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

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

My titles usually arrive before the stories - I have whole lists of titles with no stories attached. *pout*

And some stories were written just so I could *use* a specific title.

Mostly, my titles come from lines of songs or poems or quotes or some variation thereof ("Such Corruptions Out of Such Sweet Things" is an inversion of a line from Walt Whitman). Sometimes they're directly related to the fic ("Razor's Edge," "Ladyfingers"), sometimes they're ridiculously oblique unless you're privy to my thought process.

When I first started writing fic, I was very much with the one-word titles, but they're very lacking in interest, so I try not to do that much anymore.

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

It's not the fact that the *author* is well-known so much as the *title* is - I had a story I was calling "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart" (from a Stephen Crane poem), but I *knew* there was a well-known West Wing story with that title (and it turns out, an XF one and a BtVS one etc.), so even though my story wasn't West Wing, I changed the title before I posted (to "How Bitter a Thing" from er, As You Like It, iirc).

But I have stories called stuff like "Comfort" and "Confrontations" and "Enough" which are so generic I think many people would have used them.

If someone else wrote a story and called it "The Intimate Art of the Close Shave" or "Love in the Traffic-Choked Streets," I might be a little put out, because I thought those were pretty unique.

Otherwise, I'm pretty neutral on other people's titles. Summary, author and pairing are more likely to attract or repel my attention.