Mirrors and Other Magic

Spurred on by the helpful comments I received to yesterday's Title Trouble, I've decided to be brave and post some actual-real-kind-of-sort-of options for my title/s...

So. My series has three books (why are you yawning? Wait, please don't go!), and at the mo I'm thinking of using the magical object that is important to each story as the title for each. Kind of in the vein of Philip Pullman's THE GOLDEN COMPASS, THE SUBTLE KNIFE, and THE AMBER SPYGLASS (which, if you didn't know, are epically awesome!).


So....     "The [adjective] [object]"

The object in the first book is a mirror.
It's large enough to show a person's head and shoulders.
It currently (though this is easy to change) has an ornate silver frame with amethysts set into it.
The magical part is that anyone who looks into it is protected against bodily harm.

Now YOUR part (pleeeeease!): I need an awesome [adjective] to go in front of the word mirror. Or, if your think this is a dumb series of names, please tell me (um, in a nice way!)

And if you have an adjective that has nothing to do with what I've mentioned but that sounds cool in front of mirror, tell me anyway! I can always do that sneaky thing I mentioned yesterday and go back to the text and reverse engineer something in to fit the title ;-)

Title Trouble

Please help!

Okay, so coming up with a title seems to be -- for me, at least -- one of the most challenging parts of writing a novel!







I've come up with a few possible scenarios for landing the perfect title (though none of them seem to be helping me that much!):

• The title may be the first thing you think of, and the story kinda just follows on after that.
• There may be a line in your text that sounds super awesome, and that line becomes your title.
• There may be a line that isn't part of your text (and that might not even have much to do with your story!), but you like the sound of it, so you go back to your text and cleverly reverse engineer it in somewhere (sneaky...).
• The title could be the name of a character or place in your story.
• It could be an abstract idea that your plot kinda revolves around.
• It could be an object that plays an important part in the story.

I would really like to know from YOU how you came up with a title for your novel/short story/any other kind of WIP.

I am particularly interested in the naming of novels that are part of a series.

How do you come up with the overall series name? Are the names of the individual novels all related in some way? Maybe your methods can help me find my title/s!