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There’s so many different kinds of books out there that cover a huge range of subjects. What is the one thing they all have in common? That’s right! They have titles! They’re found on the front cover to signify what they’re about. This article will focus more specifically on fantasy book titles.
True to their word, fantasy book titles are exclusively used for all novels within the genre. Think of legendary ones like The Lord of the Rings or The Witcher. They work for a reason. They clearly show that they’re fantasy books, not sports or romance or historical books.
Which begets several questions for a would-be fantasy author? When should you start thinking about devising your own? How do you come up with the right one? The latter is far more important than the former though you shouldn’t entirely dismiss the former.
Many authors use what’s called a placeholder title. What that means is that it’s merely a temporary one until they come up with the perfect one. You can use this strategy in a multitude of ways to great effect. It’s imperative you come up with a great placeholder title for the book you’re working on, for it can serve as inspiration for the actual title. In rare cases, the placeholder title you use can turn out to be the actual title after all!
All the great stories in fantasy have the perfect title for them. The right title matters, for you want it to clearly communicate what your book is about. So how are perfect fantasy book titles created? There’s several integral factors that go into making memorable ones.
This is article number nine in the writing a fantasy book series. If you wind up liking this one and want to take a gander at our ever-growing number of articles, they can be found on our blog page. Surely you’ll come across one that catches your eye!
Before you consider working on the title of your novel, you first should know what to expect when it comes to names for fantasy book titles. Every genre has its own expectations. For example for books in the romance genre, many titles have various references to love that make it clear they’re romantic novels. The same is true for fantasy.
What about fantasy book titles? Let’s look at some of the most popular ones out there today, beginning with The Lord of the Rings. It depicts jewels and a lord. As for the former, jewelry in fantasy tend to be magical and the latter has a heavy association with nobility. The nobility plays a huge role in fantasy, since many works are set in the medieval period when lords and ladies held enormous sway in society.
Much like nobility, royalty dominates the genre. You see it in fantasy book titles such as The Return of the King or A Game of Thrones. These titles tell would-be readers that royalty will play a large role in what happens within the book which will pique their interest.
Up next is The Witcher. Magic is one of the most important components of fantasy and the title of this series describes someone with superhuman powers capable of performing feats ordinary people can only dream of. This title invites would-be readers to want to check it out since they know it has something to do with magical powers.
You can’t go wrong with putting a magical object or place in the title as seen in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone or pretty much all the books in that series. Including a magical object or place in the title conveys to the reader that they’ll dive into a world unlike any they’ve read before which will spark their desire to dive into said world.
Do you see how all these fantasy book titles work? They make it clear they’re fantasy and they stand out in a crowded field and that’s the same approach you should take when it comes to yours.
Coming up with the perfect title doesn’t happen overnight. It can take a long time which is why many authors instead opt for a placeholder title to hold them over until they find the right one. Having a placeholder title enables you to take as much time as you need to build the right title that accurately describes what your book is all about.
When should you start working on creating a placeholder title? You can start right at the beginning in the brainstorming stage. Even though you’re still shaping the contours of your story, you can come up with multiple fantasy book titles and then narrow it down all the way to one over time. Who knows? You might be able to use said titles in the future!
Sometimes brainstorming doesn’t help, especially if you don’t know what your book is about yet. In that case, you can delay making placeholder titles until the outline stage. By the time you begin the outlining process, you’ll have a better idea of what your book is which makes it easier to think of potential titles. By the time you actually start writing, you should definitely have at least a working title in place, even if it’s called My Fantasy Book.
Now that you know when you should start working on placeholder fantasy book titles, it’s time to look into what goes into said titles. What should they convey? Not surprisingly, they should say what the books are about at a minimum.
The placeholder title is for you, the author, not for your readers. Try to summarize your book in a few simple, concise words. If you’re having trouble, it might be that your novel is a tad too complicated which means the only way to rectify that is to simplify it. Fantasy readers love titles that are simple in concept but far more nuanced in reality.
Experiment with some of the major themes or ideas you present in your book or least you allude to in the outline. They could be characters, major events, a place that plays a pivotal role throughout the tale or a clever use of word play that depicts something interesting that transpires within it.
You’ll come up with more than one placeholder title and you can always freely switch between them if you like to see how they look. On the other hand, if you happen to create one that you like, you can use it all the way until you get the actual title set.
Placeholder fantasy book titles are part of a long process of becoming an author. However, the role they play is merely temporary until you finally think of the actual title for your novel. Getting there is another story though.
Much like the placeholder before it, the actual title must make it clear what your book is about to potential readers. You also want it to catch their eye since they have so many books to choose from. Looking at it from a different perspective, the title is selling your book and it’s imperative it leaves a good, positive impression on your would-be readers. Make them want to get your book instead of somebody else’s!
First and foremost, readers should tell at first glance that it has to do with fantasy. If you look at a couple sections above, you saw how many of the great novels in the genre had titles that showed a tantalizing preview of the fantasy worlds lying in wait. Moreover, many of the titles you see in fantasy fall within several categories.
We took a look at them earlier in the article but if you’d like a quick recap, here they are again:
Your book will most likely fall within one of these categories so its title should fit whichever one it’s in!
The trouble is, how do you find the right one? Coming up with the perfect title is hard and it might be a while before you finally get it. It’s why you should wait until you finish the first draft of your book to truly begin thinking about it. You’ve already written the novel so now all you have to do is give it the title it deserves.
This is where you’ll have to do some more brainstorming. As you think of ideas, focus on something central to the plot of your book. It could be a name of a place that plays a significant role from the beginning to the end, a particular character that plays the role of the protagonist, or objects that boast power enough to alter the delicate balance of the world.
You’ll most likely write down several different titles. You’ll have to do some fine-tuning and winnowing them down until you find the right one that best represents your book and is likely to captivate would-be readers!
Every book has a title. The title only has one job: to tell readers what to expect when they open the book. When it comes to fantasy, you want it to do its job but at the same time, you also want it to catch their eye. The worst thing you want to happen is to have a great book with a title so boring other people choose other books than yours!
Many of the best fantasy book titles fall within one or more category. They refer to jewels or magical places or supernatural people/races. Furthermore, they also refer to something central to the plot, they’re written in a way that invites readers to want to learn more about them!
Many authors think of the perfect title after they’ve written their books. In the meantime, they use placeholder titles that describe what their novels are about until they can think of the right one. Only a select few such titles wind up becoming the actual one.
Thinking of the right title isn’t easy. It needs to clearly communicate to would-be readers what the novel is about and it also needs to be presented in a way that piques their interest. It’ll take some time but in the end, it’ll be worth it because you’ll have created a fantastic title that gets people excited about your book!
Now that you know all about fantasy book titles, are you ready to make one that spurs people to want to get your book so they dive into the amazing world you created?
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Sunfire
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