On titling fics

[themostepotente]

I'm hard pressed to admit -- sometimes the title of a fic is the deciding factor on whether or not I read it.

Titles can be very eye catching, and sometimes I need that stimulus (can I call it this?) to attract my attention.

Witty, clever, thought provoking -- anything really. I just need to make that connection.

To me, there is nothing worse than a poorly titled fic. Does anyone else share these sentiments?

Do poor titles affect your judgement? Does the word 'Untitled' tend to turn you off?

How do you go about choosing an appropriate title for your fic? Song titles, catchy phrases?

What about sharing story titles with a well-known author? So many fics out there. It has to happen more often than not.

Share your thoughts, please :-)

--P

Comments

[scribbulus-ink.livejournal.com]

Coming up with a decent title is sometimes like pulling teeth with my own stories, but I don't think I'm particularly affected by in with someone else's stories. If it's a pairing I like and/or written by someone whose writing I like, I'll still read it anyway. I'm far, far more likely to stop reading a story because the first few paragraphs don't hook me than I am because a boring title.

Sharing a title doesn't bother me either. thetreacletart and I both have a story called "Bottoms Up", which I didn't remember until I was compiling a Remus/Severus recs list recently, and we probably did it for the same reason: aiming for the same pun because our stories both featured drunkenness and anal sex. *g* I'm pretty sure I've seen another story that shares a title with one of mine, but off-hand, I can't remember what it was or who wrote it. In a fandom as big as this one, overlap of titles is bound to happen occasionally.

[scribbulus-ink.livejournal.com]

Having thought about this a little more, I have to add that I think the main reason why I'm lenient on other people's titles is because I know how difficult it is for me to come up with one sometimes. So even if the title isn't terribly catchy, I'm willing to give the writer the benefit of the doubt on the story, because they may have simply had a tough time coming up with a good title. An uninteresting title doesn't make me automatically assume that the story is uninteresting too, because I know how hard it is to think of a title sometimes. As I said above, it's the first few paragraphs that make or break it for me.