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A thread about how I come up with story titles Sharing just in case it helps anybody; while I don't think I'm the best at titles, coming up with them is an exercise I actually kind of enjoy!
I'll be using examples from my table of contents
I love using poetry to find titles. Pick a central word for a story—maybe butterfly, or storm, or trickster. Go to http://poetryfoundation.org , search using that keyword, and pick poems out at random then skim them looking for inspiration.
A variation of this is just looking through your own poetry books or files to see if something might strike inspiration, even if it’s just loosely related. I have TextEdit files on my computer as well as notebooks of poems that I've copied by hand that I leaf through.
I did this with Only Unclench Your Hand, a short story I wrote about a mambabarang, or a Filipino bug sorcerer. I skimmed my poetry files for “Witch” and found Witch Burning by Sylvia Plath: https://allpoetry.com/Witch-Burning (it is so freaking good)
It was extra-perfect because the phrase that precedes it goes “Mother of beetles” and in fact my character uses beetles to curse someone. Sometimes writing really surprises me with its serendipity.
Another example: “A Cup of Salt Tears” is from Oscar Wilde’s “The Disciple.” It's not directly related to the story, but “sweet waters” to “salt tears” evoked lovely sadness in the way I wanted. Also: death, beauty, mirroring. http://www.literaturepage.com/read/wilde-essays-lectures-124.html
(2) Associations. This is more vague, but essentially the idea is to think of Nouns relating to the story—even extremely obvious ones—and just think what else that connotes. Then try to finagle it into something pleasing to the ear.
Ex. Milagroso is a story about a questionable miracle in a small Filipino town. "Miracle" by itself in English is boring, and has associations that I don't want for the story. So I looked up what “miracle” is in Tagalog: “himala” and “milagro.”
Milagro didn’t have the sound I wanted, but it was the right choice over “Himala” because there’s at least slightly more of an association to a non-Tagalog speaker because of its Spanish origins, ie, it might vaguely make one think of "miracle."
So I looked up “miraculous” instead—the adjective—and found "milagroso," which worked for me sound-wise and also properly captured the essence of the story. (When I find a single world title it is like striking effing gold.)
Another example: “Misty” is a title of a short story I wrote that’s set in Monterey, CA. We were on a family trip there once and my dad mention there was a thriller movie called “Play Misty for Me” set in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
I was planning to submit a short story to a horror YA anthology. I didn’t know what the plot would be yet, but I thought it would be interesting to use that setting, and this vague idea of a stalker.
The movie itself references the song “Misty,” where the opening line is: “Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.” Pretty terrifying for a story about a stalker.
It also works with the song "Misty Blue," because my story has a character dealing with loss and grief.
It also works with the song "Misty Blue," because my story has a character dealing with loss and grief.
(3) Title as anchor. This one sometimes feels a bit like a cheat: it’s when the title feels like an inevitability, and I don’t really have advice for this one except when it comes to you…grab it! In some cases I have the title before the story itself.
Ex. I’d wanted to write a story about girls in a retreat house for a while (it would involve a dark summoning, though I didn’t know exactly how). Retreat connotes religion, so my brain would just sometimes free-associate religious terms when ruminating on that story.
The word “Canticle” came to me once—vaguely, so I went to look it up, and found that it means: a hymn or chant, typically with a biblical text. That seemed to capture a lot of what I wanted for the story. All in one noun! Great.
But “A Canticle” by itself didn’t work, so I asked: whose story is this? My schoolgirls. And what defines them? Many things, but in terms of evocation "lost" seemed to capture a lot of it. Lost Girls to me feels too on-the-nose, but with “A Canticle” it's more interesting.
Another example: Asphalt, River came to me just as that parallel: Manila is a city of sidewalks, concrete, harshness; but there’s something also organic and alive in it, as in a river. Asphalt/River was good, but by itself it didn't capture the rest of the story.
I can’t remember when I added in Mother, Child—maybe at the end—but at that point it seemed to fit because my story opens with a grandma (well, an underworld goddess who is grandma-like) and a girl. I like the quasi-religious connotations, too.
(4) Bending a known thing, like a song title. I did this with “Hurricane Heels”—because the rhythm of that story, to me, fits “Hurricane Jane” by The Black Kids (sonically, rhythmically, and the line “kicked me down and left me for dead”). Is it songfic-esque? MAYBE.
(We Go Down Dancing), the parenthesis subtitle, is me giving a nod to fanfic conventions AND Fall Out Boy’s Sugar, We’re Goin Down. This is both embarrassing and entirely apt for my tired millennial magical girls who totally bopped to Patrick Stump in high school/college.
(5) Looking at the text itself. Sometimes the right line or phrase or word is just in the story. Reread the piece and think about what’s in it, and try titles on for size. Write down key phrases and flex them in different ways.
This one’s slightly tricky because I am sometimes unsure whether the title came to me first and then I just sneakily jammed it into the text, or vice versa—examples would be “An Ocean the Color of Bruises" and "Find Me" (these aren't in the collection, but they come to mind).
Anyway hopefully that helps! Other options: asking friends, taking long walks, smacking your head against a pillow. Godspeed with your story-titling!! 
Since this being re-shared, in case you're curious, I have some more examples + details in this post, plus a section on how I came up with the collection's overall title (and some discarded options). https://visyap.substack.com/p/another-girl-with-bright-eyes
https://visyap.substack.com/p/another-girl-with-bright-eyes
