Working Title
Quick answer: A working title is the provisional name a story carries during drafting. Learn why famous books changed titles and how to choose and test your final one.
A working title is the provisional name a piece of fiction carries while it is being written, adopted for convenience and held loosely, with everyone involved understanding it may change before publication. In other words, it is the name on the folder, not the name on the cover, a handle for the work rather than a promise about it.
The term operates everywhere from a writer's drafts folder to publishing contracts, where books are routinely acquired 'under the working title' of whatever the author typed first. For a working writer the concept carries a quiet craft lesson: titles are decisions, made and remade, and treating your first label as sacred is a small but real creative trap.
Famous covers that almost said something else
Literary history is a museum of discarded working titles. F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to call his 1925 novel 'Trimalchio in West Egg', among several other candidates, and had to be talked into 'The Great Gatsby' by his editor and wife; he was still second-guessing the choice as the book went to press. George Orwell drafted his last novel as 'The Last Man in Europe' before he and his publisher settled on '1984'. Margaret Mitchell's manuscript went through titles including 'Tomorrow Is Another Day' before becoming 'Gone with the Wind', and Harper Lee's 'Atticus' grew into 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.
The pattern in these stories is worth noticing: the working titles were usually narrower, naming a character, a place, a single thread, while the final titles named the book's resonance. That is the ordinary trajectory. Early in drafting you know your subject; only late do you know your meaning, which is why the title decision genuinely belongs at the end.
What a working title does for the draft
A working title's first job is administrative, distinguishing this file from the others, but its second job is psychological and surprisingly strong: a name makes a project feel real, which helps you return to it. Some writers exploit this deliberately, titling drafts with private jokes or bald descriptions, 'sad lighthouse story', 'the one where the wedding burns', precisely so no false grandeur attaches before the story earns any.
The risk runs the other way. A working title chosen early can quietly steer the draft, tugging scenes toward the label instead of letting the story find its own centre; a piece called 'Forgiveness' will feel pressure to forgive. And familiarity breeds false certainty. After months of typing a phrase, it sounds inevitable, though its only virtue may be repetition. The professional posture is to use the handle gratefully and re-open the question, honestly and late, when you can finally read the story as a stranger might.
Turning a working title into a final one
When the draft is done, audit the label. Generate fifteen or twenty candidates fast, mining the story's own language for phrases that carry double weight, an object that recurs, a line of dialogue with an edge, an image from the ending, and test the strongest against three questions: does it intrigue a stranger, does it mean more after reading than before, and does it fit the story's register rather than a grander one. Titles that mean more afterwards, the mockingbird kind, are the craft's quiet ideal.
Check the practical layer too: search the title to see how crowded it is, say it aloud for rhythm, and confirm it is not doing the story's job for it. The trap to avoid is the spoiler title, the label that announces the twist or the theme so plainly that the ending arrives pre-chewed. In contest submissions the title is your first tested line, read in a list beside dozens of others, and a specific, resonant one earns a first flicker of goodwill before your opening sentence gets its chance.
Working title, subtitle, and series title
The final title is the neighbouring term, obviously, but the family is larger. A subtitle is the explanatory second line more common in nonfiction, rare in fiction outside satire and period pastiche. A series title names the container across volumes while each book keeps its own, and a running head or file slug is the purely functional identifier production teams use.
Confusion mostly arises in contracts and announcements, where 'working title' flags that the name may still change; when a deal is reported under one, nobody involved has promised the bookshop shelf will ever say it.
What poets can take from this
- Name drafts with plain, private handles so no false grandeur sets in early.
- Re-open the title question only when the draft is finished and readable cold.
- Mine the story's own language for candidates before reaching for abstractions.
- Prefer titles that mean more after reading than before it.
- Say finalists aloud, search their crowding, and never let one spoil the ending.
Try it yourself
Finish any current draft, then write twenty candidate titles for it in ten minutes: five from objects in the story, five from dialogue, five from the ending's imagery, five as pure risk. Sleep on the list and circle the one that unsettles you slightly. Write a paragraph on why.
Questions
Should I mention that my title is a working title when submitting?
No. Submit under the best title you currently have and let it stand; editors assume titles may be discussed if the piece is accepted. Flagging your own title as provisional just spends confidence for nothing.
Do editors and publishers change authors' titles?
Often, and usually collaboratively; 'The Great Gatsby' and '1984' both emerged from exactly that negotiation. Magazine editors change story titles less frequently than book publishers, but suggestions are a normal part of acceptance.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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