How to come up with a good title, 9 fun ways

Post 21  of Dream, create and make money in the arts – My Series on becoming a Successful Creative

Following on from our yesterday’s post on naming your show or event.. to continue to push our lateral thinking, lets first think of titles we like and why we like them or titles that work and stick in our brains such as..

Bonkers Titles that immediately place your event or product. (and yes these exist!)
Gay Zombie
Poo
Killed by George Clooney’s Snot

The Joy of Uncircumcising

Obviously you can have an obscure title that hints but these tend to have major marketing behind it.
50 shades of Grey
Harry Potter & the Philosophers Stone
Collaborators.   This was on at the National Theatre which has a huge reputation & it was indeed a brilliant play based on the weird relationship between Stalin & a playwright, the title has wonderful connotations about their bizarre relationship.

If you have a strong brand within your ‘tribe’ then you have more leeway to be free on the title as your audience will match what they know about you to the show
Ross Noble –  Unrealtime
Absolutely Fabulous
The Book of Mormon,  from the creators of South Park

Try writing a few & asking your friends what interpretations they would put on various titles

9 ways to start ;-))

1     -A strong one word – that may be combination of two such as Showboat, Uncircumcising

2     -Make up a word eg Hobbit, Shakespeare and Tolkein did it, why not you ? take a good word and try and change the ending or middle vowels

3     -Use words in unusual or suggestive ways so Warhorse, Be Bold With Bananas (a cookery book),

4      -Weird spellings eg  ‘guvnor’ that may be made up, see how you can mis-spell something deliberately

5       -Try reversing word order – if it works for Yoda, it’s for me good!!

6       -Word associations so write all the words you can think of about and to describe your event/product and see what comes out if you mix and match

7        -Look in a Thesaurus – words meaning the same as your core idea

8        – Look in a Rhyming dictionary – words sounding the same as your core idea

9        -Get your friends in a room with beer, wine or vodka and some food with ripped up pieces of paper, get them to write 20 relevant or describing words on there which suit your show r product. Then pass these around to the right and get everyone to add 2 more describing words to what the previous person has come up with or one word to put in front or after the last persons words.. You will have some strange but possibly genius words to start  thinking on

some useful other people’s ideas on title writing!

brainstorming titles
come up with a book title

Do show names matter?

Main Image courtesy of [zirconicusso] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Nature Image courtesy of [Dan] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About this series – Being a Successful Creative – The Business of Creativity
This is a series of daily blogs for you on how to dream up, build, market and sell a creative event, gig, festival, book launch, cabaret night, exhibition of rude plastic cupcakes or whatever creatively inspires you. It is time to create and put on that play about your family, a series of drawings about hedgehogs, the album you have talked about making or the short film you always wanted to write and make.