Question Meme: Fic Titles

[paulamcg]

First snagged from adriennefae, then seen in several journals in my feed before I got to doing this.

Look at the most recent 20 fanwork titles on your AO3 account.
A lot of these titles are old, because in April, May and June I posted on AO3 the rest of those stories I wrote more than ten years ago. I'd rather list more of my recently-written fics, but these are the most recent posts on my AO3 account.

A Nude in Woollen Socks
The Darkness of This Shore
Fearing a Figure
Finding Direction
Bereft and Rescued
Learning Magic of Images
Look for Laughter
His Left Hand
Her Arm for Him to Hold
In Lines of Charcoal
Warmth Along the Fear
His Face Shines in the Gloom of My Parents’ House
I Am Still the Stray
Let's Go Home, Pads
Sharing Breaths
Challenges Like These
Anywhere and Back Again
Healing Hands and Change of Direction
If He’s Got Any Strengths
An Endearing Portrait

1. How many are you happy with? Fifteen or sixteen. I'm easily as happy with the title as I'm with the fic. After completing a fic, I look for the title in the story text and pick somehow the best phrase I can find. I try to choose such a combination of words which sounds and/or looks good, and has the possibility of different interpretations, and refers to an essential – preferably more than one essential – aspect or detail in the story. I hope it refers both to the plot and to the theme, if not unambiguously – or very well – to either. :) When sometimes I struggle to find such a phrase in the text, I fear the fic can't possibly be good. Surprisingly, I'm still happy with most of the titles of my old fic, too, perhaps because I haven't changed my almost exclusive way of choosing titles since 2005.

2. How many are... not great? In my view, four or five. Two or three of these are titles I gave to single 100-drabbles or sequences of drabbles only when recently posting them on AO3. These pieces were written in 2005 – 20010 for a series I titled back then Sketches for a Portrait, and most of them had no other titles. Now that I made the (not great?) decision not to post them all together as one work, I had to come up with titles. And my favourite method has never worked with drabbles. Out of my old longer short stories, Anywhere and Back Again has a title that's not from the story text, and this one I like less than I used to. Look for Laughter is a recent fic, and I've chosen the title in my usual way, and to me it conveys what the fic is about, but I feel the words and their combination can look like they refer to something more humorous.

3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute? Five, I think. Three of those (five) drabble (sequence) titles, and two recent short story titles, which I chose only after the beta: The Darkness of This Shore and Sharing Breaths. Perhaps I just can't remember how late I chose titles fifteen years ago, because I found it the normal thing to do. I do remember that when posting His Face Shines in the Gloom of My Parents’ House, I asked my Livejournal friends if they could suggest a shorter title.

4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning? None. Knowing the title beforehand or before the end of the process has never happened to me, except when I wanted to post the first installment of chapter one in my big fic in 2003 and I had to choose the title, and I ended up keeping it.

5. How many are quotes from songs or poems? None. Early in my fic writing life I decided I'd never want the title to be a combination of words borrowed from anyone else. I've sometimes wondered if recycled phrases, familiar lines from poetry, titles even of famous works would attract readers and help them connect to my stories. So far I've resisted, or rather not felt it would be right for me – not even to use song lyrics in this way when I've used them in the text of the story. For instance, The Winter of '79 could have been a very fitting, better title for Come to Rescue, if I weren't too stubborn about this.

6. How many are other quotes? One, somehow. Anywhere and Back Again is a combination of the name of the challenge – Anywhere But Here challenge on a genfic community Omniocular at Livejournal – and of There and Back Again, subtitle to The Hobbit by Tolkien, of course. Otherwise just quotes from my fic text itself.

7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork? Can't I really think of any titled better in this respect than An Endearing Portrait, which is about an adorable misunderstanding concerning a magical photograph?

8. Which best reflects the theme of the story/fanwork? Perhaps Finding Direction, which is a new title for a pair of old drabbles, one of which was earlier titled Change in Direction.

9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/POV of the fanwork? I still believe that in I Am Still the Stray I found my post-Azkaban Sirius's voice and that the title conveys it well. Among the post-hiatus fic, I'd pick the phrase If He’s Got Any Strengths, which is clearly my PoA-era Remus's voice.

10. Which is your favorite? Challenges Like These has always appealed to me partly due to its sound. Back in 2009, writing for a fest was a challenge I took rarely (and fests were perhaps called challenges more often back then). I found it fun to refer to that, too, having succeeded in writing a fic which both suited the prompt and meant a lot to me. Besides, this phrase in the story text refers to what's important to each of the two viewpoint characters, as well as to their relationship, which is possibly a challenge for some readers to accept (as part of my eternal main character's life).

Comments

[pauraque]

It's interesting what you say about choosing not to use quotes from other works as titles. I never had a particular policy about it, but I know I used to do it more often in the past, and I feel like it was more common among fic writers in general years ago than it is now. Especially quotes from certain songs and poems that seemed to resonate with people... back in the 90s, it felt like I saw fics posted with titles that quoted Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" every other day! I think at some point people started to feel the practice was getting a little threadbare and moved towards more original titles.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for once again telling me about your observations in the fandom, also as far back as in the '90s! I remember seeing a lot of second-hand titles in 2005 or so when I'd just come to Livejournal. (Post-Azkaban) Remus/Sirius fics titled The Hollow Men! Something like that must have influenced my decision at the time when I got more interested in writing short stories. I still see a lot of poetry-quote and song-quote titles in Wofstar fics, and I think it was at the recent Femmefest that someone commented that the fest had made them realise such quotes made great titles. But I'm more inclined to expect good writing when the title is a fresh combination of words made by the writer specifically for the story.

(I've recently written about my characters having the habit of quoting "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", but I wouldn't consider choosing such a quote as the title of my fic even if it were fitting for my plot and theme. :))

[walgesang]

It's interesting how hard it is to make a title interesting! I think in the early days of recs, people might have thought about something that would be eye-catching and memorable but I wonder if that's as much of a concern now. I know it's my least liked part of writing fic, anyway (along with summaries, eek!).

[paulamcg]

Thank you so much for commenting! Perhaps in my early fic-writing days I wondered if my titles were not familiar-sounding enough to attract people – or if they were too openly titles for first-person fics. I've always liked the naming of fics, perhaps because I've done it at the point when I've felt thrilled about a completed story and about finding at least one line in it which will be memorable to me and hopefully interesting in someone else's eyes.

However, I, too, have the feeling that the pairing, the rating and the writer's name are – and have perhaps always been – more important when people choose what to read. And the tags/contents (which writers now often include in journal posts, too, don't they?) are probably at least as important as the summary. As for summaries, I used to compose a bit longer ones, but now write only one-sentence summaries, often mentioning just the time and place and the situation at the beginning, perhaps not making the fic sound very exciting, as I don't want to reveal too much beforehand.

[kelly_chambliss]

Fascinating read; thank you! I'm like you -- I rarely choose titles until after a story is written. Every now and then, something will occur to me mid-composition, but many times for fest fics, I don't decide on the final wording until I'm actually typing up my header.

I'm willing to use quotations if they seem apt; it really just depends on the story.

[paulamcg]

I'm so glad you've enjoyed reading this. It's turned out rewarding to let myself get carried away whenever there's a fic-writing meme.

When the story's completed and I start filling in the header, I often write the (one-sentence) summary first, then start reading the fic through once again – slowly, perhaps aloud – and I stop to type up any possible title phrase I find. When I've found the right one, I'm often immediately sure about it, so that I don't need to read until the end.

I guess I should get less absolute about avoiding quote titles.

[topaz_eyes]

"The Darkness of This Shore" is an utterly perfect title; seriously, I am in awe of its imagery and its emotion. It matches your fic exactly.

I don't find long titles an issue, because I tend towards them myself at times. As long as the title fits the fic, it's good.

[paulamcg]

Oh, your praise for The Darkness of This Shore has made my day or more! Thank you so much also for the kudos at AO3 as well as for the perfect icon! Since you talk about a match, I dare assume you've found the imagery and the emotion good in the fic, too. :)

I suppose I should learn to be not so absolute about not using quote titles or one-word titles. But I feel a single word needs to be somehow ususual so as to offer some food for thought and to be memorable in the context of a fic.

(I've recently been working slowly on a complete rewrite of my second ever one-shot fic – from 2004, the time before I adopted my method with titles. The title “A Gift” was the first thing I started disliking about that fic, but perhaps that word was the best part and I only need to write a perfectly matching story. :))

[lee_bella]

Interesting read. I like the idea of using words and phrases that are in the story as the title. In my case, that's usually how I come up with the summary line: I pick a sentence from the story, tweak it a bit, and use it as the summary. Sometimes it's basically the first line of the story.

My thought on using quotes from songs and poems is a bit different. If many stories have titles quoting from the same source, I feel that they are less likely to stand out in the crowd because there are too many similar-sounding titles out there. If I do a search on the title, I might not be able to find what I'm looking for unless I specify the fandom, the pairing, the author name etc.

Nowadays, the title is probably less important than the content tags and the summary. In the old LJ days, the title on the subject line of the post would be the first thing you would see in a story. But with AO3, the tags are probably what many readers look at first.

Tags are convenient for letting readers know what the story contains and if the story is something they would want to read. Personally, I've always felt quite ambivalent towards content tags. Trigger warning is one thing, and it's important to include that. I don't care for tagging every sex act that occur in the story or having a list of tags that take up six or seven lines on the screen.

I hope you don't mind if I borrow the meme? I need an excuse to talk about my writing.

[paulamcg]

Of course I'm just glad if you borrow the meme! I take every opportunity like this to talk about my writing, and I'm also eager to read other writers' meme posts.

Thank you for the wonderful response to my post. It's lovely to hear you've found it interesting, and that you also like the idea of using a phrase from the story text as the title.

I've perhaps got too serious about keeping my method pure and consistent. I don't want to tweak the phrase I pick, so that the reader encounters the words of the title as exactly the same when reading the story. The context of the phrase, even the words right next to it, can be surprising and make the reader give a new meaning to the phrase.

I suppose it wouldn't work for me (combined with choosing the title in this way) to find my summary in the story text. Besides, even though I want to show in the first paragraph who and where and when my viewpoint character is, the opening line in which I take the reader to the character's perspective in a concrete situation (for instance I resort to flapping my ears when picking my way across our strawberry patch. No shade of an apple tree reaches here in the afternoon, and after the brief thunderstorm the relentless heat has returned, only more oppressive due to the humidity. ) seldom makes the starting point of the story clear in the way I want my summary (for instance, In July after his sixth year at Hogwarts, Remus brings Sirius to his childhood home.) to do. (The examples are from the same fic, What's In His Heart, and the POV is an unusual OC's, Remus's family's house-elf's.)

It comforts me to think that my titles could stand out even better than quote titles. On the other hand, I doubt anyone would search my fic by the title.

You must be right: the title is not so important (as it perhaps used to be) as the guide for people to choose what to read. Having really started to use AO3 only at the end of last year, I've found it hard to know how best to choose tags. I hope six has been the biggest number of lines I've used for them. :) At some point I thought I'd better mention everything (like “London”, “70s Music” “Sirius Black plays the piano”...), to maximise the chance that somebody finds my fic when doing a search on the basis of a tag. On the other hand, revealing any details about the story is not what I'd like to do. When posting the fic on a fest community's journal, I don't (or at least I won't, I've now decided) include any “contents” in the Warnings/Contents part of the header.