Writer's Handbook

Step 2: Title

This may not seem important, but oddly enough, a lot of the times a title will catch the reader's attention before any amazing description.

Again, it should be unique.

I personally like to use song lyrics, occasionally a song title.

Some of the others I made up from my own little imagination.

When it comes to titles, sometimes less is more. Go short and sweet.

Dangerous.

It's short, yet enticing. You wonder what's so "dangerous" about it to make it have that title.

There's not that many tips to give you for coming up with a good title. A good idea, though, is to come up with an actual storyline before the title. Unless you're one of those people who comes up with this amazing title and then creates a story around it. I did that once.

There's just a couple things to avoid when coming up with a title.

1. Length- Do not make it too long, like I said before. Too much of something is never good. Don't overdo it.

2. Always use caps when needed- In a title, all of the words should be capitalized, except for those pesky prepositions. Refrain from using caps on words such as a, if, the, of, etc. when creating your title. It's not that they look bad capitalized, it's just not proper grammar.

3. Refrain from punctuation- Again, it's just proper grammar. Question marks are alright if it's a question, but never, ever, ever use multiple question/exclamation marks. That looks very improper and to me, and probably many others, unappealing. Something that looks unprofessional will not score many reads.

4. Don't use weird words- I've seen titles with "uh" and "erm" in them. Not only are those not real words, they will turn a lot of people off of a fan fiction. Again, it all comes down to proper grammar. Those words are alright to use when we talk, but definitely should not be used in a title.

It's funny how with me, it always comes down to grammar...

Guess that'll be my next topic! xx