How Do You Pick Your Title?

[HGohwell]

Well, the title says it all. How do you/did you decide on the title for you comic/novel? What was your process?

So, something that often comes up in the writing communities I'm a part of it people venting about how difficult they find it to pick just the right title for their work. Much like summaries, it's something I see people leave until the last minute, right before their post, because it causes them such stress. So, what are some of your techniques for picking your titles? Are you happy with your title or are you just committed to the brand of it because changing half way can be awkward?

Personally, I like to gather together a doc of song lyrics and other book titles as a sort of moodboard of potential titles and mix and match until I find something that I vibe with and flows nicely, and then google the hell out of it to make sure I'm not clashing with something really popular and that's why it sounds good to me without realising.

General discalimer (because this always happens on these posts) I'm not looking for advice personally, I'm just genuinely curious about everyone's different methods.

[GothickangelStudios]

For my Manga thats 14+. My best friend came up with mine about 6 years ago. We were chatting one day and she came up with a nic name for my main OC. It was based on her past and what she is like now. And I liked it so I used that. Ive had this OC since the 90s I've written short stories about it during class breaks in a binder.
I made the logo 2 years ago.

[GodbreakerComic]

Godkiller was a thing, Godslayer was a thing, Godbreaker wasn't.

[SleepingPoppy]

I think I usually write out a bunch of relevant key words, then start brainstorming titles off of those. Though my current comic, Hellhounds, I just couldn't come up with something I liked and kinda gave up. But I like the titles that live in my head for future projects! Lol

[Inspector]

This is Not a Love Story was already taken, so I had to settle with "Not a Love Story"
For The Phantasm, I used a random superhero name generator (for the most part it took two words and combined them together, but it generated 'The Phantasmic' and I decided to shorten it)
For the Spark Effect, that's the name of the procedure she takes. The story is basically a heavily inspired combination of History is All You Left Me and More Happy Than Not, both by Adam Silvera.
Since I don't finish my series before uploading them, I could very possibly change the titles of the books to be more relevant to how they turn out. For now, though, I'm happy with how they are and I don't really feel like editing the cover :,)

[allisoncandraw]

My comic is a slice of life with a deaf MC, and I wanted the title to reflect that somehow. So I asked a group of artist friends for suggestions.

My friend Nick suggested a bunch of titles including "Signs Point to Bobbie", and that's what I went with since the comic is mainly in ASL!

[vapidink]

I give everything a working title that's usually just one word that kinda relates to the story until the actual title comes to me. Because so much of the story can change as I write it, I want to get enough done to where I can think of something meaningful.

[moontokkym]

Usually go for something that points to what the protagonist wants the most. In Petrichor, it hasn't rained for years and people are striving to bring back the rain so that everyone can benefit from water, not just the rich, so the word for "the smell of earth after rain" felt thematically appropriate.

[MaxFF]

I like to come up with titles that are fairly unique, but so many titles are already taken, the easiest way to get unique titles is to use words that aren't even English. The title for my comic is "Kyklos Revolvis" which based on googling seems to be pretty unique. However I had to think carefully and do a lot of googling to pick those two specific words, cause I wanted something that would match the themes and subject matter of the comic.

Kyklos means cycle but it was used by some classical Greek writers to specifically refer to cycles of one type of government transitioning into another one. In the comic there is a widespread political change as revolutionaries are battling to overthrow monarchs all across the continent. However in the grander scale this is just one part of a larger cycle of governments being overthrown and new systems of government being brought in. On the more fantastical side, the setting has another repeating cycle, in times of great war and strife, the chaos serpent emerges from under the earth and stars wrecking civilizations until it can be defeated and sealed again. This mythical cycle involving some evil serpent is directly connected to the political cycle. Based on all this I found the word Kyklos suitable for my title.

Revolvis is a word that I'm still not entirely sure if its a real word in another language or its actually made up to sound like another language. Google returns a few results but I can't definitely say what its origins are. But it does sound like the word revolve, and it supports the word Kyklos in suggesting a repeating cycle, just like the planets revolve around the sun in a repeating cycle.

[llobucervallince]

Take a wild guess

[ThunderChicken]

When I was a teenager, my favourite band, Judas Priest, put out a record called Turbo. It was (and is) derided by hardcore fanboys because Priest experimented with synthesizers (it was 1986) and they were trying for a more mainstream sound (again, 1986, so think Van Halen, Poison, Def Leppard, etc), but it was (and is) one of my favourites because it and I went through puberty together.

One of the songs on it is called Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days, and I adopted this as my personal anthem as a teen and well into my 20’s.

Fast forward 36 years, and when I wrote the story of my life Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days was a natural choice for the title.

My other book is a fantasy story about a dude named Daecon (rhymes with bacon) discovering by accident that he is a shapeshifter. He stumbled into this new world of magic and magical races and now must navigate his way through it while he tries to discover where he belongs. Finding Daecon’s Way seemed a fitting title.

[Headypigeon4180]

I named my series after the names of my two protagonists and added Adventures! to it XD.

I also named my series Ice Cream Truck Of Doom because there is an ice cream truck of doom in one of the storylines and the name is cool

[ThunderChicken]

When I was in high school a friend had spina bifida and was confined to a wheelchair. I did some cartoons for the school paper and one day decided to “hot rod” her wheelchair.

I called it “The Wheelchair of Doom”. Your ice cream truck of doom just reminded me of that. Come to think of it, I think I have a scan of that old pic (drawn in 1993 or so) on my phone.

Yup! Here we go! I didn’t know much about cars back then, and I’m a mechanic now, so I cringe at those “specs”, but still. It’s a pretty cool wheelchair.

[MelancholicOtaku]

I got the title The Lost Forest from a short story I wrote about the main character and her brother playing hide and seek in this vast and enchanted forest. Since that was a story that I wanted to continue, I decided to keep the same title.

[powerplantanimations]

I remember it was going to be something like this:

I JOKED about it on April Fools, but I was really considering giving it a long title but settled on "That Stick Figure Isekai" because of the simplicity. It rolls off the tongue better. Also story reasons that I can't really remember :v

[AmazementComics]

I love this question! So get this, I’m in the seventh grade, I’m currently watching shows like the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show and other cartoons like Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I always knew a long term goal of mine was to become an animator, but figured I would get my start in comics.

Well I was apart of my school’s newspaper organization and was in charge of the comics section along with two others. I had an idea to do short gag comics about a group of teens who “protect” their cul-de-sac from outsiders. I don’t know why I thought to include a giant sentient Apple companion to the teens but I did. I was going to be coined “The Action Society”.

Unfortunately, my school’s newspaper organization didn’t last very long and went defunct eventually, but I still held on to “The Action Society” concept. Remember when I said earlier that during that time I was watching TMNT and Aqua Teen Hunger Force? I got the crazy idea to make a comic series of my own focusing on ninja… fruits! It was essentially an amalgam of those two particular shows. Thus, add fruit to the name and The Action Fruit Society was born.

[cherrystark]

By "feel", very much how you would name a child or a pet. You have a few ideas in mind and then weigh the options until you find the perfect one. When the story is done, you know what to call it.

[LostKelp]

The original idea was a super sappy romance that was set in a space rebellion in an alternate timeline when the ottoman empire didn't dissolve and entered the space race, and because it was a sappy romance there would be Poetry so naturally the name came from an arabic poem or proverb - I'm not totally sure which one but It could be this.

Speaking to the Moon
I spoke to the moon, all my mind and feeling,
It listened so politely,
Stars everywhere were sharing
Our talk with no complaining.
Words were crawling over each other,
To express what I feel much better,
That night, I slept with no worry
About gossip or cheating.
And today, by opening my window
I saw its halo more charming,
And stars around
Were smiling, waiting for another talking.
Inas Essa

I'm kinda tempted to share the original plot synopsis because it's so off-base now.

[BoomerZ]

Mine was a play on one of the main characters names. Her name is Baul (pronounced Ball). And the title is Little Ball of Hate. It's also her personality.

[BlueDragon]

I actually came up with the titles for each part of my series first, then the series title last XD

So Dark Horse is a direct steal from George Harrison's song and record company. I liked it, because it has a couple meanings wrapped into it, which is why I chose it.

I also liked that it was short, and closer to the beginning of the alphabet. So I don't have to scroll as long to find it on lists XD

The other titles in the series I haven't gotten to yet all have their own meanings, but I won't babble about that until we get there