How do people name their stories??

really, a good way to do it is to just mash a few words together and see if they sound good to you and other people. i came up with the name of my adventure, Complete Idiocy, on a whim when i first came up with the concept as a temporary name but i could never think of another name for it. so its just complete idiocy for now

Either mash two tangentially related words together... or use the XKCD method and have it be meaningless.

I wouldn't rush to name it, generally every project I've worked on has had a placeholder name that gets phased out for something that is more satisfying once there's more substance to work from.

@Shelbybunny Complete Idiocy is a really fun name. And with characters I do relate with giving them on-a-whim placeholder names that turn into permanent names lollll

@ChrisAperiod good idea I will keysmash a title

TY to both I’ll try to think of random words to mash I may have stuff to work with. The word “genesis” has been floating in my mind after I posted this, since I did take names from the Genesis story to give to my characters cus I thought it would be funny lol. I’ll try to come up with other words to pair up that.

@Squiddo, yeah I don’t wanna rush either but I do wanna come up with something soon because I don’t want to spam the art channel with individual posts. I’m kinda nervous that counts as duplicate threads or whatever, since I’ve seen ppl complain about that, and I dont want to contribute to that 😓

i usually look for some kind of motif and go off of that. and the "motif" thing is really broad, sometimes it's an important event, sometimes it's the stylistic choices, sometimes it's about the thematic content of the story, for example sometimes i like naming things something un-intuitive and that feels like it has nothing to do with the story because in reality it's not about the plot or the literal events but rather the themes.

another thing i like doing is taking stylistic cues from whatever i'm working on and using the titling conventions of other media. for example i've been loosely working on a project that takes inspiration from super old internet animation, think newgrounds and that whole early internet culture of memes for 12 year olds, so i titled it the way a young kid would title their youtube video in 2011 that's like, a PMV they made in movie maker with stolen fanart (with XD and everything). but really this can be applied to many other formats, title your story like how one would title an official work document, an email, a blog post, a scientific species name, really anything! the more creative you get with this approach the more fun it is.

generally speaking i like for my titles to have something going for them, like either it means something more after you read the story, sometimes it's just a little comedic thing. also i'm a big fan of sentence titles, like the title is a medium-long sentence. i think those types of titles can be fun, and you can take them in either direction: something funny, or something mildly concerning, or something downright menacing.

Bloodstuck originally was going to have a much more elegant and refined name but I wanted people to immediately catch onto what it was like rather than get caught up in the title. So I decided to make it way more simple, which is why it's just called "Bloodstuck".

For a snazzy title, sometimes less is more IMO :3 But I do tend to over think titles all of the time and so many of my stories have really vague or long titles lol

I havent made any mspfas or anything, but I have done some creative writing both fiction and nonfiction, and I find it very hard to name anything confidently before it’s finished.

So my fanventure I knew from the start would feature the Denizens as its main villains, and I wanted something to sort of hint at or reflect that. Something about gods, and how horrible and cruel they could be. I considered the name "Ichorbound" on a recommendation from an acquaintance, but I eventually went with the name "Of Gods and Monsters", which I think fits pretty well, and lends itself to the snappy abbreviation of OGAM.

I don't really consider myself to be that great at naming stories tho. But I suppose the lesson from that little story is, look for something that reflects the themes of your story?

for long-term temporary names, i like to find some tangentially-related sciency word. for permanent titles, it really depends on the specific project. it could be just a basic description, it could be song lyrics, it could be words with thematic relevance.

I thought of one of the best songs out there. Boom, name.

not speaking from experience, but try coming up with something vague and completely unrelated, but still unique. it just might stick.

The default choice seems to be to pick a word and add "stuck" on the end....

I went with "Team Madrigog," as it's about the madrigogs of the broodfester tongues. Can't say the title has drawn much traffic to my fic. (I've got the opposite problem: I've got a story, but can I draw my characters? No I can not.)

you have to think of some nice words that have a "title essence" to them. typically they could be used to describe the work as a whole. the name of a character is one route. sometimes a name can be used to solidify ideas and themes about the work... but also to kind of act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. a big piece of advice i would recommend to anyone trying to make a story - try to look at it outside yourself. if you weren't you, would the title pique your interest?

the works i've named, when i've named them, and why:

COUCH SEARCH - an unfinished story, but about a girl trying to buy a couch. the couch is placed as "last thing your apartment really needs before you feel you can really call it a home", with the home being the thing that makes her a "real adult".

FAILURE TO LAUNCH - about a girl who is struggling to grow up and figuring out what that means. also, she's got the poster for the mcconaughey movie up on her wall. i named it before i really got into the meat of writing it, so the title influenced the direction it was going in.

SICKIE - it's a about a girl who is physically ill, and also going a little insane. i think i named it before making it, because i liked the word. and so it influenced the short.

REAL FISH - it's a story about becoming "real". the title came early on. a little crude!

FLIPPY ZIPPER - about a girl struggling to grow up and figuring out what that means (are you seeing a pattern here??) i knew monsters would come out of the girl's head, kind of like flcl. so i was trying to find a title that was similarly fun to say... and ended up on flippy zipper. zippers, then, became a part of the main plot! monsters come out of a zipper on the girl's head!

Titles are hard.
They are, above all other things, a type of signal to imply the impression of any given work.

For me it'd be best to go through titles and explain their "type" and their utility

Disco Elysium - za/um
It literally means "I learn Elysium". It's a simple, succinct title that subtly hints that this is the player's first view into the wider world of Elysium.

Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
It plays off the central focus of the characters in the book being guards from the city's watch, implying from the get-go who the story's going to follow.

Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
The title speaks to the broader theme of the book, with it only being mentioned in passing rather infrequently in the book.

UNSONG - Scott Alexander
The title is a direct reference to the fictional organization within the text.

Homestuck, Undertale, Deltarune, Earthbound - Andrew Hussie et. al, Toby Fox, Shigesato Itoi
Relate to the literal central setting/concept of the story.
Homestuck, being stuck in a house
Undertale, a tale happening underground
Deltarune, spinning off of undertale and relating to a central object, the delta rune
Earthbound, literal reference to the characters (on earth) bound to fight giygas or giygas bound for earth.

The first three titles highlight the central "function" or theme of their respective stories, where the latter titles are referring to literal or not-as-literal scenario that the respective works explore.