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Joined: 3/4/2011
Posts: 15
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Slug titles are damned hard to come up with, especially ones that publishers might actually be inclined to keep when they publish your book. What's your process? How do you come up with a title? Any tips for making the process easier for others?
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 102
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I'm not familiar with that term. What's a Slug Title?
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Joined: 4/4/2011
Posts: 3
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I never title chapters.
I've never had a book title in the beginning of any wip. I might have one by the time I get to the middle but rarely.
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Joined: 3/4/2011
Posts: 15
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"Slug" simply means temporary. Whatever you name a manuscript is a slug title, since most manuscript titles will be changed by publishers when a book goes into production.
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Joined: 3/12/2011
Posts: 40
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I don't worry about it. I name the WIP whatever I think of it as, with one exception that was just too embarrassing. On that one, I just picked a cliche that fit until my husband came up with something mildly better. Pretty sure if it ever gets published it'll change. I hope going along gracefully with changing the title will earn me brownie points. Maybe. It's a minor point and not something I'm willing to spend a lot of time worrying about because it's partially outside of my control anyway.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 102
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I'm in love will all my WIP titles. I put a lot of thought into making them encompass the story. When the time comes that a publisher changes my title on me, I will be crushed.
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Joined: 3/4/2011
Posts: 15
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If a title is a good fit, then hopefully they won't change it. Sometimes it does work out that you get the title you want. Fingers crossed!
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Joined: 3/16/2011
Posts: 214
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I hadn't thought about this too much. The first draft of "See Sabrina Run" was called "Girlfriend." My character had a whole new twist, though -- she was always the girlfriend men wanted, but never the wife.
I like my WIP title because it has a duel meaning -- the character is going to run for office. However, she also runs from love and commitment. I also tossed around "Party of Two" for a while.
Well, for a couple of nanoseconds. That title blows goats.
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Joined: 3/29/2011
Posts: 25
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I hate coming up with titles. I'm pretty bad at it, but I do have a method that makes it slightly less agonizing. I make huge a list of words or phrases related to the story: character names, place names, themes, ideas, etc. Then, I try to put words together in a way that describes the story. Sometimes I end up with good titles and sometimes I don't 
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Joined: 4/1/2011
Posts: 4
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I try to wait until I'm finished with a first draft to come up with a title, but even then it's hard (especially since I have an unhealthy love of alliteration). I usually pick out three or four words that describe the story and string them together.
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Joined: 3/9/2011
Posts: 16
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I try to find a decent WIP title (hadn't heard it called a slug title before either) because having untitled projects bothers me. It would get confusing since I work on several novels at one time. I can work with one even though I know I don't like the title, like when I have Hero as the title for my adult mutant novel. Then again, I refer to my paranormal romance as Angel/Demon even though I have a title for it now, just don't want to share it yet. Titles are important to me and oh so vexing to find one I like. I either come up with one at once or have to search and search until a random moment exposes a title to me.
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Joined: 3/3/2011
Posts: 68
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I don't tend to have trouble at least coming up with temporary titles, though the YA novel I started last fall (currently on the back burner) is the work with the most obviously temporary title.
I have, however, changed and re-changed and re-changed story titles. My Space Opera Tango story was, a various times:
"Dancing at the Edge of the Black"
"In the Grim Darkness of Space, We All Must Dance"
"Tango de las Estrellas"
"Last Tango in Sub-Space"
before becoming and selling as "Last Tango in Gamma Sector"
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Joined: 3/14/2011
Posts: 80
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Sometimes a title will just come to me. Other times I feel like I'm pulling teeth to get something that fits well and is something other than the obvious. I have 3 titles I would fight to keep:
Embers to Ashes (phoenix related story)
Heavyweight (refers to the secrets the main character, a HS wrestler carries & the weight class he's trying to stay out of)
Tears of a Clown (she's a literal clown...well, a juggallo which is a fan of the band Insane Clown Posse, who wear clown makeup.)
My other titles? Please someone come up with something better! Heh they're just...meh.
The Other Side
Red Dust
Power of the Stars
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 244
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Titles for me are finicky. Every project goes through at least one or two titles. (With one exception.) Either the title comes to me up front or I have to sit and think till my puzzler is sore. Then maybe I'll come up with something. For my first novel, I took a line from Shakespeare. It's not the world's greatest title by way of originality but it fit the piece.
Second novel I purloined a chapter title for the book's title. The planned books in the trilogy all followed a similar theme, sharing a word.
My last novel I came up with a title I really liked. It was one word and the way I'd drafted the story it was both meaningful in several ways to the story and a play on words from an early setting of the book. That title has since changed, and will likely change again.
My current book that I'm working on is titled after the game truth or dare, because that game factors in to some events of the story.
A book I have on the backburner follows the traditional title of the MC's name and an element of the story. (Think Harry Potter or Indiana Jones.)
My poetry collections I'm working on were far simpler to title and I think their titles have meaning to the content of each.
But it's hit and miss, like I said. Sometimes I hit on that title right away (like with the poetry and my current WiP); sometimes it's a massively epic struggle (like with the last book I wrote or the second one I wrote). I think it depends on the story itself. Do the events and the characters naturally lend themselves to a title, making it apparent to you what their story should be called? Or do they delight in clouding that deeper meaning from you? (I'm a firm believer in the fact that a title should have multiple meanings that reveal themselves to the reader as the story unfolds.)
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Joined: 3/12/2011
Posts: 376
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Some times the title happens before the story. My published 'Artifice' series is like that. Some times the title develops as the story does, like with my 'Iron Angel' series. Other stuff I'm not sure on. Right now I've got a work I'm editing which started with the unlovely title of 'The Werecamel Thing", *rapidly* changed to "Baby", and now I'm considering calling it "Cat's Paw: A Baby Novel".
Yeah, some of my titles are 'PLEASE come up with something better, o publishing gods' titles. Others are really integral to the story.
My publisher, I think, would like to light a fire under my short hairs for the way I title my SteamPunk. I use flowery psuedoVictorian dual titles, like "The Strange Fate of Capricious Jones - OR - Genesis of an Iron Angel." Fitting that on a cover was a challenge.
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Joined: 3/4/2011
Posts: 15
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Carrie, your way reminds me of a method I used once to title a comic book series. I took a bunch of terms relevant to the setting and story, threw in the lead character's name, and coded up a title randomizer that put random words together with "of", "and", "of the", "in the", and so on. Made a list of the most promising titles that came out of the randomizer and went over them with some fellow writers. Found a pretty good title that way. Sadly, the comic book series got nixed while it was still in production. 
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