Monday, October 28

The challenge: "Can't think of a book title" or "Can't think of a book idea"?

I've always thought that the book title was the easiest part, but the book story the hardest. I tried this idea for both titles and story lines. Use the names of songs and the lyrics to get ideas. When listening to a song one day I said, what if that was a book title, what would the story be, and it took off from there.

Top 10 songs today:
Royals; Roar; Wrecking Ball; Wake Me Up; Hold on, We're Going Home; The Fox; Rap God; Holy Grail; Applause; Blurred Lines.

All but two are easy or the least challenging. Wrecking Ball and Blurred Lines look the most intriguing.
Let's take Wrecking Ball as the title of a book.The best part is whether you like or don't like the song and or artist, it doesn't matter. You don't even have to listen to the song and it's probably best not to be swayed by the meaning of the actual song. You could even take the worst song and make a book title out of it.

What could the title be about? An abused relationship, or some crazy home breaking adultery, a couple of angles here; the last dance at a high school homecoming; a detective or soldier who goes on a rampage.

How about some Lyrics to the song as titles:
WE clawed, we chained our hearts in vain.
Some possibilities here. Mostly as a love story gone wrong, but the clawed part could lead to a monster or the current vampire/werewolf craze.
We jumped, never asking why.
How about a sky diving group and their charismatic or hypnotic leader.
We kissed, and fell under your spell.
Lots of obvious ones here. Black magic, etc.
A love no one could deny.
This one has a very wide range of topics. Love of whom, what, where, even Why. Love of adventure; self; addiction; God; food; dieting; just too many to chose from.

Blurred Lines is an interesting title:
Obvious is right and wrong, but what kind of right or wrong? Same thing about Good and Bad; How about a race driver losing his sight. A portal between two worlds. Someone deciding to come out of the closet or have a sex change.

You could probably take each of them and try to match a genre to it. Mystery, Detective, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Love Stories, even your favorite person as a back door approach to their life or a back door approach to a time in History.

You could do the same thing to the Top 10 Songs of all time or the Top 10 songs of an era or year or ANY song if you thought about it.
Just try the title or look at the lyrics.
There are endless possibilities.
Misspelling the title or using homophones, homographs or homonyms also works in thinking of book titles.

Explore your fun side or dark side.

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