Returning from Fall Break this week, my students have four more days before NaNoWriMo ends. We have two class periods together, plus they will write at home. Our focus this week, after months of planning our stories, collecting writing advice from authors, working through writer’s block, and figuring out how to conclude our novels, is to just get to our word goals. We know the draft we’ve written this month is very, very rough, and we know we want to revise it significantly, but this week it’s all about that sprint to the finish line.

But today, before we dive into writing, we’re going to take some time to brainstorm ideas for titles for our novels. No matter what kind of writing my students are working on, I tell them to wait on a title until they are finished. So often the best ideas for titles come from within the piece itself, so why struggle to name it if it hasn’t been written yet?

Another reason we wait to come up with our titles is that brainstorming titles can generate more ideas for our stories. We look at how authors often title novels with conflicts from the story itself (like Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why, or Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games), or with important symbols (like Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, or Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie, by Jordan Sonnenblick). The time we spend listing potential titles can give us ideas for how we will finally conclude our stories, or how we will add more words by inserting a flashback or two.

Here is the brainstorming page that my students will be using this week. You’re welcome to use it, too. Who knows, maybe the activity will inspire an entirely new ending for your novel.