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

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm a shameless song-title thief. And I stuff song lyrics in my fics, too, and it's horribly self-indulgent, and I'll never stop doing it. When I'm in the nursing home, I can reread my fics (providing I can still see them), and I'll remember all of the songs I listened to while writing.

A Thousand Beautiful Things is a song by Annie Lennox.
Waters of March is a song by Tom Jobim (well, that's the English translation from the Portuguese). All of the chapters in that fic have names from lyrics in that song.

I have a horrible time remembering one word titles, especially if it's an emotion or a general concept. And I even used one - Chaining - but that was my first, so...

Some words just filter away into brainless-land. Dissipation and Despair is one of my favorite fics, and I have to stop and look up the title nearly every time I mention it. But I finally know how to spell despair.

I'm more tempted to read fics with clever, long names.

BTW, I recently friended you - Hi - and I'm a transplanted Michigander (Livonia, to be exact).

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* Song title thief #2 here. And proud of it. I mean, besides my novel-length (Oscillate Wildly), my angsty Harry/Neville (One Sweet Moment - actually, a lyric from Queen's 'Who Wants to Live Forever?'), and a 'not-a-songfic-songfic' Snape/Harry (Time Trap), I also have those thirty-one individually titled stories named after Beatles songs from Come Together. And it works; I get a lot of compliments for appropriate adapatation of song titles/lyrics to fics.

Second place is literary quotes and terms. Basically, I like having a familiar hook for some of my readers before they even read a single word.

I'll read untitled fics from my favorite authors. Flora, for example, often churns something out and doesn't bother with a title, which works just fine for me. However, if I'm browsing for new fic, I'm not going to read an untitled something from a new author unless it's one of my rare pairings.