How do you come up with a title?

Hmmm. But above taking out the garbage and cleaning the bathroom, right? RIGHT???

I agree, the title is really important and it is a delicate dance. It needs to be vague enough to be intriguing, yet reflect the theme of the story and it's ok if readers don't connect the title and story line at the reading of the first installment. but there are other elements that influence my choice. Think of the novels you read. Sons and Lovers, Ship of Fools - my current read Bring up the Bodies- how could you not be intrigued by those. Another possibility is to draft your own synopsis.

Personally, I rely first on the author of the piece- I have quite a few favorites and not always enough time- and the synopsis gives me a sense of the story's subject. I am also partial to those purple circles and sometimes the red ones, providing there isn't a warning regarding rape or excessive abuse.

Right now my current story, Against the Odds, indicates the couple's relationship is unlikely to survive because of all the obstacles they encounter. I usually have the title in mind by the middle of the first episode. For me, an interesting plot is a bigger issue.
Islandcarol

Sometimes I'll change a title a few times until I come up with a pithy one. For example, one recently posted story had the following working titles:
Pss - got some weed?
The understanding
A different sort of drug deal

And it ended up as:
Ace Deals Until Dawn

How did all of those titles fit? It's about a small time weed dealer named Ace and a cute but empty headed girl named Dawn. She wants some free weed, he'd like to live out his fantasy of giving a spanking without safewords or pre-established limits, and things progress from there. With that as the set up any of the first three titles fit the story.

But because the characters sort of twisted on me while I was writing it, an actual relationship develops that lasts far beyond that deal. That point the first few titles didn't really fit the finished story. The eventual title, "Ace Deals Until Dawn", is a nice play on words and as the story ends they might be heading towards a new dawn with her off (or at least really cutting back on) weed and him looking at retiring from the drug business.


Then there's the story "Looping Across the County Line" (which will be up soon) where the title predates the story - because it encompasses the concept. The title references a previous story "Christmas Across the County Line", and has to because it's set in the same world and I didn't want to go through all that world building again and skip over most of the "why different states and counties have radical different laws" bits. At the story's heart is a road that is mostly in one county (where spanking is at a normal level) but loops briefly in another county (where anyone under 21 can be spanked practically at any time for any reason by anyone over 21). The characters are making a weekly trip between two cities and each week they stop in at a rest stop in the loop.

Who are those characters? I didn't know that when I titled the story, but the title still fit when the story was done.

It is difficult (for me, anyway) to come up with something catchy enough to be noticed and descriptive but that doesn't give away too much. Maybe I need to hire a professional title-writer. And, I agree - there are some authors I try to read no matter what.


Rick, only my beloved pets come before you.

I do hope he hasn't been telling you to read and comment on his stuff ... he has a reputation for doing that! So a posse have got together, headed by a very cross Miss Thrashbottom, intent on curing him of this irritating little habit. Little does he know that Miss Thrashbottom has cut holes in all of his socks, shrunk all his underpants, and put her granddad's old toe nails in his cookie jar

Oh, well he told me to ... but, to be fair, I told him to read and comment on mine too. It sounds like maybe he got out of the Norty Corner a little prematurely. He might just need a permanent slot there. Bring him on back and I'll deal with him.

Eeew! Please, Flopsy! At any rate, my thoughts. That a spanking is going to take place in our stories should be taken for granted. However I sense that most stories including my own get read more often when words like 'spanked' 'spanking' 'paddled' etc are in the title. Maybe Februs could churn out some statistics on this!!

I think my favourite title of my own work was Six and Out! Mainly because to my mind if just fitted the story so well.

No doubt about it, having a salacious, pandering title will gain you attention. Looking at my own "latest list", the story with the most comments is "The No-Panties Option". I admit it, that's about as salacious and pandering as a title can get!

My original working title for that story was "Rule 38". Would that title have given the same results? I think not! But still, that's not my favorite title and I don't try to write pandering titles for all of my stories. (Honest)

Off that same list, my very favorite title, and the title I'm proudest of, is "Icarus Vicarious." In lots of ways that's a terrible title because it tells you nothing about the story, but it trips off the tongue so well that I just had to go with it, even though it was a challenge story and I suspected it would cost me points. That title also has a very intimate connection to the main character, but means nothing until one actually reads the story.

My most-viewed story has the most-used title on the LSF - "Back to School," though it's far form my best story. I supposed that many readers like the idea of an adult going "back to school" and getting you-know what, a supposition supported by the fact that my second most-viewed story is entitled "Jenny Goes Back to School" (a weird tale, and again, far from my best).

I agree, though, that, for some reason, stories with words such as "spanking," "school," "naughty," "bottom" seem to draw lots of attention. Why, I don't know, since those ideas are so frequently (if not always) present in the stories here.