Writing Filter

[the_rck]

Picking titles for fics is hard for me. I hate, hate, hate assigning titles. I usually do it late in my writing process, generally at the last minute, right before I post. Unless inspiration strikes, I pull out the dictionary and start browsing. I make a list of words that seem to vaguely fit the fic. Later, I'll eliminate the ones I can't pronounce, the ones that are too generic, the ones I dislike and so on. Somewhere in there, I'll google the candidates with the fandom name to see if someone else has used them. I don't want to duplicate a title.

The downside of this is that I end up with titles that are...um...esoteric might be the word for them. They're often things I need to define in order to have readers know what they mean and often scientific terms with very specific meanings ("Rheotaxis," "Symphysis," "Zymogenesis"). I know that puts off some readers (I also put off readers with my subject matter, themes, fandoms, pairings and so on. I'm not sure if the titles make it worse or not). In rare fandoms, I have more leeway to use normal words than I do in big fandoms ("Rustication," "Fulcrum," "Endowment").

My titles tend to be only one word. That's become both habit and affectation. I'm trying to decide if I want to try to break that or if it's easier to have some guidelines/limitations to work with. It's not as if there aren't a vast number of words out there. Of course, it's hard to manage allusions or quotations in titles if I only use one word.

I'm thinking about titles right now because I have three stories to name, the Harry Potter AU (stalled out at 3.5 chapters until I have time for it again), a new shortish (I hope!) Weiss fic and the crossover fic. The last of those is the most urgent as it has a deadline. The other two are still just for me and one or two others who don't demand titles. I'll probably want to post them eventually, though, and they'll need titles then.

Comments

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

I, too, dislike titles, unless I start a story out with one, which is rare. I like the one-word title thing you've got going very much, personally. :)

[the_rck]

I have a mild temptation to break it for the Harry Potter AU, but I also have a fairly strong suspicion that the quotation that keeps poking at me for that is utterly inappropriate and only tangentially related to the themes. ::googles for exact text:: Or maybe it isn't. I have no idea where the fic is going in the long run. Right now, it wants a line from Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" for a title or maybe simply to appropriate that title.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

What's the line?

[the_rck]

The initial impulse was either 'infinity in the palm of your hand' or 'eternity in an hour.' Looking at the rest of the poem, there may be more suitable candidates, and I kind of like 'Auguries of Innocence' too. It fits in several ways and would be ironic in others.

[odosgirl.livejournal.com]

I share your difficulty in creating titles for anything I write. My fiction divides roughly in half this way: either I have a title in my head from the beginning, or else I have nothing that seems to fit. I now understand why so many romance novels have forgettable or annoying titles because I'm having the devil's own time coming up with a title for my own.

Oh, and I'm probably too busy to take it on now, but I'm sure that at some point I'd love to read your HP fic, just as long as your version of Snape isn't irredeemably evil. I can't do Evil!Snape. :-)

[the_rck]

Snape hasn't been in the fic much so far, just a few paragraphs of flashback. He did a lot to set up the situation in the story by making what he viewed as the best of several sets of really rotten choices. (The set up for the story involves Draco getting cursed with fairly detailed and insanity inducing precognition. Snape was the one who filtered and interpreted those visions to try to reach the least awful possible future.)

I may bring him back later, but right now, he's on the run and hiding. Harry and his friends have won and owe it in part to him, but Harry's never going to admit it. Also, Snape did a few things that were necessary but that, if Harry (or a few other people) found out about it, would get him killed messily.

My impression is that some romance titles are publisher imposed.

[odosgirl.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a very intriguing version of both Snape and Draco (have you read book 6? -- the dynamic between Snape and Draco there is actually pretty compelling).

I wouldn't doubt that some romance publishers dictate titles. Probably other genres as well, but romances often seem to get treated and managed as "product."

[the_rck]

I had to read books six and seven to work on this AU. The divergence event is in book six when Draco actually succeeds in killing Dumbledore. (I think that the true divergence is in the character of Draco's parents in that they raised a child who could become a murderer. That drives some other differences later in the timeline.) At any rate, things go rather badly for Draco after that. The fic is set something like six years later, when the war is finally over.

Romances do get treated as product. The books in various lines of category romances seem to be treated as interchangeable, as if it doesn't matter who wrote a particular book, just which label is on it. I've seen series that involve the same characters but that have each volume written by a different person. The quality really does vary a lot. The writers generally have the discipline to focus on the same things, but the details of the focus differ. It's a little weird as a reading experience.

[odosgirl.livejournal.com]

That does sound odd. I haven't read too many category romances, except for a couple of the older regencies. I tend to go for longer stand-alone historicals (Georgian or Regency period is my favorite, but I enjoy Victorian era stuff as well), and I definitely have specific authors I favor (as well as ones I stay away from).