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Coming up with Fantasy Titles is easy! Just pick a format:

1) A _______ of _________ ; if you’re feeling dangerous making it a little longer:
2) A ________ of ________ & _________
Or go with Good Old Classic
3) ___________ of the ___________

Switch around “of” to “and” as needed or like a good boomer add a “The”, then pick from the following list:

Moon
Sword
Throne
Ash
Fire
Wolf
Prince
Sea
Crown
Midnight

I’m kidding. These are popular formats. Famous examples include:

1) The Wheel of Time; Tower of Obsidian; The Sword of Truth
2) A Court of Thorns and Roses; A Song of Ice and Fire; A Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
3) The Lord of the Rings; Gardens of the Moon; Faith of the Fallen

Again kidding – Tower of Obsidian isn’t famous.

Whether we’re talking about an individual book or are coming up with a series name, you usually need something relatively short and punchy, unique and memorable. Why short? Because it will get a nickname otherwise and, while I have no problem using ACoTaR and TLotR, those are famous, if you’re not careful it’ll be that book with the dragons and it had red. Also, it may be listed with the series title, and again, these are famous, but A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons or The Wheel of Time: Fires from Heaven; but it’s more common for books for young readers, such as Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone or Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief. I don’t know how much you care about covers but, I’d like the title not to be completely crammed in there.

The first thing I would consider if this is going to be a standalone or a series and figure out if you want a running theme. For instance, I have another series called Rogue Healer, and the format follows Person’s Something: Witchslayer’s Scion, Magus Gambit, Titan’s Ascent, and the working title for the next in the sequence is Hawk’s Flight, but that might change. I like having meaning about what’s going on in the story, so it’s not uncommon for me to be drafting and come up with a title midway or even after I have a working draft.

I had several considerations when naming A Fable of Wood and String. My father pointed out The Puppet Master was already taken and not at all original, but that was always my intended name for the duology as a whole and never each book. Several contenders included Songs Foxes Sing, Of Shepherds and Foxes, and my first solid one I came up with was A Ballad of Wood and String – music plays an integral part of the story – but The Hunger Games launched a new book/movie in 2023 (The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), so I decided that would sound too much like piggy-backing, so I changed Ballad to Fable. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone else if they chose not to do this, but my niece also is not a fan of The Hunger Games, so I wanted to distance myself between the two.

I considered A Jig of Wood and String but it didn’t sound right. To me, etymology is important, and a Fable is usually a short morality tale often featuring talking animals. It has other definitions though:

fable
noun
1. a short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters; apologue: Aesop’s fables.
the fable of the tortoise and the hare;
Aesop’s fables.
2. a story not founded on fact:
This biography is largely a self-laudatory fable.
3. a story about supernatural or extraordinary persons or incidents; legend:
the fables of gods and heroes.
4. legends or myths collectively:
the heroes of Greek fable.
5. an untruth; falsehood:
This boast of a cure is a medical fable.
6. the plot of an epic, a dramatic poem, or a play.
7. idle talk:
old wives’ fables.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fable

Most of these work, so one could argue which one I meant. It’s a work of fiction (2), but that’s using it in the vaguest way possible. I’d argue foremostly it’s also the plot of an epic (6) and about supernatural events (3), so the fact that the foxes talk are a bonus.

Wood & String has several meanings. The first and most obvious is that marionettes are traditionally made of wood (and plaster, glass, etc) and are controlled by string. The second is the mandolin Lily plays and uses is again made of wood and strings. Finally, there’s the dynamic between the fox and the jorogumo. The jorogumo spins a web of lies and deceit and catches her victims. In this case she turns them into marionettes and controls them via strings. The fox on the other hand’s normal domain is the woods. This implies a game between two supernatural creatures with human beings in the balance.

So how does one start coming up with names? This is the case whether you’re trying to come up with a business name or even for chapters. Practice. Take a book or show you love and come up with something else that would work in a pinch. It’s not as easy as it first appears, but if you practice, I promise it’ll get easier. Look up words similar to the ones that the author/creator has already used and see if you can evoke a similar mood or theme or, consider if you wanted to go for a complete rebrand. How would you do it differently?

How are you at coming up with titles? Any trends you love, others you wish would go away? Comment below.

Would it hurt you to just do as you’re told?

The O’Connell siblings live in the shadow of their parent’s past, held back by obligation to keep the people of Stagmil safe when their father has to lead the non-hunters of their village to drive off a wyvern.

Lily doesn’t trust the stranger who calls herself Madeline when she staggers into the pastoral lands. The puppeteer seems to take an interest in Lily’s talent with the family mandoline, and she teaches Lily new music. Lily’s had songs stuck in her head before, but nothing like this.

Twins Seth and Tiffany however can’t wait for their father to return so they can get on with the shearing. Seth should at least be helping hunt the wyvern, and Tiffany wants to take her best friend Molly and head to the nearest city and see the world.

The twins and several other villagers are lured by song into the woods and transformed into marionettes: Seth breaking free before he can be strung, and Lily tainted in a way she doesn’t understand. They have the skills to track the woman down, but to restore Seth to his body, and rescue Tiffany and the others?

Tracking the woman takes them far from the familiar woodlands they know, across the sea to an enchanted castle, where in an effort to rescue their sister they’ll learn something much more sinister than turning folk into puppets is going on. They’ll get help, of course, but not from who they expected.

After all, last Seth checked, foxes are only supposed to have the one tail.

Enjoy an Excerpt

The figure in black started to play something else, and the other’s eyes widened. Tiffany shouted something, and they all reached for the soft wax of the candle but didn’t know what they were doing. In the haste of grabbing the candle, it was knocked to the ground.

Seth ignored his companions and nocked his bow. “Stop what you’re doing or I’ll shoot!”

The figure seemed undeterred. Seth knew he was about to commit murder, but he didn’t care and he wouldn’t leave Louis or any of them to whatever that doppelganger was, and this thing was obviously part of this plot. He loosed the arrow, and the figure only stopped playing to bat it away with the sword hidden under the cloak. Impossible, Seth thought, nocking another with a second between his fingers for quick redraw. He might not be the finest archer—but at this range he didn’t have to be, and no one could deflect arrows in succession for long.

Someone screamed. It looked like Rebecca was caught in a web when she tried to bolt from the glen between two trees. Seth unsheathed his long knife and went to help her, but the figure of Not-Lily appeared, taking off her face and standing near Rebecca. The face was completely blank underneath; Seth let out a surprised gasp before she replaced that face with something with six red eyes, two in the normal place with another four running up her forehead.

Then he saw it—her—grow. The lower half of her body swelled and became massive, bulbous, like the back half of a centaur; her body remained about the same size, but rather than fur and four legs, shimmering black hair and eight legs protruded from the torso, longer at the bend than Dale was tall. She towered over Rebecca. A giant spider . . . woman? There was something eerily feminine about it, a sort of terrible beauty that froze him when his instincts told him to move. She stepped over Rebecca, barrelling down on Seth. He loosed another arrow at her head, but she dodged and shot out webbing from her hands that knocked him backwards, pinning him to the grass. More spider silk flew and pinned his arm to the grass.

Seth tried to wriggle free the monster chased after Dale, and to Seth’s horror, caught him with long strands at his wrists, and wrangled him like a marionette. Dale wriggled against the webbing and she dragged him back, and it seemed that he was transforming in the shadow, shrinking and becoming . . . something else. Seth unbuttoned his over shirt to try to free himself.

Dale was reduced to the size of a doll, and the spider had shifted him to a web in the canopy before going after Tiffany. Brigid flailed between two trees, seemingly stuck in a giant web.

Louis cut Seth free and thrust the bow into Seth’s hand. He shouted something and Seth realized that if he got her attention, there wouldn’t be another time. Louis released his sling in the dark. Seth couldn’t see the rock’s trajectory but the spider reeled, leaving Tiffany and moved with intent on the pair of them. They darted in opposite directions, and by luck the creature honed in on Louis, giving Seth enough time to fire. The arrow bounced off the creature’s bulbous body.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seth thought he saw a fox or coyote dart from the bush and bound through the grass. It ran behind the mandolin-playing creature and bit it in the butt. Suddenly there were two people, but Seth couldn’t watch them.

Seth let loose another arrow, narrowly missing the torso, and shouted at the others to run—he wasn’t sure who it had now, was it Rebecca or Molly? The light was too poor for him to be certain, but whoever the spider held she was shrinking fast.

The creature turned, six red and black eyes focused on Seth, and came down on him with full force. Seth found his limbs caught by two bands of silk and forced above his head, and he was hoisted into the air. He locked eyes with Louis who was looking not only smaller, but . . . wooden. Against his control, Seth raised his hands to his ears and removed the wax, and sound same rushing back.

About the Author L.T. Getty is a Manitoba Paramedic. She received her degree in English in 2006 from the University of Winnipeg, and has gone on to write several novels. Her latest title, Titan’s Ascent, is a sword and sorcery forthcoming from Champagne Books for 2025.

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