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Every month there is a (totally optional) question to get your post-writing juices flowing. This November 3rd the question is: What’s harder to do, coming up with your book title or writing the blurb?
The co-hosts keeping us moving this month are Kim Lajevardi, Victoria Marie Lees, Joylene Nowell Butler, Erika Beebe, and Lee Lowery! Head to their sites to drop a comment and keep this group engaging all day.
My answer for this month is absolutely titles. No question. Titles are awful and I dread them so much. Begging the muse for inspiration in this case is useless. That minx will give me ideas all over at 3am but is one of them a good title?
How do you encapsulate all of the ideas in the story in one pithy phrase? What magic enables other authors to come up with a wonderfully fitting, dramatic title? How do you shove the meaning of your entire book into one or two words? How do you make it interesting, apt, evocative, perhaps even punny, but not too long, or too vague, or too boring?
Blegh. In all honesty, I usually end up trawling Amazon to gather inspiration from which titles are selling well in my genre right now, then tweaking the different ideas for my own story. And I head over to the Kindlepreneur list of free book title generators a lot of the time, too.
A blurb, now. Ahhh. Blurbs are so much more fun. They are the way to slap sequins, glitter, some sex-worker-worthy boots, and a spotlight on my story. Make it really sound enticing. I enjoy finding a way to work in the characters, stakes, and tropes. It helps, I think, that I’ve got more words to work with than a snippy little title.
I actually started pre-writing the blurb several years ago as a way to measure my ideas for book-worthiness. If there is enough to an idea to fill an entire blurb, it will probably make a good story, is the idea behind doing that. And if the story idea won’t even extend to the short length of a blurb, I can gleefully throw a middle finger at my muse, who likes to interrupt showers and has never heard of a thing called ‘sleeping’. I wrote a post explaining it, with pros and cons and everything. It also contains butterflies carrying cannonballs, if you’re at all interested.
Titles just come to me. Blurbs take an awful lot of work (emphasis on awful!).
That’s fair! LOL
I tend to google best first lines, and blurbs in my genre too. They are all inspirational and get my imagination going.
<a href=”http://emaginette.wordpress.com”> Anna from elements of emaginette</a>
Truly! There is no better inspiration than other authors in our genres.
I’m finding blurbs easier as time goes by, but titles still baffle me. I usually crowd-source them with writer friends. Funny post! I wish you happy writing in November.
Thank you! And crowd sourcing is definitely the way to go 🙂
Titles are the worst for me. I know of several other writers who create a blurb first and write from that.
Oh neat! I thought it was a bit of an odd idea, but to hear that others are doing it too gives me hope. It’s been pretty effective for me.
You’re the first IWSGer I’ve encountered today who loves writing blurbs! I like the gif of your muse 🙂
Ronel visiting for IWSG day <a href=”https://www.ronelthemythmaker.com/thats-a-wrap-year-in-review-iwsg-writerslife/”>That’s a Wrap! An Author’s Year in Review</a>
Thank you! I do tend to think of my muse as a slimy creature with tentacles everywhere. So it fit.
Titles are hardest for me too. I like your idea for searching titles on Amazon.
Anything to make it easier! And bestsellers in your genre have to be doing something right.