I suck at titles. It’s not my perfectionism speaking (honestly!), I just cannot for the life of me come up with good ones… or even any. The file names of my stories, which I have to come up with to save the things, are one of four things: 1. The name of the MC, 2. The place where the story occurs or at least starts, 3. The first words of the story, which incidentally is the file name that Word automatically suggests, or 4. The setting in which I started writing the story.
I’ve actually looked through my stories to see if this was based on actual fact or if I’m just guessing again. It happens, you see.
I have at least four stories entitled “NaNoWriMo <year>”. A great deal of stories named after the main character, so many that I can’t be bothered to count the actual number. I have some named after the first incident in the plot, namely “Dragon in a Wheat Field,” which started out with a farmer finding a dragon in his wheat field. Surprisingly enoough. I have “Border Forest” (in fact several stories with the same title, because they occur in the same forest). I have some named after the season and place – not titles like Indian Summer or Spring in Paris or some such, but “Winter valley” or just “winter.” I suppose I could rename that one “Winter in the Valley With No Name.” Then, of course, there’s all the “New novel” or “New story” or titles like that, which should tell me absolutely nothing. Somehow I still know which is which even if I wrote them years ago.
Some titles are actually okay, like “The day the world ended” (I cannot find another example right now), but the problem is that I only had the title and nothing else. Not much help in that.
My current story, promising as it may be, is currently named “NaNoWriMo 2011.” How eloquent. How deep. How… blah. If it hadn’t been NaNoWriMo it would probably have been called “Shanni story”. No, not even “Shanni’s story.”
I really, really wish I had some actual title for it. I have writing friends who come up with really cool titles, and here I am, not coming up with anything at all. Sometimes I wish I wrote crime or mystery so that I could have titles like “The mystery of the rogue sorcerer” or something.
…actually I kind of like the sound of that. Maybe there’s some hope after all.
Well, you know why I do my victory dance every time I find any title, no matter how horrible. I have “Scarlet”, “The Unicorn”, “Revenge” (worst part is that this title has absolutely NOTHING to do with the story and only two titles I actually like (“The Lost House” and “Nathaniel Must Die”. Problem is that the latter no longer fits my story either.
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“Nathaniel Must Die” is the most awesome title ever, and no one cares if it no longer fits the story!!!!!
I agree with you, it’s an awesome title
I love thinking of titles. Granted, half the time I have these awesome titles that I need to find a plot for just so I can use them (like For Fear the Squirrels Know). And when I really need a title (like for last years NaNo) I usually draw a blank. Cause that is just how the world works.
“The mystery of the rogue sorcerer” sounds like an awesome title, and it’s a book I want to read!! And who said crime novels are the only ones who can have title like that!
Haha, well, I’m glad you like the title. It seems to have stuck now anyway, so finally I can stop thinking of it as “NaNoWriMo 2011″…