Fantastic entry about titling your work.

[valis2]

painless_j discusses titles, why some work, and why some don't.

As some of you might know, I have an English major. One of the most formative classes I took was a Shakespeare class. The woman teaching the class continually took off points for having boring titles for papers.

I'd always had boring titles. I always felt like it was kind of...showing off, maybe? to have fabulous titles. I mean, what if it doesn't live up to a cool title? But this teacher really pushed me, so I started naming my papers wildly, and she gave me full points.

I've kind of gotten out of that, but J really made me think about it. The title for Retribution was pretty boring, but at the last moment I froze, and went back into that old don't-make-the-expectations-too-high mode. Now that I read her entry, I realize that I'm not doing myself any favors by naming things so vaguely.

*resolves to name wildly in the future*

Comments

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I'm not much into titles...I can't ever remember them, I usually remember plot. But J's entry did make a great point about how you will get an extra handful of readers who might normally not have clicked on it if your title is interesting enough, and that makes me want to work a little harder at it.

In the case of prose, I usually have the title last; for poetry, the title is usually first, oddly enough.

[auctasinistra.livejournal.com]

In the case of prose, I usually have the title last; for poetry, the title is usually first, oddly enough.

I don't write poetry but I wonder if this is because in a poem you have your theme more firmly set in your mind than in a story? That is, a poem is generally a more tight encapsulation of a single theme than a story is, so sometimes a story can take turns you don't expect, modifying the theme, I don't know if you title things for that reason, based on theme - I do - but if so, that might make sense.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I think in the case of poetry...the title unifies it (just as you are saying), whereas for me in a story...the plot unifies it, so sometimes it's a little more difficult to put it together for me. ;)

[auctasinistra.livejournal.com]

That makes sense to me.