As a news writer, after I do all my research and interviews, I find it difficult to actually sit down and write the story until I have an angle to attack it from. Usually, this is the lede, but sometimes it’s a grasp of how the first couple of paragraphs will turn out.
Once I have that, I find the structure of the rest of the article just flows right along from there.
At least one other writer in my newsroom writes his ledes last, though. I guess he gets all the info structured, then introduces it. It’s not wrong per se, just completely foreign to my experience.
Headlines, in case you’re unfamiliar with the way that newspapers work, are written dead last — and they’re not even written by the reporter, rather they are written to fit into the space available by the person doing layout.
I suspect that book titles are similar. And in fact, this post at The Rumpus takes a look at what makes a good title, how some titles are very bad, and why authors don’t always come up with the best ones:
The point is, though, when it comes to the writing process, sometimes a bad title can help you more than a good one. In their book Deepening Fiction, Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren talk about the idea of creative beginnings versus actual beginnings: Even if we end up cutting the original “creative beginning” of a novel or short story—the part of the novel or story, often, that we’re most attached to—this doesn’t mean it’s not an essential part of the writing process. In some ways, it’s the most essential. The same goes for titles, I think. I’ve heard students tell me they come up with their titles first, before they have the slightest notion of a plot. I see nothing wrong with this, so long as they’re willing to give up their “creative title” when it no longer serves the story.
There is also a good, thought-provoking list of Titles To Avoid. I will keep them all in mind.
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