So I’m working on book titles for the next series and having trouble. Originally, I had cool names and some not so cool ones. Honestly, I’m seeing that I flushed this out during a time where I thought I’d get right back to it. These outlines are going to be harder than I thought since I have so little to work with. Oops. I’m currently thinking of doing one word titles, so I’ll put those down with the older ones in parenthesis. Book 2 is the only one that has stayed the same throughout since it’s a character’s name.
Anyway, I thought I’d list them here and get some feedback.
War of Nightfall
- Evolution (Realm of the Night/Dawn Fangs/Natural Selection)
- Lost
- Temptation (Queen of Apelios)
- Antithesis (Durag’s Wrath/The Orb of Durag)
- Hunger (Mistress of the Corrupted/The Ravenous Ones)
- Fear (Stronger/Clash of the Abominations)
- Anarchy (Children of Anarchy)
- Eulogy (Clyde/Death of Shadows)
Legends of Windemere 
Wow! I love the one name titles. Makes it real clear what the book is about.
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Thanks. I just came up with them last night and they were rough. Kept fearing that Evolution and Antithesis wouldn’t work well for a book that still has magic inside. My brain is still on fantasy mode.
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You could somehow rework the old ones as secondary titles.
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They’d end up being tertiary at that point. Series title and book title are there already. I really messed this post up by not writing the series title next to the one word titles.
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Okay. 🙂
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Hmmm, mixed feelings here. Some of them are pretty close to other titles (Lost) and none of them says vampire to me. Fangs for the Memories, and Peg O’ My Heart are old vampire jokes, but seem to get the point across. I prefer the longer titles in parenthesis. — you asked.
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That’s one of the issues I’m having. I don’t want to make it stereotypical vampire titles. Then people will expect the stakes, sunlight, blah blah blah stuff when the Dawn Fangs aren’t like that. My biggest issue with the longer titles has been that I keep doing ‘of’ and ‘of the’ things. Didn’t know if that was a problem with repetition. Might have to take a combination in the end.
Guessing going with one word titles is bound to stumble onto other stories. The words exist and a lot of authors in the past and present have gone the one word route.
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I guess I’m not one to talk. I wrote Panama, and there are bound to be others. You could try something with “The Girl,” like The Girl With The Deadly Overbite. Daugher’s are popular now too, The Bloodsucker’s Daughter.
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This is all because of that damn show. 😀 Girl and Daughter seem to get overused these days. The latter might reveal a bit too much as well. One thing with these books is that they don’t run like the vampire books that are romance and horror. It’s fantasy action, so the usual titles don’t really mix with what’s in my head. It is strange though. Why do vampire stories typically have pun-level titles?
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Because they’re so darned much fun. There really has been a mountain of Girl and Daughter’s titles in the past few years. If that’s what it takes to have a bestseller, I’m going to write The Girl with the Daughter.
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For some reason, I never got into pun titles. Thought it set the tone too quickly and I’d be doomed if I strayed from the wacky. Bet that title would be a hit. Lady is another word that turns up a lot. Trends can be a blessing and a curse. You could jump right in, but then get lost in the shuffle. I wonder if having ‘War of Nightfall: Lost’ makes things different. That’s the other issue I had with longer titles. Combine those with a long series title and it’s a lot to take in.
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Yeah, it poses a new issue. Think about The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack. Oh, The Girl with the Experimental Notebook!
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The Lady Girl with the Daughter’s Experimental Notebook? Nah, that one doesn’t work.
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Might sell a ton of them.
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Guess that makes it a smart move.
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Maybe it’s time to reboot an old Hollywood idea. Son of, Bride of, etc.
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It’ll happen soon enough. Mummy is getting another reboot, so I expect Frankenstein to return too.
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Can’t happen soon enough. The last few with Frankie weren’t very good, lots of visuals and not enough story. Maybe you can move into Son of Callindor territory.
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I actually like it when The Monster is intelligent. That doesn’t seem to happen very often. Son of Callindor is just asking for trouble.
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I have a short project that goes along that line. It’s the hardest of the three to figure out, and I may consider it by late summer.
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The monster or a son of story? That second one sounds a little off actually.
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The monster will be fully aware and somewhat handicapped when it comes to interaction.
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Kind of like the one in Young Frankenstein?
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Kind of.
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I also love the one-word titles.
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Thanks. Hoping to get enough feedback that I have most of them by the end of the day. Probably hard to figure out how well they work without synopses though.
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One word titles are tough. I know they show well on covers, but I don’t feel they really give a good enough hint to what’s Inside. I thought about Alliances for Naked Alliances. Alliances sounds more dystopian, or sci-fi, or, IDK…a war story? Throwing Naked from the Naked Eye series just put a twist on it that suited the style of the book…the niche genre it belongs to. (And there was another book with the title: Alliances. So, not very original. There are tons of crime novels with one word titles…”Busted”, “Toxic”, “Client”, “Ungoverned”. “Dodgers”,…and so on. I tend to pass over them. Unless the cover really sucks me in. Then I’ll read the blurb.
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Alliances definitely sounds like a war one. I can see how they don’t explain much, but I’ve also been told that my longer titles reveal too much. It’s like you can’t win. Starting to wonder if I should do a combination and use what feels right for the story. The two word titles of the Bedlam series seem to work, but keeping the theme going is a little bit of a head scratcher.
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I was just looking through the titles I have in my Kindle and most all of them are two word titles. Think about Crossing Bedlam. It just wouldn’t have the same appeal if it was Bedlam.
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Bedlam is the repeated word in that series. Another issue is that many books don’t have a series title to work with as well. Bedlam doesn’t have one, but these would be ‘War of Nightfall’ and then the title. Not sure if that makes a difference.
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The series title does make a difference in my mind. With it, the titles could be one word and still convey a bit more meaning than one word titles tend to.
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Kicking myself for not writing them that way then. Might have made things easier on people. Oops.
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You’ll get it figured out, I’m sure. I have Chasing Bedlam on my TBR list and my NY resolution is to read at least an hour before bedtime every day. So I might just get to it this year…lol
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Thanks. Crossing Bedlam is fun, so I hope you like it. I need to get more reading in.
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Surfed back through, because it’s an interesting topic. Looks like I’m in the minority. If they all had the series name, one word titles makes more sense.
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That’s what I’m thinking. Visually, I definitely messed up the presentation. I tried finding synonyms for a few like Evolution and Fear. Nothing stood out.
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I like the one-word titles. But I can’t wait to see the synopses.
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Hoping to work on them today. Probably only going to be 2-3 lines each.
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Coming up with titles is an evolving process. My Frank Rozzani series uses the name Frank in every title and something arriving at a title is harder than writing the book.
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Definitely one of the first hurdles. I do something similar with my Bedlam series where Bedlam will be in every 2 word title. ‘Legends of Windemere’ didn’t have a theme though, so I’m swimming in uncharted waters for myself. Hopefully I present better ones tomorrow after I do more work on them.
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One-word titles have definitely been a trend of the past few years. You might want to search on Amazon by your titles and make sure they haven’t already been used. Or if they were used, it was by something unrelated so there won’t be confusion.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them are used. With one word titles being popular, all the juicy ones and their synonyms are out there. ‘Lost’ and ‘Anarchy’ certainly, so I’ll be depending a lot on the series title too.
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