I modified my random title generators. One complaint I got from people was that too many of the titles sounded like Perry Mason stories.
Background to the Random Title Generators
I used a few writer’s prompts on-line. Although I found them useful, they didn’t seem to have a lot of variety. The same or similar prompts would start to show up after a while. So, I decided to create my own.
I set up the random title generator with three elements:
Noun/Person – This is either a person or thing that is the object of the title. The current versions of the generators have 158 animals, 17 Flowers, 44 foods, 898 persons, 295 places, 646 things, and 206 vehicles.
Adjective – This is a descriptor for the noun/person. The current versions of the generators have 1,425 adjectives.
Article/verb – This is an opener for the title. For example: “The,” “A(n),” “Investing in a,” “The Parable of the,” “The Case of the,” “The Wisdom of the,” and “The Werewolf and the.” The current versions of the title generators have 726 article/verbs between them.
Because not all adjectives, article/verbs make sense with some nouns/persons, I split the generator into two. Some of the words are common between the two, but others are unique to each. Between the two title generators they can generate about 554,000,000 unique titles.
I plan to add more words to the generators. If you have any suggestions, by all means get in touch with me. I can provide you with the current word lists.
The Modification
The complaint was that many of the articles/verbs I used in the generators tended to make the title sound like a Perry Mason story. I did add more article/verb options to address this, but I had another idea. I added an option where the random article/verb is always “The” or “A(n)”.
I believe that this gives more ambiguous titles. This will allow for broader interpretation and creativity by writers.