In which Clare talks about writing - day seventeen

[astreamofstars]

I suspect this might not be fair, as my masterlist is mostly full of short ficlets, but never mind!

1.) Go to my master fic list and pick out a line or two from one of my stories. (Must be a full line, please -- no sentence fragments or speech tags or other such nonsense

Comments

[astreamofstars]

Hee! I know that one. It's Crystalline :)

Titles are a pain in the ass. I'm tempted to do an Epics post where we give vague descriptions of fics we're working on, and get other people to title them for us.

[somadanne]

However, at other times they go through about three transitions

I've done this, too! I have one fic that I still think of with its original title. (I abandoned it after finding that title had been used for real books, including one I found fascinating but that was also quite morbid, lol.) Anyway, I always have to ask myself what it was I ended up calling that particular fic, and while I do like the title and it truly fits the fic, I'd thought of it for so long with the original title, so that's how I think of it first.

[somadanne]

I usually just end up stealing a word or a phrase I like from within the fic and using that.

I actually think that's a great way to come up with a title, LOL. But I have the same issue you do--it's usually very hard to come up with something.

I've also had it happen where I've come up with a title I really like and then discover it's already been used. In those cases, they were originally used for drabbles and were quite different from what I'd written, so I contacted the authors and asked if they were okay if I used the titles. Both were thankfully gracious about that. I wouldn't have done that if their stuff had been full-length fic, though.

With my last fic, I was desperate for a title and asked my betas for help. Thankfully, I got a note back from tjonesy saying that a certain phrase in the fic ("Light and Laughter") would work well as the title--and it did.

I suspect I will go the easy route and just number the chapters.

I actually prefer this. When individual chapters get names, I get confused, lol.