Story Title Stories

[seekingferret]

Story titles are weird. I'm in the middle of editing a story where I had the title before I had the story idea. It's the second time that's happened: the first was "Only a Sun Can Lead a Copernican Revolution", where I sat on that title/bad joke for a while before figuring out that it was a Manhattan Project/Back to the Future crossover. Contrast that to "Only the Third Story in this Forsaken Fandom Whose Title Doesn't Begin with If", which was finished for several weeks before I came up with a title I liked enough to post the story.

"The Music Speaks for Itself" was the fifth title of that story, and it was the one I slapped on the day I uploaded. Working titles included the leeringly obscene "Piano Concerto for the Left Hand." If I'd had another day to upload, it might have changed again, which is interesting because someone who commented on the story explicitly mentioned how the title had positively influenced their reading of the story. On the other hand, as soon as I wrote the final sentence of "Rhapsody in Red" I knew that had to be the title.

Anybody else have story title stories?

Comments

[sanguinity]

Story titles are my bane. I struggle and struggle and struggle, and in the end, they tend to be little more than utilitarian handgrips: a way of remembering which story that one was.

But "Ozma and the Royal Jack-Knife of Oz" (which is right up the middle of, and simultaneously a blatant violation of, Baum's titling conventions), I had the title before the story. Two minutes later, I texted that title to my beta, and she texted back, "O_O !!" And then the title wrote, dunno, two-thirds of the story. Maybe more.

I think the last time I was that happy with a title was Betrayed by Amy March, which was a NaNovel some years ago.

[zandperl]

I hate writing story titles too. I tend to write short stories with a twist at the end (as was much of the more classic "speculative fiction"), so it can be hard to come up with a name that fits the story without accidentally giving away the twist. A perfect title of course would fit the setup without revealing the twist, but then turn out to exactly describe that ending after all once you know what it is.

[sophia_sol]

Mostly my story title stories come down to one of two things:

-oh crap I wrote a fic now I have to TITLE IT??? What can I throw onto it as a title that won't be too awful?
-here's something that would make an excellent title for a fic that I'm never going to write!

It is TOO BAD that I can never bridge the gap between these two ways of approaching titles.... I haven't once been actively pleased with one of my titles; the best I can get is not-unhappy.