Titles and Comparable Books
Title principles (comps, hook phrasing, title as promise) are in
../../story-init/references/title-logline.md. This file is the
brainstorming procedure and the premise-stage comp check.
Brainstorm across families
Generate 3-4 candidates in each family, then cut. Mixing families stops the list collapsing into twenty variants of one idea.
| Family | Pattern | Example shape |
|---|---|---|
| Image | A concrete object or place from the story | The Drowned Bell |
| Phrase from the world | A saying, rule, or term only this story has | Keep the Light Lit |
| Character | A name, role, or epithet | The Last Keeper |
| Contradiction | Two words that should not sit together | A Quiet Wreck |
| Question or promise | What the reader will want answered | Who Rows Out |
| Genre signal | The shelf's usual register for this genre | Match the comps' weight and length |
Cut to a shortlist of five
For each candidate, check:
- Promise: does it promise the tone and subject of the logline?
- Shelf: does it sit beside the comps without sounding like one of them?
- Sayable: can someone say it to a bookseller after hearing it once? Read it aloud.
- Searchable: a search for it should not bury the book under a famous title, film, or product. If web search is available, check and report what you found; otherwise tell the user to check.
- Not a spoiler: it does not give away the ending or the twist.
Present the five with one line each on what they promise. The user picks or asks for another round.
Check names against the project
Once the project exists, run candidate titles' key words, and every new character, place, or term name, through the collision check:
story names "Maren" "Bellrock" --path .Pass each word separately when a title or name has more than one
("Bell Tower" Bell Tower): multi-word names are only checked for exact
clashes.
- Exact clash (error, exit 1): the name already belongs to a
character, alias, location, faction, artifact, system, or glossary
term, or its given name (the first word that is not a title or article
such as
The,Lord, orCaptain) equals a character's given name, so Lady Sera clashes with Sera Voss. Pick another, or confirm the reuse is deliberate and rename the existing entity withstory rename. - Look-alike warning: the same first four letters (Maren / Marenna), or the same initial and one letter apart (two for words of five letters or more: Maren / Marek). Readers confuse these.
- Shared initial with a major character: fine in moderation; a cast where three leads start with M is hard to follow.
Premise-stage comp check
Comparable books at this stage are a sanity check, not a pitch (the
submission comps list is built later in the submission skill).
Ask the user for two or three recent books the idea sits beside, or suggest candidates only when web search can verify them. For each:
- Same shelf? Category (adult, YA, MG, children's), genre, and form. A comp on a different shelf means one of them is the wrong book to compare.
- What is the same? Name it concretely: setting, relationship, voice, structure.
- What is different? If nothing substantial, the premise needs a new
angle; return to
what-if-generation.mdand apply "invert it" or "give it to the wrong person" to the part that overlaps. - Length? The comps' length is a check on
formandtarget-words.
Rules:
- Never invent a title, author, year, prize, or sales figure. Unverified comps are marked unverified in the notes.
- A premise that resembles an existing book is not a failure; most do. It needs one clear difference a reader would notice on the jacket.