A rose by any other name would smell as sweet... or something...

[kellifer]

So, while my muse refuses to belch up so much as a paragraph at the moment, I thought I would do a thinky writing post... because I never really do...

The hardest thing I find about writing isn't the writing itself, getting ideas or finishing something off. It's what to call the damn thing. I really want to know how everyone else does it? The very last thing I do about 99% of the time is title the story I'm writing. You don't know how many fics I have on my hard drive which are called a variation of in progress or Untitle. It gets confusing when I have a bunch of these and have to actually open the files to see what they are.

I should just start calling things The one With The Doll or That Story About Jack And The Pants...

It's a very *rare* occasion that I start with a title. I can only think of one off the top of my head. It was the SPN/Daemon fic A Heartbeat At My Feet , mostly because I'd been thinking about an HDM fusion and read this poem about a dog being their master's constant heartbeat at their feet and it just clicked.

I'm not good at the organic title. Sometimes it will just come... but most of the time I'm flailing around. I cheat, *alot*. I look up www.thesaurus.com or Latin words because then it sounds good... heh (Hegira or Abscido). Either that or mythology. Just look at Lethe. That was me googling around. Removed was a visit to thesaurus.com. It sounds like a simple title but I was really stuck there for a while.

Sometimes, I'll come up with something whacky just to tide me over. It's never going to be the title of the story but it makes me smile. Simultaneity (another trip to thesaurus.com thank you very much!) started out life called Blame It On The Morlocks.

Some are easy. The wing!fics I just incorporate flight, feather or something to do with flight or feathers into the title. The first Doll fic was a play on a Supernatural episode title. That kind of evolved into a play on movie titles after that. Try it. Just insert Doll into your favourite movie title. See? Works most of the time.

I like Five Times fics, because you can just title them with a descriptive. Five Times Dean Was Truly Afraid or Five Ways They Tell Someone are pretty self-explanatory. No muss. No fuss.

Then you get the titles gleaned from song titles or lyrics. She's Taller Than Most, a lyric from KT Tunstall's Suddenly I See, pinged perfect for an SGA story where John finds himself a woman. Mainly because transformed he's still pretty much John and so taller than the average woman. Funnily enough, Kaboom came from a Marilyn Manson song... one of those rare instances where the title came before the story.

There's those times where I'm trying to be witty... and most probably failing laughably. Minor In Action is an example of that...

Then there's those titles that come from a long-nearly forgotten memory. Corner Of The Eye, title and story idea came from a book I read *years* ago and have no idea what it was called or who it was by or much about it, other than there were these kids playing these video games and the longer they played, the more they saw stuff starting to encroach on their vision. They were getting these weird black washes right on the edge, and if they could turn their heads quick enough they'd actually see what it was that was starting to edge in but they couldn't. They were starting to see a reality bleed or something... I'm not really sure on the specifics but I was just idly mulling it over one day for no reason and there it was...

Finally, when I'm *really* desperate, I go the loooooong title. How Being On SG-1 Isn't All Space Babes And High Adventure. Phew! Almost as long as the story! Or Build Your Walls, I'll Tear Them Down, Brick By Brick. If you've got to have three commas in a title, you've gone TOO FAR! I seem to be most guilty of the looooong title in the SG-1 realm.

Well, and after all this, what's my favourite title I hear you not ask? (Not story, title)...

Probably... Waiting For Him. It sums up the story pretty well, it wasn't a pain in the ass to come up with and it's simple.

Here's my questions to you...

-> How do you come up with titles. Do they just pop into your head, do you use other resources? Do you hit thesaurus.com as much as me?

-> What's your favourite title of a story you've written?

-> What about a title of something of mine? Has something made you go bzuh? What does that have to do with the story???

-> What's a favourite title of something you've read that isn't yours fandom wise?

-> What's a favourite title of something you've read that isn't yours non-fandom wise? For me, it's definitely The Stand. Again, simple, to the point and sums up the book perfectly.

Comments

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

Mostly they pop into my head.

My favorites are "The Slow Braille of Touch" which is a line from a poem, which I found thanks to a friend, and "Lassie Takes Timmy To the Shrink," which was just a joke that sat there, panting, for me to find it.

I'm going to have to muse upon the others and get back to you, as I realized I began this comment before I had my facts together. ::gives you scholarly nod:: I do have to say, however, that just the title "Pet Cemetary" gives me the creeps, still.

[elusive-life-77.livejournal.com]

**The slow braille of touch** Wow, that is the most sensual phrase I may have ever heard...er saw...I mean read...whatever.

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

I like it, too. It kind of sums up a certain theme that runs through all my McKay/Sheppard stories. A more elegant way of describing how they blindly fumble toward one another; one blind to what he's feeling inside and the other blind to the usual social cues, but when they finally touch, they seem to be able to get one another just fine.

And the quote is from Anne Sexton's poem "The Farmer's Wife."