(and this is why this post has no title)
I feel like those memes about writing always ask about titles, so here is a slightly better answer than I tend to give most of them.
I love titles! Usually. But mostly I try to title things before I write them, or at least before I get too far in, because I like titles that are really relevant to the story. And I tend to build off titles: I don't need a title to start out with, but if I just stick on a title at the end it feels sort of disconnected, even if I've spent a long time thinking about it. I tend to pull a lot of the theme from the title, and doing that in reverse is a little more difficult. A title is a foundation, a direction; I think in a much clearer and more constructed way about a story once I have a title to go off of.
I mean, Knife and Ink is a lot less fun-and-games-in-Ba-Sing-Se than it used to be, and a lot more about Mai and spirits and things that are written down, or not written down, or written down somewhere else. Blood Dreams (that mostly-genderswitched KHR AU that I have posted one fic of) has gone from just being an excuse to write a darker and mostly-female KHR to something that is about inheritance and the lack thereof, about the refusal of gender roles, and about discovering the time for an old dream to die. (I am also fighting a terrible urge to retitle it Girls' Generation.)
Not that I haven't come up with some terrible titles, mind, that never did anything at all. But I think I've gotten better about that lately, and I'm very much looking forward to what that Hermione-in-movie-Ohtori fic is going to look like once I've found it a proper title. (Let alone all the auction fic and challenge fic that are simmering on the stove of my brain.)
TL;DR: Titles are hard, but they're also fun and very useful. I need to go think up some more.
http://esmenet.dreamwidth.org/75044.html |
comments | Feel free to comment at Dreamwidth
I love titles! Usually. But mostly I try to title things before I write them, or at least before I get too far in, because I like titles that are really relevant to the story. And I tend to build off titles: I don't need a title to start out with, but if I just stick on a title at the end it feels sort of disconnected, even if I've spent a long time thinking about it. I tend to pull a lot of the theme from the title, and doing that in reverse is a little more difficult. A title is a foundation, a direction; I think in a much clearer and more constructed way about a story once I have a title to go off of.
I mean, Knife and Ink is a lot less fun-and-games-in-Ba-Sing-Se than it used to be, and a lot more about Mai and spirits and things that are written down, or not written down, or written down somewhere else. Blood Dreams (that mostly-genderswitched KHR AU that I have posted one fic of) has gone from just being an excuse to write a darker and mostly-female KHR to something that is about inheritance and the lack thereof, about the refusal of gender roles, and about discovering the time for an old dream to die. (I am also fighting a terrible urge to retitle it Girls' Generation.)
Not that I haven't come up with some terrible titles, mind, that never did anything at all. But I think I've gotten better about that lately, and I'm very much looking forward to what that Hermione-in-movie-Ohtori fic is going to look like once I've found it a proper title. (Let alone all the auction fic and challenge fic that are simmering on the stove of my brain.)
TL;DR: Titles are hard, but they're also fun and very useful. I need to go think up some more.
http://esmenet.dreamwidth.org/75044.html |
comments | Feel free to comment at Dreamwidth