How to Name a Story
You never get a second shot at a first impression. The title of your story is how it’ll be presented to the world–your story’s first impression. The decision as to what to name your story is at once a creative decision and a marketing one. Humans love to use mental shortcuts as to what to pay attention to. The title of your story, no matter the medium, is critical to gaining any viewer's attention in our era of overwhelming information. Once a story exists, its first battle is gaining a reader or viewer's attention to get the story consumed in the first place.
Deciding how to name your story is a seemingly small decision with very big potential consequences for the livelihood of the story. It can be stressful and leave a writer to contemplate just using a name generator and call it a wrap. How do you name something as all-encompassing as a story anyway? Or even name an arc in a story or even just a chapter? But, ultimately, using a book name generator is not going to cut it. How to name a story, be it a book, an essay, poetry, a film, or a play, needs to come from within the story’s essence. So let's take a look at examining practical tips and creative approaches for naming a story, ensuring the title reflects its theme, genre, and essence to any and all potential readers and viewers.
Just looking to get started? Here’s how to write a script in 4 steps.
Why the Right Title Matters
The phrase, “don’t judge a book by its cover” exists because our brains love to do exactly that. Naming a story is as important as a book cover, if not even moreso. As stated above, it’s the first impression, and it can also make a lasting impression. JAWS gives you everything you need to know about the story in one four letter word. Star Wars invokes the scale of something audiences in 1977 had never seen before.
Names are powerful. They linger on the mind. Can enrapture you into an alluring daydream of another reality. Or, conversely, they can be ineffective and convoluted and slip your mind even if you’re trying to conjure the name. “What’s that movie called again? It’s right on the tip of my tongue… um, uh.”
One of the biggest examples of this is the 2014 sci-fi film, Edge of Tomorrow. Or was it called Live. Die. Repeat? On many marketing materials both titles appeared. It was awfully confusing. Maybe it would’ve been better to stick with the manga title that the story was adapted from: All You Need is Kill.
The Role of a Story Title
In addition to grabbing the notice of people’s eyes, the title is also functioning as a stand-in for some reflection of the story’s identity, be its plot, setting, central conflict, themes, genre or any combination of these components. As with any first impression, the title is also setting up people’s expectation for what’s inside. The mystery novel, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is setting up the reader to go on the sleuth hunt ride and figure out who the victims and who the culprits will be. Expectations are set before page one.
How the Title Reflects Genre and Tone
Speaking of mysteries, all genres bring with them intertextual conventions and wordplay that’s often associated with them, which brings different elements to story title creation. A title can play within its genre differently than when it's presented in a vacuum. Thanksgiving tells us the setting, but leaves a lot up in the air. But the horror film, Thanksgiving, tells us a lot more information. Something terrible (or terribly enjoyable for avid horror fans) is going to happen on Thanksgiving. The title lets its genre bear the load to infer tone to the audience.
People expect different tones and moods that come along with different genres of storytelling. Titles likewise reflect those expectations (or work to subvert those expectations). Many romance titles invoke the central characters or type of relationship like, Take a Hint, Dani Brown or It Ends with US. Many noir titles play into the mood associated with the genre with titles like In a Lonely Place, Nightmare Alley, and Touch of Evil.
No matter the genre, a creative title selection will match the story’s emotional core or narrative tone.
Here’s an intro on writing genre scripts - with an example for each!
Techniques for Brainstorming Story Titles
Like any blank page, conjuring how to name a story can seem a daunting obstacle. The writer sees the puzzle that is the story in their head, but as they extract the puzzle pieces from imagination and bring them into the world, they start to develop edges and boundaries, and the pieces don’t always fit together right away. The immense amorphous idea inside our heads can’t claim any proper shape. Naming a storybook can feel just like this. No matter what is conjured, the title just doesn’t feel right, doesn’t capture everything that’s in a writer’s head.
So let’s develop some title selection tips to help in the brainstorming and writing process and create the best titles for any given story.
List Keywords and Themes
When choosing a book title, start with the key themes, symbols, and words related to the story and its central conflict. What is the story trying to say? What is it trying to leave behind for people to ponder on? Once the list is produced, try to expand it and make it exhaustive with related words and synonyms to give a variety of options. Often, the word with the right meaning doesn’t flow the way you want it to, but potentially a synonym will flow better within your title construction.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower elicits the main characteristic of the protagonist, and the challenges that come with being a wallflower (as this is normally has a slightly negative connotation) while also suggesting that despite those negative connotations, there’s positives as well, and the audience has to watch it to find out. Come to think of it, this title is kind of similar to the most effective clickbaiting youtube videos.
Wordplay
When thinking of how to name a story title, wordplay, double entendres, and puns are valuable resources for making creative storytelling names. The 2019 film Parasite feels like a straightforward title, given the conflict, but after watching the film, the audience understands that the eponymous parasite can be multiple characters, and carries with it slightly different meanings of what it means to be a parasite. The 2013 film Prisoners is another example of the title referring to multiple characters being or feeling like prisoners in different facets of the story.
The sweet spot for the length of a title seems to be between one-to-four words, the shorter the title, the easier it is to remember: Moonlight, Nightcrawler, Get Out, La La Land, Inception, Batman, The Social Network.
The longer the title, the easier it is to overly confuse or forget. But longer titles exist, and they tend to evoke a poeticism like Killing of a Sacred Deer and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. If you’re planning on a longer title, the title really needs to hit. And it’s easier to hit with one word like Psycho than with nine.
Consider Story Conflict or Climax
If we’re still stumped on how to name a story with the above examples, looking to the central conflict, climax, or turning point in the film can be inspiration. Whiplash is named after the most famous scene in the movie in which the protagonist can’t keep the proper tempo to Whiplash and the teacher lashes out and humiliates him in front of the rest of the students. The title is not only spotlighting the most visceral scene, but again is able to elicit a characteristic of abusive relationships in which the victim can feel whiplash as to the abusers sudden and violent mood swings.
Need more info about story conflict? Here are ten examples of external conflict.
Different Approaches for Naming Stories by Genre
Once a story exists, users will categorize and taxonomize it among its contemporaries and among its genre companions, if applicable. And when doing so, patterns emerge. Successful titles can be achieved through different means depending upon its genre. Westerns are going to want to evoke the setting, and the key theme on living on the fringe of civilization, and titles emerge like, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, Bad Day at Black Rock, and The Big Country.
For Fictional or Fantasy Stories
Fantasy titles tend to showcase their ability to transport the audience to a new world. Spirited Away, The Lord of the RIngs, and Avatar are portals, ready to teleport you away from reality. Fantasy comes with many familiar naming constructions like, The + Noun that is a word we’re unfamiliar with. Also, The + adjective + noun are very common like The Green Knight. Another one: an article (The, A) + adjective, modifier, idea + article, preposition + noun like The Shape of Water.
Relying on words that are unusual can be tricky. Nosferatu is now an entrenched cultural idea, but creating a wholesale new monster and using a brand new word can backfire and leave people confused as to how to pronounce something or even just react like, “What’s Nosferatu?”
For Mysteries or Thrillers
Conventions around mystery and thriller titles are the feeling they try to provoke in the audience–namely, fear and curiosity. These titles are mood and tone heavy. They give a sense of foreboding like The Thing. The Sixth Sense plays on cultural knowledge of the five main senses to leave us guessing what the sixth refers to.
For Nonfiction or Memoir
Nonfiction and memoirs play in a different sandbox than the fictional genres, and their titles tend to push straightforward themes. Learn about this person or place. Educated by Tara Westover or I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy are to the point and invite you to learn more.
Caste, An Immense World, and An Empire of Pain all comment directly and forthrightly on their subject matter.
Tips for Refining Your Story Title
Now that all of the potential titles have been laid out on the table, it’s time to pull the needle from the haystack. Any favorites? Any potential title constructions popping out? Not yet? It’ll be easier to cut the options that have become clear they aren’t it. From there, it’s time to eliminate and refine. Don’t tunnel vision either. Potentially create a few different potential options
The short, sweet noun: Challengers, Barbie, Conclave
The portmanteau noun: Birdman, Booksmart, Nightcrawler
Article + Adjective/Noun + Noun: The Amazing Spider-Man, The Big Lebowski
Article + Adjective/Noun +Article/Preposition + Noun: The Worst Person in the World
Other, if applicable to the story’s needs
See what works and what doesn’t. Test if the title sticks in the mind and is easy to remember. Search in databases to make sure it doesn’t already exist. Type in Ghostbusters and are we talking about the 1984 original or the 2016 follow-up. An amazing martial arts series, Warrior can be hard to look up because the name can be confused for the 2011 film Warrior or the NBA team, The Warriors will cluster your query.
Final Considerations Before Settling on a Title
After divvying down the potentials, check again that the title is conveying the proper first impression. Is it evoking any of the story’s tone, genre, characters, or conflict while keeping the target audience in mind? Refer to friends and colleagues to see what clicks and what doesn’t. Which option resonates with others.
After all deliberation is done, the right title will emerge, either by triumph or by default of all the other options falling away. Trust gut feelings that come when thinking about each option. Gut feelings and first impressions go hand-in-hand.
Now, Choose the Right Title For Your Story!
The title sets the stage for the audience's journey, it beckons what is to come. It’s a decision not to be taken lightly. Remember that names are powerful, be it a human’s name or a story’s name. They leave lasting impressions. With this in mind, deciding how to pick a name for your book or personal story can leave anyone second guessing.
With brainstorming, carefully culling the options, referring the options with others, and finalizing the story title, it’s ready to announce itself to the world and seed its ideas and themes into the audience. And a story name generator tool was not needed at all. The story is ready to welcome the audience into a riveting adventure, if only the title entices them enough to start.
