When I first wrote my novel, I called it The Arrowhead Game. The title felt right—it captured the relic at the heart of the thriller, the Calusa arrowhead that sparks a chain of danger and discovery. But as the manuscript moved through the Adventure Writers Competition, something unexpected happened: my story began to outgrow its name.
During finalist preparations, the contest organizer and I talked about how titles shape a reader’s expectations before they’ve even read the first page. He suggested a new one—The Hurricane’s Daughter—and at first, I hesitated. Changing a title can feel like changing your child’s name after it’s learned to answer to it. Yet the more I sat with it, the more I saw how the new title didn’t replace the old story—it revealed it.
The Hurricane’s Daughter captured the novel’s true pulse: a girl caught in the storm of her family’s past, learning that survival is as much emotional as physical. “Arrowhead” spoke to the artifact; “Hurricane” spoke to the heart.
The experience taught me a lesson I want to pass on to other writers:
Titles aren’t labels—they’re lenses. They decide what the reader focuses on before the first line.
Be willing to see your story through someone else’s eyes. Sometimes a fresh perspective can uncover the story you actually wrote, not just the one you thought you wrote.
Let the theme steer the title, not the plot. A strong title should echo the story’s emotional weather, not just its props or puzzles.
So, yes—The Arrowhead Game is now The Hurricane’s Daughter, and I couldn’t be prouder. The new title fits the girl at its center, the storm that defines her, and the lesson every writer eventually learns: sometimes, to find your story’s truest name, you have to let go of the one you started with.
~ L.S.