A lame title will turn me right off. Overused titles bug me a bit, especially if it's from the same currently popular song, but a title that says, essentially, that the author didn't want to bother with coming up with a better title have about the same effect on me as netspeak in a summary. I'd rather see the ten millionth story titled "Aftermath" than "Snape Story (i suck at titles)"
As for me, I usually steal my titles the same place I steal my pseuds: From Christopher Marlowe. If a title doesn't spontaneously erupt from the writing process, I usually fall back on Marlowe because I'm a bit of an obsessed freak and know where to look for passages in his works that fit the theme of my story. When I was trying to come up with a title for "One Bare Hour," I went to the end of Dr. Faustus because I knew I needed something about ends and time running out, and I found the perfect line "Now hast thou but one bare hour to live." For another story, I was talking a lot about writing and love, etc., and found a passage from Tamburlaine about someone's love being unexpressable even if all the thoughts of every poet who ever lived were distilled, and got "All the Pens That Ever Poets Held."
A side effect is that I don't often find myself sharing titles, something that I actually make a bit of effort to avoid. It's impossible to avoid it altogether, but at a minimum I try to search and make sure I'm not duplicating any titles within the fandom. It's just too confusing to have multiple stories with the same title, and I need all the help I can get. :)
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A lame title will turn me right off. Overused titles bug me a bit, especially if it's from the same currently popular song, but a title that says, essentially, that the author didn't want to bother with coming up with a better title have about the same effect on me as netspeak in a summary. I'd rather see the ten millionth story titled "Aftermath" than "Snape Story (i suck at titles)"
As for me, I usually steal my titles the same place I steal my pseuds: From Christopher Marlowe. If a title doesn't spontaneously erupt from the writing process, I usually fall back on Marlowe because I'm a bit of an obsessed freak and know where to look for passages in his works that fit the theme of my story. When I was trying to come up with a title for "One Bare Hour," I went to the end of Dr. Faustus because I knew I needed something about ends and time running out, and I found the perfect line "Now hast thou but one bare hour to live." For another story, I was talking a lot about writing and love, etc., and found a passage from Tamburlaine about someone's love being unexpressable even if all the thoughts of every poet who ever lived were distilled, and got "All the Pens That Ever Poets Held."
A side effect is that I don't often find myself sharing titles, something that I actually make a bit of effort to avoid. It's impossible to avoid it altogether, but at a minimum I try to search and make sure I'm not duplicating any titles within the fandom. It's just too confusing to have multiple stories with the same title, and I need all the help I can get. :)