12 ways to title your book
2. Play Scrabble. Use every fifth word.
3. Browse the stacks at the library. List your favorite title and extrapolate to your own.
4. Ask a stranger their favorite massage points and use that in your title.
5. Randomly flip through one of your favorite books. Make a list of phrases that pop out at you. List 10 phrases and choose one.
6. Do #5 with your own book.
7. Google “How to make love in a bomb shelter” and click “I feel lucky.” Use the ninth result in your title.
8. Is there symbolism in your book? If not, what is your protagonist’s favorite colour? Attach a painful childhood memory to that colour and do a character sketch, weaving that colour into the backstory. Base the title of your book on the symbolism of that colour in your protagonist’s life.
9. Google your protagonist’s name and occupation.
10. What is your protagonist’s greatest fear? Does your protagonist battle this fear? Why or why not? Use the reason as the title of your book.
11. Google location/setting of your book. Focus on vegetation and local history.What is your protagonist’s greatest desire? Does your protagonist win this desire in your book? Why or why not? Use reason as title.
While some of these ways may seem a little bizarre or left-field, look at them as ways to get you to think ‘outside the box.’ Often we get into a rut and can’t think of anything other than what we’ve already thought of. Reaching for the bizarre can help to break us out of the rut.