
Ultimately? Don’t get too precious. Title it something that works for now and change it later if you have to. This process is nonlinear and messy.
Which brings me to:
Totally Real and Not-Made-Up Book Title Services You Wish Existed
NameDropper™
For when you’ve been staring at the ceiling for four days and all you’ve got is “Untitled Sci-Fi Project 3.”
Title Fight
You vs. the thesaurus. Only one will survive.
The Titling Dead
Your last five rejected titles come back to haunt you…and one of them still kinda works.
Wheel of Genres
Spin once. Your title now includes either “Blood,” “Chronicles,” or “The Something of Something.” You’re welcome.
SEO No-No
Every title idea you love, cross-referenced with Google trends to make sure it’ll never show up in search results.
The Title Whisperer
“Call it Ashes and Echoes. Or maybe The Echo of Ashes. Or Ashy Echo. I dunno. You figure it out.”
If you’ve got a great titling trick, or just a hilarious fail you’d like to share, I’m all ears. I may even borrow it. For a book. Or this post.
Titling is an unacknowledged burden for book writers! I decided a while back to sharpen my skills in this area by titling my chapters, which helps us identify the central idea we're trying to punchily capture.
Sometimes, the title reveals itself after you've done a lot of work, because there's a difference between what you thought was coming and what actually does. I've found more than once that the epiphany of what the story actually is accompanies a revelation of its title. Goddess from the Machine didn't reveal itself until I was about halfway done with it. Ghost in the Autumn Vale had about 3 different previous titles.
When I realize what the whole thing is about, that's when the title hits.
DRM
This was good! I feel the pain. Luckily, for once, My current book had a title as I dreamed it, before I wrote more than one page. I also confess; I do judge books by the covers.