What to call my story?

In a succinct summary:
The story is about the life of a 16-year-old boy, Owen Ares, who works as a bounty hunter. Owen goes on missions to help make ends meet with his mother Audrey Ares who is also a bounty hunter. Bounty hunting is a government authorized occupation and there are bounty hunter organizations that you can enter. Owen goes through several missions with his friends James Tremain and Sandra Hale. They do missions like chasing outlaws/fugitives, investigations, bodyguard duty, etc.

So with that short summary, here are the 4 title ideas I have in mind. Please choose which one you like and why I should go with it. Or if you have a better title idea, write it down. :)

Title 1: Leon Fang
Name of the bounty hunter organization the main character works for.

Title 2: Dawn Defect
Name of the power that the main antagonist organization is searching for.

Title 3: Hunter Ares
The occupation of the main character, which is Bounty "Hunter", and his last name Owen "Ares."

Title 4: Power Hunter
The story is generally about bounty hunters with superpowers.

I normally think way too much about titles, but I do have some thoughts.

In my opinion, titles should reflect the main idea of the book. So, I want you to think about your story idea for a bit. What are the main characters doing? How are they going about doing this? What's the main conflict running throughout the story? What's your message you're trying to get across?

If your story revolves around one idea, or power that heavily influences just about everything the characters are doing, I would name it off of that. So for me, that sounds like "Dawn Defect". Although, I might add a "the" in front of it, so people know it's an object of some sort.

Long story short, I vote for "The Dawn Defect".

Nolafus said:

I normally think way too much about titles, but I do have some thoughts.

In my opinion, titles should reflect the main idea of the book. So, I want you to think about your story idea for a bit. What are the main characters doing? How are they going about doing this? What's the main conflict running throughout the story? What's your message you're trying to get across?

If your story revolves around one idea, or power that heavily influences just about everything the characters are doing, I would name it off of that. So for me, that sounds like "Dawn Defect". Although, I might add a "the" in front of it, so people know it's an object of some sort.

Long story short, I vote for "The Dawn Defect".

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Okay thank you!
and yes, the general idea is that money isn't everything and with new powers, you must use it to protect others. And with many villains in pursuit of Dawn Defect, the heroes use their powers to stop them from achieving their evil plans. And it's a graphic novel so it will be long term and not a one-shot book. :)

The main point of a title for me is to have something that ties into the story's plot, but isn't so blatantly obvious as to how (i.e. if you're going to put the main character's name directly in the title, I'm likely not going to read it). I personally think that "Dawn Defect" or "Leon Fang" are excellent because they don't sound like they're directly taken from the story, even though they are. That sort of usage is the mark of any skilled writer, in my opinion anyways.

Personally, Leon Fang sounds darned cool.. I dont really like the Hunter Ares and ones regarding hunting... they sound kind of stoopid. No offense or anything, but Leon Fang sounds cool.

Although The Dawn Defect sounds pretty damn good too. Id consider those two.

Incinermyn said:

The main point of a title for me is to have something that ties into the story's plot, but isn't so blatantly obvious as to how (i.e. if you're going to put the main character's name directly in the title, I'm likely not going to read it). I personally think that "Dawn Defect" or "Leon Fang" are excellent because they don't sound like they're directly taken from the story, even though they are. That sort of usage is the mark of any skilled writer, in my opinion anyways.

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Haha yeah, I was kinda thinking of Detective Conan, Naruto, and Harry Potter when it came down to naming it after the character. xD

But okay cool. I can tell that Dawn Defect is the popular opinion so far. Thank you!

SuperEspeon said:

Personally, Leon Fang sounds darned cool.. I dont really like the Hunter Ares and ones regarding hunting... they sound kind of stoopid. No offense or anything, but Leon Fang sounds cool.

Although The Dawn Defect sounds pretty damn good too. Id consider those two.

Click to expand...

Thank you! :)
I think I might go with Dawn Defect because I'm a sucker for alliteration lol.

There are issues with putting forth a "title" character. It works well for some things (like The "Jason" Bourne series), but not so well in others (Harry Potter, Naruto, etc.). To me, it's generally redundant to put a character's name in the title, especially when the story itself may not even follow that specific character all the time. Any good novel I've read generally had the title tie into the story's central theme (i.e. The Da Vinci Code about a secret code encrypted into Leonardo Da Vinci's artworks, The Loch about a marine biologist finding evidence that the Loch Ness monster actually exists, The Golden Compass about a magical compass that deciphers the truth behind things in a different reality, etc.). The more important thing is to avoid linear thinking. That generally leads to generic titles and bad puns. :P

As an extra piece of advice, you want a title that will catch potential reader's eyes. No matter if you're posting on a forum or attempting to publish your book, your title needs to get attention drawn to it. It's pretty much what potential readers see first before they know anything else about your story, aside from who wrote it. (It's interesting to see what is put in bigger font on the cover of a story: the author, the series name, or the book title. I can go on about this, but be warned that I will be talking about my favorite subject!)

You'll want a title that sounds good and makes people wonder what the story will be about.

That said, The Dawn Defect is my choice out of the four. It's interesting and easy-to-remember.