{"id":"create-story-title-options","audience":"college","category":"creative-writing","technique":"constraints","track":"writing","title":"Brainstorm story titles that don't give away the ending","free":false,"task":"You finished a short story for your fiction workshop but hate the working title. Get exactly 5 numbered title ideas, each formatted \"1. Title - from: detail\", where the detail is an image or object that's really in your story. Titles under 6 words with no colons or subtitles, under 90 words in total, plain text. None may hint at the ending, and skip the words your professor called overused: echoes, whispers, shadows.","materialLabel":"Your story summary and notes (attached to your prompt automatically)","material":"STORY SUMMARY - working title \"The Letter\" (Fiction Workshop 220, about 3,500 words)\n\nNadia, 19, cleans out her late grandmother's apartment in Cleveland over one weekend. Details in the story:\n- a jar of buttons sorted by color on the windowsill\n- a radio stuck on a polka station\n- the grandmother's green wool coat with a bus ticket from 1971 in the pocket\n- a locked sewing box Nadia can't open until the last scene\n- snow piling on the fire escape the whole weekend\n\nENDING (don't spoil it!): the sewing box holds letters showing that her grandmother had a twin brother nobody in the family knew about, and the bus ticket was the day she left him in Detroit.\n\nWorkshop notes:\n- classmates said the story is \"quiet but sad\"\n- the professor wants the title to come from something concrete in the story\n- I like titles that are a little odd","rules":[{"type":"numberedItems","count":5},{"type":"maxWords","max":90},{"type":"plainText"}],"mistakes":[{"title":"Titles that spoil the twist","why":"The AI reads your whole summary, ending included, and picks the most dramatic thing: the secret twin.","fix":"Add: \"Don't hint at the ending: no twin, brother, secret or Detroit.\"","checks":["r1"]},{"title":"Getting the stock title words","why":"AI titles lean on 'Echoes', 'Whispers' and 'Shadows of...', the words your professor called overused.","fix":"Add: \"No echoes, whispers or shadows. No colons or subtitles.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Titles from nowhere","why":"The AI invents images that aren't in your story.","fix":"Show it: \"1. Title - from: the jar of buttons\" and say each must come from a real detail.","checks":["r0","numberedItems"]},{"title":"Trusting the AI to count words","why":"AI is bad at counting. Ask for a total and it often lands 20% over.","fix":"Cap each line: \"each line under 14 words.\"","checks":["maxWords"]},{"title":"Forgetting where it's going","why":"AI adds bold and headings that show up as stray symbols in your workshop notes.","fix":"Add: \"Plain text, no bold, no headings.\"","checks":["plainText"]}],"promptHints":[{"label":"Protects the ending","patterns":["spoil","ending","twist","give away"]},{"label":"Bans stock words","patterns":["echoes","whispers","shadows","overused"]},{"label":"Ties titles to details","patterns":["from:","detail","concrete","image"]},{"label":"Says how many titles","patterns":["\\b(5|five)\\b.{0,25}(title|idea|option)","exactly \\d+","numbered"]},{"label":"Sets a length limit","patterns":["\\d+\\s*words","word (limit|count)","under \\d+"]}],"hint":"The AI will reach for the twist and the usual title words. Tell it to stay away from the ending, ban the stock words, and tie each title to a real detail.","rubricLabels":["Each 'from:' names a detail that is actually in the summary (buttons, the polka radio, the green coat, the bus ticket, the sewing box, the snow on the fire escape)","No title or detail hints at the ending (no twin, brother, sibling, hidden family, secret letters or Detroit)","No title uses 'echoes', 'whispers' or 'shadows', and no title has a colon or subtitle"]}