What’s In a Name?

Oftentimes I struggle to come up with titles for my ideas, which is often why you may want to come up with a title early on. In fact, many great ideas can be formed just by looking at a title. I’ve had an AI generate some titles for me, and I’m going to try to write a 1-2 sentence premise for a story using that title alone. Feel free to tweet some of your ideas from these titles to me!

Enemy of the Stockade

In a prosperous and topic city, those on top enjoy the greatest privileges of life by profiting from the labor of slaves trapped in a prison known as The Stockade. Only one man was able to escape this prison, and now he’s coming back to give all his fellow inmates a chance at freedom!

Girl Behind the Counter

Amber is the kind of girl who feels her life is going nowhere, being 25 and stuck in a dead-end job at a small-town gas station. But while working the late shift one night, she witnesses the crimes of the serial killer, and now she has vital information that could lead to him being brought to justice, but also makes her a prime target for the assailant.

Nymphs of Fortune

Civilization as we know it has come to an end, as the human population is endangered and nature has retaken all that we have built. Strange creatures connected with nature called Nymphs have begun to inhabit the cities, and one of them has found a lone human baby that she decides to raise at the behest of her society, creating a small spec that could keep humanity alive.

Those are just some of the ideas I have at the top of my head. Another way you can use this exercise is to take the titles of pre-existing books and movies and completely change them from the ground up. What if The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a romantic comedy? What if The Notebook was a psychological horror film. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes, one word can create thousands of branches each with a story of their own!