(no subject)
So is it bad when the guy who serves you every Friday after work at Swiss Chalet now recognises you on the street and strikes up a conversation when you're both on your way to work? >.> I'm suspect it's even worse than the guy at the Greek place across from the office still able to ask me if I want the usual even after I haven't been there in a couple months.
Anyway, for no particular reason - except that I'm clearly procrastinating about work - I'm going to talk about story titles.
I know this has come up a few times lately though I couldn't for the life of me tell you where because I filed it away as an interesting topic I'd like to come back to when I had the time and then promptly forgot where I'd seen it. I think coming up with titles is a really interesting process, but whenever anyone puts up a poll about it I have trouble answering because it's not the same for me from story to story. Sometimes I have a title right away. Sometimes I agonise about it after the story's already done. Sometimes it comes from another source, sometimes it's a reference from within the story and sometimes it's something else entirely.
These are the six stories (plus one) that I've posted so far in the Supernatural fandom, and how their titles came to be.
Somewhere There's a Bluer Sky
This is a story that stayed untitled until I was at least halfway through it; it didn't even have a working title (which I'll often do even if I know it's going to change, because aesthetically I like having the title up there at the top; it's just a thing). It's a song lyric but I can't for the life of me tell you from what song; I was just listening to music as I was writing one day and the words stuck in my head as a phrase that was really relevant to what I was trying to say. Sometimes I guess it just happens that way.
Through Me The Way Among The People Lost
Okay, for this one I deliberately went looking in Dante's Inferno for a title. It'd been a long time since I read it, but a) just in general I knew it followed some of the same themes I was exploring in the story and b) I just had this feeling I'd once read something that would work perfectly. This is not, however, the phrase that had been niggling in my memory. It turned out I remembered it wrong and it just didn't work at all. But this, this line was everything I could possibly have wanted in the title. In addition to referencing the work that I wanted to reference, it works on its own even knowing nothing about the source (which I think is really important when chosing a quote or a lyric; if it only works for you, it doesn't really work).
The Fifth Annual Hank Pyle Memorial Poker Game
This one is exactly what it looks like it is. :D I wanted to write a story about that generation of hunters and this was the title before I even wrote the first word of it. The only thing that changed was Hank Pyle's name.
Wish You Were Here
Right up until this story was almost finished the title was "It Is Not Inertia Alone", and I never expected that to change. But as I was closing in on the end I realised that the story had veered a little from my original vision; it was a little bit darker and explored some areas that seem absolutely necessary now but hadn't really occurred to me when I was starting it. I seriously listened to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" over a hundred times when I was writing this, and I came to realise that it just said what I wanted it to say. (As a side note, putting a song on repeat is something I do all the time when I'm writing, so it's not entirely weird.) Like the title that came from Inferno, this works on its own to sum up the themes of the story without ever knowing the source, but in this case in particular I think knowing the source makes the title richer.
This Foreign City
I had a lot of trouble titling this one. I think I went through and discarded at least a dozen over the course of writing it, and while none of them were terrible they all felt a little clumsy and ill-fitting. I ended up reading a book of WWII poetry while taking a break from it, partly because the theme of war was in my head and partly because reading poetry or short stories while taking breaks takes me away from writing for less time than diving into a novel, and I came across the poem "The Refugee" by Marjorie Battcock, which I'd never read before but just completely stuck with me. It's about returning from war to find your home a changed and ill-fitting place and, well, so's the story. :)
Inheritance
This also went titleless until it was finished (IIRC, I'd just written "Untitled Summerlove Fic" at the top so I wouldn't have blank space), but once I was done I reread everything I'd written and I didn't even have to think about it, the title was just clear to me. It's exactly what the story is about, in both literal and less tangible ways. I used to use a lot of one-work titles for things and find I do it a lot less than I used to, but here I think it really works.
Prodigal Children
This is the WIP that's most likely to be finished next, and really the thing that got me wanting to talk about titles today. It's gone through at least three titles already and I think I've settled on this, but there's this little part of me that wonders if it entirely fits, and also if it's a little bit cliche. The story does deal with rebelling against the father and returning to the fold (for a certain definition of father), but in the end I'm not sure that's entirely what it's about. Still, it's the best thing I've come up with so far, but the process on this one isn't over quite yet. :)
And now I should probably really try to get some work done before someone notices that all this typing isn't on something productive.
Anyway, for no particular reason - except that I'm clearly procrastinating about work - I'm going to talk about story titles.
I know this has come up a few times lately though I couldn't for the life of me tell you where because I filed it away as an interesting topic I'd like to come back to when I had the time and then promptly forgot where I'd seen it. I think coming up with titles is a really interesting process, but whenever anyone puts up a poll about it I have trouble answering because it's not the same for me from story to story. Sometimes I have a title right away. Sometimes I agonise about it after the story's already done. Sometimes it comes from another source, sometimes it's a reference from within the story and sometimes it's something else entirely.
These are the six stories (plus one) that I've posted so far in the Supernatural fandom, and how their titles came to be.
Somewhere There's a Bluer Sky
This is a story that stayed untitled until I was at least halfway through it; it didn't even have a working title (which I'll often do even if I know it's going to change, because aesthetically I like having the title up there at the top; it's just a thing). It's a song lyric but I can't for the life of me tell you from what song; I was just listening to music as I was writing one day and the words stuck in my head as a phrase that was really relevant to what I was trying to say. Sometimes I guess it just happens that way.
Through Me The Way Among The People Lost
Okay, for this one I deliberately went looking in Dante's Inferno for a title. It'd been a long time since I read it, but a) just in general I knew it followed some of the same themes I was exploring in the story and b) I just had this feeling I'd once read something that would work perfectly. This is not, however, the phrase that had been niggling in my memory. It turned out I remembered it wrong and it just didn't work at all. But this, this line was everything I could possibly have wanted in the title. In addition to referencing the work that I wanted to reference, it works on its own even knowing nothing about the source (which I think is really important when chosing a quote or a lyric; if it only works for you, it doesn't really work).
The Fifth Annual Hank Pyle Memorial Poker Game
This one is exactly what it looks like it is. :D I wanted to write a story about that generation of hunters and this was the title before I even wrote the first word of it. The only thing that changed was Hank Pyle's name.
Wish You Were Here
Right up until this story was almost finished the title was "It Is Not Inertia Alone", and I never expected that to change. But as I was closing in on the end I realised that the story had veered a little from my original vision; it was a little bit darker and explored some areas that seem absolutely necessary now but hadn't really occurred to me when I was starting it. I seriously listened to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" over a hundred times when I was writing this, and I came to realise that it just said what I wanted it to say. (As a side note, putting a song on repeat is something I do all the time when I'm writing, so it's not entirely weird.) Like the title that came from Inferno, this works on its own to sum up the themes of the story without ever knowing the source, but in this case in particular I think knowing the source makes the title richer.
This Foreign City
I had a lot of trouble titling this one. I think I went through and discarded at least a dozen over the course of writing it, and while none of them were terrible they all felt a little clumsy and ill-fitting. I ended up reading a book of WWII poetry while taking a break from it, partly because the theme of war was in my head and partly because reading poetry or short stories while taking breaks takes me away from writing for less time than diving into a novel, and I came across the poem "The Refugee" by Marjorie Battcock, which I'd never read before but just completely stuck with me. It's about returning from war to find your home a changed and ill-fitting place and, well, so's the story. :)
Inheritance
This also went titleless until it was finished (IIRC, I'd just written "Untitled Summerlove Fic" at the top so I wouldn't have blank space), but once I was done I reread everything I'd written and I didn't even have to think about it, the title was just clear to me. It's exactly what the story is about, in both literal and less tangible ways. I used to use a lot of one-work titles for things and find I do it a lot less than I used to, but here I think it really works.
Prodigal Children
This is the WIP that's most likely to be finished next, and really the thing that got me wanting to talk about titles today. It's gone through at least three titles already and I think I've settled on this, but there's this little part of me that wonders if it entirely fits, and also if it's a little bit cliche. The story does deal with rebelling against the father and returning to the fold (for a certain definition of father), but in the end I'm not sure that's entirely what it's about. Still, it's the best thing I've come up with so far, but the process on this one isn't over quite yet. :)
And now I should probably really try to get some work done before someone notices that all this typing isn't on something productive.