Titles?

[ladytp]

Hi all!

Moony's recent contemplation about the title of her fics made me wonder: How do you guys choose titles for the stories you write?

Is it a long and tedious process, going through multiple options, or is it whatever comes to mind first? Do you choose something that describes the story contents, or do you go with an abstract notion? I know many titles come from snippets of poems or songs - is that the way you go?

Just curious...

As I mentioned in my comment to Moony, I have deliberately named my stories as minimally as possible, using only one or two words (except the very first one, when I had no clue or idea or plan). I like the minimalist approach, although trying to come up with one word only that summarises the story is not always easy. Also, simple names are more common across the fandoms and can cause confusion, which I didn’t think at first. Who knows, eventually I may change tact and start choosing over-flowing, multi-sentence monsters that take half the page just by themselves!

Anyone?

Comments

[ladytp.livejournal.com]

I find they often just end up looking pretentious. I have to say I feel like that sometimes when viewing a title...but then again, if it has a link to something meaningful or important to the author, it's all good and I may just misjudge it because I simply miss that link...

And I agree it is not good to bind oneself to too strict rules! So my next fic could be called "Tame the ghosts in my head that run wild and wish me dead, should you shake my ash to the wind"... :-)