I'm in a right stew. I've got a Young Adult novel almost ready to pitch but I can't think of a suitable title. Up until now it was always called "The Devil's Prayer" but I've cut out all reference to the prayer and all of the occult stuff. Now it's just a story about two boys, one quite normal and one a psycho. At the end they end up being the opposite. The psycho matures and the normal kid goes a bit nuts. "The Devil's Prayer" no longer says anything about the book, but I don't want to send it as "Untitled"

Gaaaaaggghhhhh!!!!

Colin
Some people start with a title but I always find it incredibly hard. All I can suggest is a mad trawl through quotations and song lyrics that might be relevant. There are tons of searchable websites like this.
How about: 'Switching'.
Just popped into my head! probably dreadful!

'Twist or stick?'
'The Devil's Twist'

It's near on impossible to give you ideas without knowing more about the story.
You could always post a thread in the inspiration forum, and give us a few more details.

Casey

The only other thing I could come up with was, "His Father's Eyes" because the psycho character has a similar mindset to his dad, which is what he's trying to get away from. But that won't work because it says nothing about the other character. I've decided to stick with The Devil's Prayer for now because I can't think of anything better, and that's got a slightly ambiguous feel. At least I think it does.

Everything else I came up with was utter crap.

Pick a line out of a poem or a book, and use it as a titles, but not Shakespeare because everyone does him.

I shall now pick random lines from the first 3 books I pluck randomly off my bookshelf, and engineer them to offer you titles:

"Alexander's Bloomsbury Days"
(full quote: These were Alexander's Bloomsbury Days. (A.S. Byatt: Still Life)

"The Final Straw"
(This was the final straw. Gerald Durrell: The Whispering Land)

"Ever To Be Preserved"
(I shall pray ever to be preserved. Frank Mclynn: Wagons West)

Completely unhelpful,I know, but it amused me for 5 minutes.

Colin, it might happen that you’ll find a title as you edit the ms… in much the same way EmmaD found hers. Look laterally. I don’t know if you remember a series of books by Lillian Beckwith, popular in the 80s. The first one was called The Hills Is Lonely, which I still think is a remarkable title. It came from a line in the book which went something like; ‘It’s so quiet here that even the sheeps themselves on the hills is lonely.’ So you really need to read off-kilter to see the potential in some lines.

Good luck,

Dee

I tried that. I've been through the full script three or four times in the past two weeks and still nothing. At one point I put a line about the Devil's Prayer back in, but then it lost it's ambiguity.

Leila, that's a great idea. A quick scan through a few MP3s brings up:

nope, not a thing... all sound like songs. I would try the book thing, but all my books are in storage while the house gets rebuilt.

a few quick ones:-

Swings and round-a-bouts
Switch
About Face
Aspects

None really any good but hey, it might trigger a thought.

Mark

That's what brain storming is all about. The more ideas you come up with, even the stupidest of stupid ideas might be the thing to spark off the good one. It's hard though, especially considering I like titles that don't always show what the book is about, ie "Lord of the Flies", "The Catcher in the Rye", "To Kill a Mockingbird"


Hmmm. How about "The Fridge of Darkness"

Don't know if I'm on the right track but when I read your brief synopsis the nursery rhyme, See Saw, came into my head. Can't remember all the words but there might be something there, see saw margery door, Johnny must find a new master, etc.

Good luck

Just looked through the two pieces you have in the archive, and these came to mind:

Dirty Fighting
Crack On The Head
Money In The Dark

Not easy, is it?

As an aside, I always thought it was Margery Daw... I wonder where the name came from?

Dee

I don't know why, Colin - but William Blake comes to mind. Can't think of any obvious titles but Songs of Innocence and Experience shoe opposite sides of the same coin. Try the Poetry Archive too - you can search themes and there's bound to be a good line.

That's http://poetryarchive.org

If nothing else it's a great day to start your day with a random poem.

Sorry http://www.poetryarchive.org

Hi Colin,
How about Binary Inversion?
Tony