Titles! (aka titling, the bane of many a fanfic writer's existence)

[donutsweeper]

Titling fics can be one of the hardest parts of writing. A lot of people love to use quotes for their titles or do what I do in that they take a quote/idea and play with the wording to get something that will work for their story. But, that still means finding quotes or whathaveyou, right? Here are some places to start:

Japanese-dubbed Red Dwarf episode title translations with titles such as "The Future Came Suddenly" and "Hell’s Life Auditor" and "The Bride is a Beautiful Woman Beast" you might find something helpful(ish). (wayback machine link)

List of Shadow the Hedgehog Library Stories 326 interesting, yet oddly dark and despondent titles including "Tear-Soaked Hometown," "Shouting at the Morning Sun," and "Faith Without Falsehood."

Ruggenberg's Title Generator (comes up with 5 at once)
writingexercises's Random Title Generator
Morne's title generator
Random Book Title Generator and its sister sites, Random Romantic Title Generator and Random Sci-fi & Fantasy Book Title Generator (quality and usefulness of these varies)
The Random Pulp Science Fiction Title Generator
Portent's Content Idea generator
Hozier Lyrics title generator (via generatorland), and a second one (via perchance.org)
Mumford and Sons fanfic title generator
Taylor Swift Lyric Generator
The Abstract Art title generator (really different and interesting titles, generator working wayback machine link)
Generate Creative Artwork Names Instantly (6 titles provided after choosing an art category)

Poem Generator
Bad Poem Generator

somethingdarker's collection of poetry snippets for titles: index of snippets by author, by word and by broad category

Rhymezone - search by phrase, lyrics and poems, quotations and more

Search poems by theme at poets.org or by keyword either at poetryfoundation.org or at poetrysoup.com.
University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online is a web anthology of 4,800 poems in English and French by over 700 poets spanning 1400 years you can search in various ways.
Bartleby's has quotes by themes. They have several different online compilations including Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, Batlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed, and many others.
Wikiquote has numerous lists and themes that can be browsed
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - articles and quotes to browse and search
poemlinefortitle on tumblr (a new line from a poem with every refresh)
The Phrontistery along with its Dictionary of Unusual Words and Lost Words is amazing. I suppose this could have gone in the 'What's that word again' post, but it can be used for titling as well and its glossaries are a thing of beauty.

Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser "A Practical Handbook Of Pertinent Expressions, Striking Similes, Literary, Commercial, Conversational, And Oratorical Terms, For The Embellishment Of Speech And Literature, And The Improvement Of The Vocabulary Of Those Persons Who Read, Write, And Speak English" (Many possible titles here, Project Gutenberg page for more reading options)

And always useful:
Capitalize My Title "Making title capitalization easy. Automatically capitalize and case convert to Title Case (in AP, APA, Chicago, MLA, BB, AMA), sentence case, UPPERCASE, lowercase, and more."


Research and Resource Collected Links Masterpost

Comments

Broken Link

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that the Romance Title Generator now leads to a pottery company website.

Re: Broken Link

[donutsweeper]

Thanks for the head's up! I found the new website for it and updated the links :)

[wolffyluna]

Thank you for this title resource, it's very useful!

[donutsweeper]

Glad to hear it :)

[maevedarcy]

These resources have saved me more than once. Thank you so much for putting it together!

[donutsweeper]

\o/ Glad to hear it!

[pikkugen]

Okay, this is probably my savior for all the exchanges I've unwittingly gotten myself into. Thank you.

(Now if someone would invent a summary generator too...)

[donutsweeper]

Glad to hear it'll be helpful (and yes, a summary generator would be *amazing*)!