i know it's everybody's sin
So I've been thinking about titles. SPN fandom has some truly godawful titles floating around. Sometimes I skim the newsletter, and I'm like, "WTF? No, seriously, WTF?" But I am certain - 100% even - that somewhere out there, someone else is reading the newsletter and going, "Awesome!" at those titles, and looking at mine and going, "Seriously? No, seriously? What the hell?"
As with all things, it tends to be a matter of taste.
In fandom, unlike in professional publishing, we don't have to worry about sales. There is certainly marketing involved, and there have been any number of posts over the years about how to market your fic, how to make it more interesting to readers who are scanning over lists of stories, how to hook someone into picking yours over the twenty other stories that pop up on a list (in the old days) or comm or someone's flist or when searching an archive. A lot of the time, especially with LJ-based fandom newsletters, all you get is a title, a rating, a pairing or character listing, and the author's name.
Which, honestly, for me, the pairing/character list and the author's name are the most important, followed by summary, which I'm not getting from that particular resource. A long time ago, back in the day when I was still using diaryland instead of LJ, I wrote a long thing about how I choose the fic I read, and though the fandoms have changed/multiplied, the process really hasn't.
The thing with a title is it has to be eye-catching and evocative on its own - especially if it's almost all a reader is getting - and it also has to suit the story and make sense once the story is read - preferably resonating on two or three levels at once.
There was a recent post linked from metafandom about titles (I'm too lazy to dig it up now), and it listed a bunch of guidelines and they're all good advice, except I don't follow any of them.
I use foreign language titles (Quinquae Viae), I use song lyrics (The Love There That's Sleeping), I use lines from poems (For Thine Is the Kingdom), familiar sayings in whole or part (Beggars Would Ride), and occasionally a word or phrase that either is apt or punny or referenced in the story (The Fine Print) or really on the nose (all those awful one word titles I used when I first started posting fanfic).
I like really long titles. I like poetical titles. I occasionally like really apt but not too obvious or overused one or two word titles. I like titles that make me go, "ooh, what does that mean?" I think there should be a moratorium on titles from "Hallelujah" and all of Sarah McLachlan's works for at least another five years. There are also any number of titles I would tell people to just... not use because they're *so* overused, but I can understand the temptation. I understand the frantic title scramble at the end, where you end up with a title that later, you're like, "What the hell was I thinking?" when really, you were thinking, "I need to post this sucker, what's playing on iTunes right now?" (*cough*The naked floor reminds me*cough*)
Like I said, I don't have to sell my title to an agent or a publisher; I have to sell it to other fans. I don't think recognizing the source of a title hurts (sometimes it adds context), but I think it should be unnecessary, which is why I don't have any problem with song lyrics or quotes or lines from poems, because I don't think the title's suitability should be dependent on its original context. I think a title needs to work in concert with the story, to comment on it or tell you what it's about in some way. So it shouldn't really *matter* that it's from a Pearl Jam song or a poem by e.e. cummings or whatever (though sometimes, like I said, that can add another layer of meaning, if the reader does recognize it). I've used titles from bands or songs I hate (Everything's Not Lost; The Calendar Hung Itself) because they fit the stories I was writing.
One of the titles I've used that I really like, that other people find really oblique, is "Follow me into the desert, as thirsty as you are." For *me*, it's not important that the line is identifiable (it's from "Burden in My Hand" by Soundgarden; awesome song); it's important that it *fits* the story. To me, that story is about how Dean influences Sam, and how Sam *follows* Dean, and when Dean isn't around, he finds other people to latch onto (most notably, Jess), and how he's so willing to focus all of his attention on *one* person - he doesn't really need much more than that, but he's really, um, thirsty for the kind of love and support that Dean, and then Jess, and then Dean again, provides. And the story begins and ends with Sam literally following Dean, first out into the summer night where they sit and drink beer, and then at the end, out of Palo Alto, out of the safe, normal life Sam tried to make for himself, and back onto the road.
And the thing is, I should probably care that people didn't get it, or didn't like it, or didn't think it made sense, or thought it was uncreative or whatever because it was cribbed from someone else, but since it makes sense *to me*, I kind of really don't. I think the title is memorable, I think it's apt, and for me it resonates on more than one level with the story. Since I'm my own ideal reader, pleasing myself comes first. Which is one reason my titles, and often, my stories, won't work for some readers. Them's the breaks, you know? I'd rather have written that story where Sam and Jess have hot sex in a bathroom, and then Dean takes care of Sam after she dies, and maybe there was something about the desert in the title? than that story that was named some unmemorable one or two word phrase that was less oblique and also easily confused with half a dozen other stories where Dean takes care of Sam after Jess dies.
I have a list as long as my... well, it's long... of titles I would like to use someday, and most of them are quotes - lines from poems or songs or movies or books. Personally, this method works for me as a writer, because it works for me as a reader, much like the pullquote from the story method of summary writing generally works for me as a writer because it generally works for me as a reader (anonyfests excluded, as was recently discussed *snerk*). And as much as I'd like to have wide appeal, I've mostly accepted that there will always be people for whom my stories, my titles, my summaries, my pairings, and my characterizations will never work, just as there are people whose... stuff like that doesn't ever work for me.
***
As with all things, it tends to be a matter of taste.
In fandom, unlike in professional publishing, we don't have to worry about sales. There is certainly marketing involved, and there have been any number of posts over the years about how to market your fic, how to make it more interesting to readers who are scanning over lists of stories, how to hook someone into picking yours over the twenty other stories that pop up on a list (in the old days) or comm or someone's flist or when searching an archive. A lot of the time, especially with LJ-based fandom newsletters, all you get is a title, a rating, a pairing or character listing, and the author's name.
Which, honestly, for me, the pairing/character list and the author's name are the most important, followed by summary, which I'm not getting from that particular resource. A long time ago, back in the day when I was still using diaryland instead of LJ, I wrote a long thing about how I choose the fic I read, and though the fandoms have changed/multiplied, the process really hasn't.
The thing with a title is it has to be eye-catching and evocative on its own - especially if it's almost all a reader is getting - and it also has to suit the story and make sense once the story is read - preferably resonating on two or three levels at once.
There was a recent post linked from metafandom about titles (I'm too lazy to dig it up now), and it listed a bunch of guidelines and they're all good advice, except I don't follow any of them.
I use foreign language titles (Quinquae Viae), I use song lyrics (The Love There That's Sleeping), I use lines from poems (For Thine Is the Kingdom), familiar sayings in whole or part (Beggars Would Ride), and occasionally a word or phrase that either is apt or punny or referenced in the story (The Fine Print) or really on the nose (all those awful one word titles I used when I first started posting fanfic).
I like really long titles. I like poetical titles. I occasionally like really apt but not too obvious or overused one or two word titles. I like titles that make me go, "ooh, what does that mean?" I think there should be a moratorium on titles from "Hallelujah" and all of Sarah McLachlan's works for at least another five years. There are also any number of titles I would tell people to just... not use because they're *so* overused, but I can understand the temptation. I understand the frantic title scramble at the end, where you end up with a title that later, you're like, "What the hell was I thinking?" when really, you were thinking, "I need to post this sucker, what's playing on iTunes right now?" (*cough*The naked floor reminds me*cough*)
Like I said, I don't have to sell my title to an agent or a publisher; I have to sell it to other fans. I don't think recognizing the source of a title hurts (sometimes it adds context), but I think it should be unnecessary, which is why I don't have any problem with song lyrics or quotes or lines from poems, because I don't think the title's suitability should be dependent on its original context. I think a title needs to work in concert with the story, to comment on it or tell you what it's about in some way. So it shouldn't really *matter* that it's from a Pearl Jam song or a poem by e.e. cummings or whatever (though sometimes, like I said, that can add another layer of meaning, if the reader does recognize it). I've used titles from bands or songs I hate (Everything's Not Lost; The Calendar Hung Itself) because they fit the stories I was writing.
One of the titles I've used that I really like, that other people find really oblique, is "Follow me into the desert, as thirsty as you are." For *me*, it's not important that the line is identifiable (it's from "Burden in My Hand" by Soundgarden; awesome song); it's important that it *fits* the story. To me, that story is about how Dean influences Sam, and how Sam *follows* Dean, and when Dean isn't around, he finds other people to latch onto (most notably, Jess), and how he's so willing to focus all of his attention on *one* person - he doesn't really need much more than that, but he's really, um, thirsty for the kind of love and support that Dean, and then Jess, and then Dean again, provides. And the story begins and ends with Sam literally following Dean, first out into the summer night where they sit and drink beer, and then at the end, out of Palo Alto, out of the safe, normal life Sam tried to make for himself, and back onto the road.
And the thing is, I should probably care that people didn't get it, or didn't like it, or didn't think it made sense, or thought it was uncreative or whatever because it was cribbed from someone else, but since it makes sense *to me*, I kind of really don't. I think the title is memorable, I think it's apt, and for me it resonates on more than one level with the story. Since I'm my own ideal reader, pleasing myself comes first. Which is one reason my titles, and often, my stories, won't work for some readers. Them's the breaks, you know? I'd rather have written that story where Sam and Jess have hot sex in a bathroom, and then Dean takes care of Sam after she dies, and maybe there was something about the desert in the title? than that story that was named some unmemorable one or two word phrase that was less oblique and also easily confused with half a dozen other stories where Dean takes care of Sam after Jess dies.
I have a list as long as my... well, it's long... of titles I would like to use someday, and most of them are quotes - lines from poems or songs or movies or books. Personally, this method works for me as a writer, because it works for me as a reader, much like the pullquote from the story method of summary writing generally works for me as a writer because it generally works for me as a reader (anonyfests excluded, as was recently discussed *snerk*). And as much as I'd like to have wide appeal, I've mostly accepted that there will always be people for whom my stories, my titles, my summaries, my pairings, and my characterizations will never work, just as there are people whose... stuff like that doesn't ever work for me.
***