Writing a manuscript for a new book can be hard work. It’s especially hard if you feel as though you have to follow certain traditions or patterns. For example, the order in which you write your book. We each learned the rules of writing in English class throughout our school careers, from middle school through college. But rules were meant to be broken, weren’t they?
You may be under the impression you have to write your book in order. Title, chapter one, then chapter two, then on to chapter three and so on. I used to write every book this way. Then I found myself wanting to write out of order. Sometimes I had a great idea for a title, but no story. Sometimes I had the story, but no title. I had ideas for the middle of the story but wasn’t sure of how the story should begin. So, I started writing whatever I actually had available. If I had a middle planned out, I started working on the middle of the story and came back to the beginning at a later time. If I wasn’t sure about the title, I came up with a “working title” for the sake of having a title for my current project.
What Is A Working Title?
Perhaps you’ve heard this term before, but you weren’t sure of what it meant. A working title is a temporary name for a project, which can be a production, a product, a film or TV show, a book, a song or video game, while it’s still in development. I prefer to use working titles now more than ever. Sometimes I come up with a title for a book, and halfway through my writing I start to feel differently about the title. Sometimes I’m unable to come up with a title at all, so I just slap a name on my writing project just so I can separate it from the other projects I’m working on. For example, I’m working on the third Witch of Fulton Lane book, and the working title is The Third Sister. I liked the title when I first came up with it, but now, I’m not entirely sure. So, it’s a working title that will most likely change before the book is published. The original working title for Valentine 5: The Queen’s Fold was simply Five. It took me a long time to come up with a title I was happy with.
While you’re writing your book you don’t need to commit to a title. You can use a working title and come up with something you really like later on. I don’t commit to a title until I’m ready to publish the book. If you use a print-on-demand publisher such as Amazon’s KDP, once you begin the process of filling out the form to publish you book and you enter the title and move on to the interior and the cover, that title is now the title. You’re stuck with it. So, give yourself some time and some room to think and change your mind.
Keep writing everyone.
