First impressions

Did your NaNo novel finish the month titled "NaNo 2007"? Except for my first NaNo which was always called Flight, the other two were named at the last moment before I uploaded. If you still need a title, here's some title naming strategies.

• Use the name of a character, place or significant object
  
• Name plus some element from the story
  
• Phrase from the novel
  
• Line uttered by a character
  
  
• Play on words (common in the mystery genre, often indicates a lighter tone) (Tea and Curses, No Time or Treason)
  
• Play on a recognizable title (War and Pieces, Withering Heights)
  
  
• There's a good brainstorming process to use at Write a Good Book Title and Greatly Increase the Marketability of Your Book!.
  
  The author suggests writing a paragraph description of your book. From that paragraph list all the nouns and verbs. Then for 5 minutes make combinations of the two. Don't worry if some don't make sense together! If you don't like any of the combinations together, then spend 5 minutes brainstorming words related to your nouns and verbs then repeat making combinations. When you find a verb and noun pair you like, then spend 5 minutes brainstorming phrases using that pair of words.
  
  
• And another more focused brainstorming process at Title Creation on DeviantArt, which helps you play around with character names, settings and themes.
  
  
• Here's a couple of random title generators. The first, Random Book Title Generator, is completely random but comes up with some surprisingly intriguing titles like "The Missing Night", "Living Tales", and "Widow of the Prophecy". The second, Title Generator by Aabashenya, asks for some help like a verb ending in -ing, a plural noun, which, if you did one of the previous two brainstorm processes, can be well focused for your book.
  
  
• Alter phrases, epigrams, cliches, aphorisms, idioms: Cliche Web and CLICHÉS: AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE
  
  
• Use phrases from Shakespeare, Bible, and Nursery rhymes:
  
  A short Shakespeare list
  A longer Shakespeare list
  More extensive list (with links to sources)
  Several thousand (with links to sources)
  Probably the most extensive (listed by play)
  
  Bible
  Old Testament extensive (Bartlett's)
  New Testament extensive (Bartlett's)
  
  I want Bartleby's results to be better displayed, but there's a wealth of searchable books there (Bartlett's Quotations, Columbia Encyclopedia, Brewer's Phrase and Fable, Bullfinch's Mythology, author's works in the public domain and loads more.) (The books have nicer formatting. It's just the engine that searches all the books that returns some ugly results.)
  
  
• Be inspired by titles in your genre. The most likely part of your book to be changed by an editor is the title. Readers expect genre titles to conform to a certain feel, that is The Elemental Fire Queen of Goronji probably isn't a mystery. ;-) Here's some lists of books:

  Fairy tales
  Fantasy novels
  Science fiction
  Horror
  Fictional (not fiction!) books
  Best sellers

  Also try Amazon. Type in some key words from your book and see what Search turns up.
  
  
• And finally, here's a Fantasy Novel Title Generator. You can generate from 1 to 50 titles at a time. Here's some examples:

  Child's Discord
  Desert of the Shining Stone
  Eladian's Lady
  Dalisrte's Emerald
  Demon's Discord
  Heart, Autumn and Stone
  Hirorte's Winter
  Mistress of Pride
  Secret Hero of Enijil
  Spell Sea of Ortanor
  Spirit Citadel of Redudiel
  Storm's Fate
  The Destiny of Quainill
  The Elven Master
  The Faerie Demon
  The Fire of the Citadel
  The Illusion of Hirotanor
  The Iron Faerie
  The Trisimene Winter
  The Legend of Reduldas
  The Night of the Spirit
  The Pillana Master
  The Prophecy of Pilmene
  The Orbar Wizard The Repetidian Sun
  The Rogue and the Master
  The Rune Ruby
  Unholy Heart of Egibar
  Valdiriel's Spirit
  Winter and Prophecy