Meme: 30 Days of Fanfic
Oct. 1st, 2015 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_ls17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?
Titles are so incredibly variable. Some of my stories start with the title. (I knew I wanted to write a story called "The Atropos Project," so I started writing until I found out what that story was.) Sometimes I get titles that I can't match to a story and I end up sitting on indefinitely. Sometimes I start a story with one title and end up changing it at any point in the writing before posting because the working title doesn't fit what the story became. ("The Measure of Ourselves" was originally called "Abandon," as in "to do something with abandon"). Sometimes I finish drafting a story and have to put out a call to my friends in hopes that they'll supply a title. ("Mortal Mistakes" had a place-holder title almost right up until it went live. My beta made some suggestions, all of which I rejected. Except, something she said sparked the new title and it seemed so perfect that I adopted it immediately). Sometimes a title presents itself while I'm writing or as I'm getting ready to post. ("Imposter Syndrome" was untitled during most of the drafting, up until I started trying to unknot the ending and I heard the phrase come out of my mouth). I've also, on a couple of occasions, posted a story Untitled and/or changed the title shortly after posting.
My titles tend to be one or two words, but my stories also tend to be ficlets in the 1.5-5k word range, so one or two words is sufficient to identify the theme. A few times, I've had to resort to stealing lines from songs (notably, "Sticky Jazz" by Shriekback which is responsible for three, arguably four, titles), though I've usually done this because my goal is to title the story in a way that's not easily identifiable as mine. Which I guess means that it's time to find a different Shriekback song to plunder.
The only chapter fic I posted with titles on the chapters is "Grimm's Law," and I'm pretty sure I stripped the titles off when I archived the story on FFN and never put them back in. Titling chapters is too much work, especially since I don't get the feeling that most fans pay that much attention to titles.
Titles are so incredibly variable. Some of my stories start with the title. (I knew I wanted to write a story called "The Atropos Project," so I started writing until I found out what that story was.) Sometimes I get titles that I can't match to a story and I end up sitting on indefinitely. Sometimes I start a story with one title and end up changing it at any point in the writing before posting because the working title doesn't fit what the story became. ("The Measure of Ourselves" was originally called "Abandon," as in "to do something with abandon"). Sometimes I finish drafting a story and have to put out a call to my friends in hopes that they'll supply a title. ("Mortal Mistakes" had a place-holder title almost right up until it went live. My beta made some suggestions, all of which I rejected. Except, something she said sparked the new title and it seemed so perfect that I adopted it immediately). Sometimes a title presents itself while I'm writing or as I'm getting ready to post. ("Imposter Syndrome" was untitled during most of the drafting, up until I started trying to unknot the ending and I heard the phrase come out of my mouth). I've also, on a couple of occasions, posted a story Untitled and/or changed the title shortly after posting.
My titles tend to be one or two words, but my stories also tend to be ficlets in the 1.5-5k word range, so one or two words is sufficient to identify the theme. A few times, I've had to resort to stealing lines from songs (notably, "Sticky Jazz" by Shriekback which is responsible for three, arguably four, titles), though I've usually done this because my goal is to title the story in a way that's not easily identifiable as mine. Which I guess means that it's time to find a different Shriekback song to plunder.
The only chapter fic I posted with titles on the chapters is "Grimm's Law," and I'm pretty sure I stripped the titles off when I archived the story on FFN and never put them back in. Titling chapters is too much work, especially since I don't get the feeling that most fans pay that much attention to titles.
