How Do You Choose the Perfect Title for Your Novel/Comic?

stella 2025-03-14 18:56:58 UTC #1

Hey everyone!

Choosing the right title for a novel or comic can be tough. It needs to be catchy, meaningful, and sometimes even marketable. How do you go about picking your titles?

Do you go for something symbolic, straightforward, or mysterious?
Do you decide on a title first or after finishing the story?
Have you ever changed your title because it didn’t feel right?

Share your process and any tips you have for finding the perfect title!

Btw this my new novel please check it out and tell your opinion

Paul_Tromba 2025-03-14 19:03:09 UTC #2

I usually have to change the title a few times during the drafts. Eventually, I find one that sticks and my betareaders unanimously agree on it.

ShidoDraws 2025-03-14 19:52:22 UTC #3

My favorite thing about writing is picking titles for my stories. It can be stressful at times, but I always like the result that comes out of it. It is the story I have trouble writing, thinking about what people would like and put a little bit of what I like in it. I know that if I ever pitch any of my stories to a publishing company, they'd definitely want to change my titles for the marketability and possibly the entire story, but that's not the point of this topic. lol

I've mentioned this a long time ago when someone made a similar topic here. My "Nina" comic was planned to be renamed to "The Light In The Dark" but none of my beta readers like the new title. They seem to like the title it always has. I suppose it's one of those things where the draft is better than the end result. Anyway, there's a line in chapter 14 where a character says that which is a neat little detail if anyone's ever read it.

eldritchtroubadour 2025-03-14 20:01:56 UTC #4

There's no right or wrong way to do it, unless you are the "I was reborn in another world as a sentinent washing machine who goes on adventures with my harem of hot home appliances" or something like that.

Just go with what feels right. Sometimes it can be very meaningful to the overarching themes, others symbolic of something in the story.

For instance, let's take my own Webnovel:

It's name began as something really generic, like Tower Climber (back when it looked closer to SSS Class Suicide Hunter). As it evolved, it turned into "The Emperor's Path", to symbolize the change in direction for the series. Turns out someone else had named their story the exact same on Webnovel, so I had to brainstorm a change. It evolved to go beyond the Emperor thing, so I picked Ascendant because it sounded a bit more unique and mystical.

I also tried (and failed) to write a horror webnovel for a contest on Honeyfeed. It's named "Beneath the Scarlet Sands", about a expedition to ancient ruins on Mars. I might get back to it, because i liked the story.

As for the title, it evoked danger and mysteriousness, which both work really well with horror stories. Try to see what are the standards for your genre so you can figure out what to call your novel.

Rant over, thanks to everyone who read it to the end.

Aeneas1 2025-03-14 21:53:55 UTC #5

Well, before I published here, I studied Latin (NOT Spanish) and Greek at university. The title is a neologism I coined, combining the Latin words "nix" for "snow" and "vir" for "man" (as in male, which makes sense because the snowmen are all male anyway). Originally, I was going to call it Virnix, but that would have made the title much less memorable. Nixvir wasn't really grammatically correct, but I found the name stuck. After all, it was far easier to remember. The titles of the other stories were chosen because they made sense in their own way: Ragnar, because it's about Ragnar himself and about his life and such, and Lunacy because of the importance of the moon in the story.

MelancholicOtaku 2025-03-14 22:54:15 UTC #6

I went for the symbolic meaning for my novel The Lost Forest.
My Mc Elyn loses a part of her innocence the fateful day she loses someone she loves deeply.

I started the novel first . The Lost Forest was an originally a short story but I loved the character of Elyn that I had to continue. The Lost Forest just made sense to keep as the title.

Nope The Lost Forest just fits the novel.

As for tips brainstorming titles might be good.

ArtGremlin 2025-03-15 00:39:17 UTC #7

I may be good at naming characters, but I’m terrible at naming my stories half the time. There have been some that I like the name I came up with, ex: Star Hunters and Catelynn the Destroyer. They just sound right and tell you a little bit about the story. Then there are others like Recollections of the Prince, (I don’t know why I don’t like that one) and Fuego De Sombra (that one’s just confusing and could make people expect the story to be in Spanish) and Blade Quest (It sounds basic).

I just think a lot until I come up with something that sounds good (or good enough)

inubasket 2025-03-15 11:46:05 UTC #8

I always try to make sure my titles directly reflect the story. For example, my current comic is called "Not Dead Yet". It's a zombie apocalypse comic about 3 survivors who have a rare immunity to the zombie virus. So they're not dead... yet. Lmao

vieveda 2025-03-15 12:02:36 UTC #9

My title changed as I was writing to better reflect the world of the novel. Originally it was called 'The Electrum Tsar' but I ended up exploring so many different characters that inhabit the Empire of Electrum I decided to keep it simple and go with Electrum instead.

The word itself helps to serve part of the central theme since its's an alloy of gold and silver; and the two races in the book worship the sun god (Solaris) and moon god (Lunis) respectively. Much of the novel is about the different characters coming together to create a new world

Leyelle 2025-03-15 14:17:31 UTC #10

trial and error tbh. And I have an editor who I run my ideas past before setting things in stone

jwabeasley 2025-03-15 16:13:08 UTC #11

I looked for a name that was unique, understandable, and is highly applicable throughout the story. Short, memorable, and searchable, too, in this internet age. If people go looking for me, I want to be found!

I changed the title several times before I started publishing, but by that time it was pretty well established. I try to be somewhat intuitive with names.

Looking at the title of your novel, while it might be descriptive, it's not a very unique turn of phrase, is it? If people google "Diamond in the rough" or even "Diamond in the rough story" it's not likely to come up, right? Searching the latter, I get two full movies, a book series, and a novel on Amazon.

2DLenzy 2025-03-15 16:47:00 UTC #12

The title actually inspired the whole concept/story first. I ultimately picked Friar Chicken for my comic title bc of its double meaning. You have a chicken that's a friar, and also a fryer chicken (used for food lol). It's punny and just unique enough to be memorable, at least I assume. Kinda captures the vibe of an absurd comedy (but has lots of drama as an afterthought bc he destined for the chop at some point, or not) Just fun(ny) and serious enough for a dramedy, and I would never change it.

stella 2025-03-15 17:26:42 UTC #13

Thanks for asking me because the character is a criminal and goes by the name of blood diamonds. I did not want to use "bloody diamond casse" because it tells a lot about the plot and how the case is important in the detective's life, I wanted the story to be slowburn and has an unexpected twist

kyupol 2025-03-15 17:46:47 UTC #14

It honestly came to me in a dream (or daydream. Hard to tell )

Its because I know Tagalog, Spanish (very basic), English.
Started from watching this old Tagalog action movie called "Anghel Dela Guardia".
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0346511/

And it also means "guardian angel" in Spanish. But it literally means "angel of the guard".

So... "Angel of the Blackpill" = "Anghel Dela Blackpill".

But the word "hell" rhymes with "anghel". So it became AngHell = "The Hell" (mix Tagalog and English).

So its final title became "Anghell Dela Blackpill". English, Tagalog, and Spanish. Can mean "hell of the Blackpill" or "Angel of the Blackpill" depending on which language you read it in.

An underlying theme of this comic is also perception can be deceiving. And this whole "reality is an illusion" theory gets explored. That's why it fits perfectly as a title.

jwabeasley 2025-03-15 18:25:01 UTC #15

That yours is a pun is perfect for your series.

remiquise 2025-03-15 18:58:40 UTC #16

My current comic is a remake of something I made in highschool so it has a boring name that doesn't vibe with how I name things now.

"The Temptation of the Sea and its Monsters" while being a mouthful followers my newer naming convention well, that being: Multiple meanings.
We're dealing with pirates, so the call to the sea is obviously there. I'm writing a swashbuckler so romance is obviously going to be an aspect of this eventually, and that love interest happens to be a merman-- a sea monster. But there are other characters drawn to different sea monsters for many different reasons throughout the story, and the same is true for why the cast is drawn to the sea. I can't really say much without risk of spoiling some pretty big character motivations and fates. It is a title that applies to everyone. And "its monsters" are sometimes each other.
Sure, our lead is hunting a great sea serpent so she is drawn to the sea for that, the monster she is hunting, and the monster she eventually falls for.
The merman, in turn, is drawn to the captain-- a monster at sea in her own right-- and after being captured for so long, returning to the sea wouldn't be so bad...
One crew member is drawn to the sea and its monsters to make deals with sea demons-- one to slaughter those same sea demons. One is drawn to the sea for another pirate, another for their misguided parent. One for a monstrous science and the genocidal forefather of sea monster studies... Heck, even the cat is drawn to the sea monsters because ~fish~!

That and other sites I post on have super limited tagging systems and I wanted it to be abundantly clear what this story is about lol. I'd hardly call the title perfect, I'm awful at titles, but it is... serviceable.

stiatent 2025-03-16 00:45:19 UTC #17

Nice to meet you Stella
Yep totally agree can be tough.

I think a mix of all three honestly with the current
series on Tapas. Some of the other story ideas have more straightforward ones.

I decide title early in development, once I have a rough idea of what the plot would be.

No haven't changed any title yet, also to avoid the URL getting messed up as a result, and not confusing old readers
I have a bad habit of making some long titles tho 🤣TBH, sometimes I'm tempted to swap to one word titles.

For I'm no̶t̶ a Sick Boy! - The strike through on the 'not' was both for stylistic purpose & double meaning, 'I'm not a sick boy' and I'm a sick boy' ('not' having strikethrough). Wanted to make it personal too so the 'I'm', and imagined 'sick boy' reflecting the MCs are unwilling super-spreaders of an outbreak the gimmick of story but 'sick boy' can also be the MCs owning the derogatory term the authorities dub them "sick boys". Left it open to interpretation. Personality of the title matters too, so went for something that has an edgy implied zombie-horror vibe like 28 days later, night of the living dead, I am legend etc

A BL-thriller short series, hoping to release this year (a stand alone prequel to SickBoy) is named Holiday in Heavensea. This title reflects the plot where a vlogger is hired by his Celeb Crush to film his one week visit to Heavensea (fictional country in both series). Went for a title that feels 'bright and Holiday-ish' and 'too good to be true'. Also thought it has a hook with the two Hs, abbreviated to HiH.

Love to draw but never enjoy doing logos XD so all my titles are simple fonts. Films and games are the standard I try to emulate and thankfully many films have Simple font logos so it didn't bother me too much.

Hopefully someone finds tips in there lol
And wishing you goodluck on your novel

gypsyqueen 2025-03-16 01:24:23 UTC #18

I usually decide on the title after writing the first few chapters. I focus on the main plot point, desires or theme of each novel. It makes it easier for me to sketch out the plotline of the novel.

For example, the Princess and Her Shadows centers on solving the mystery that surrounds the Princess. While, my second novel is "I will make the male lead choose me focuses on the main character's desires.