13 Tips for Young Writers / Day Twelve: Create Your Title

by Dr. K. Mark Hilliard

Day 12: Create Your Title

Sometimes your young writer’s title comes to him or her first, before writing the first sentence. Sometimes the title won’t come until after your young writer tells the story. Sometimes maybe it will hit your young writer in the middle of writing the story, or someone else will read the book and suggest a great title. 

Any of these ways of creating a title are fine. Titles can be straight-forward and tell readers what the story is about, or they can be more subtle and be something only mentioned once in the story. Maybe they tell the theme or moral of the story.

Some writers take a long time to write a title, spending days narrowing it down. It isn’t always as easy as it seems to be. That’s okay.

Action Item

Work on helping your young writer pick a title. You can ask questions like these to help:

1. What is your story about?

2. Who are the characters? Do you want their names in the title?

3. What is your favorite sentence in the story so far?

4. Imagine your book on a shelf in someone’s house. Your name is on the bottom of the book as the author. The title is at the top. Can you see a title on there when you imagine this?