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writethisfanficI hope writing is going well for all of you! I've managed about a hundred words and hope for more by the end of the day.
As for today:
Did you write?
Edit?
Research?
Plan?
Send to beta?
Take a break?
Deal with other life things?
How do you feel about your writing today?
Today's discussion topic is titles. I don't think I've ever run into a writer who didn't struggle with titles, at least some of the time. How do you find your titles? Do you come up with a title early in the writing process or is it the last thing you do? Do you check to make sure other people haven't used the title dozens of times before or do you not care?
When I'm trying to come up with a title, I often start with a dictionary, a paper one so that I can page through at random. The dictionary suggests things that I'd never have thought of. I make a list of possibilities and sometimes run those through a thesaurus (online) to see what else suggests itself. I also have a document with song fragments that I heard and thought might make good titles. I tend not to use those so much because they tend to be long. The title is usually the last thing I come up with. My working titles tend to be simple-- a character's name or something like 'Yuletide 2012' or a descriptive word. My big WIP has working chapter titles of wks[chapter number]. I do sometimes check to see how often a particular title has been used. I don't always remember to do it, but I intend to do it more often now. I gave up on a potential title for my Yuletide fic because there were a couple dozen other fics on AO3 that used that exact title.
As for today:
Did you write?
Edit?
Research?
Plan?
Send to beta?
Take a break?
Deal with other life things?
How do you feel about your writing today?
Today's discussion topic is titles. I don't think I've ever run into a writer who didn't struggle with titles, at least some of the time. How do you find your titles? Do you come up with a title early in the writing process or is it the last thing you do? Do you check to make sure other people haven't used the title dozens of times before or do you not care?
When I'm trying to come up with a title, I often start with a dictionary, a paper one so that I can page through at random. The dictionary suggests things that I'd never have thought of. I make a list of possibilities and sometimes run those through a thesaurus (online) to see what else suggests itself. I also have a document with song fragments that I heard and thought might make good titles. I tend not to use those so much because they tend to be long. The title is usually the last thing I come up with. My working titles tend to be simple-- a character's name or something like 'Yuletide 2012' or a descriptive word. My big WIP has working chapter titles of wks[chapter number]. I do sometimes check to see how often a particular title has been used. I don't always remember to do it, but I intend to do it more often now. I gave up on a potential title for my Yuletide fic because there were a couple dozen other fics on AO3 that used that exact title.
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Date: Thursday, January 17th, 2013 19:15 (UTC)So, it's just gone 7pm for me today and I haven't done any writing, but I'm happy with the decision to start doing this and recording some progress! (Baby steps!) And there's still time for me today yet!
As for titles though, oh god I hate them. I suck so bad at titles. I end up coming up with them last out of desperation so I can actually post the damn fic. They're very often one-word titles or a couple of words that form a familiar phrase. Very simple XD Sometimes I'm lucky and come up with something along those lines that's also witty! (At least in my mind ;D), but basically titles are the bane of my writing life XDDDD
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Date: Thursday, January 17th, 2013 21:00 (UTC)As for the discussion topic, I hate titling things. It's really hard for me to come up with titles, so I usually pilfer or alter bits of song lyrics or titles that I like or that helped inspire me to write a certain story or chapter. Sometimes I resort to dictionary and thesaurus hopping, or grabbing the first thing that works so I can get the damn thing posted finally, or asking friends for input and ideas.
Very, very rarely, a title will come to me out of nowhere with an idea for a story already attached to it. I love when that happens.
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Date: Thursday, January 17th, 2013 22:12 (UTC)It depends with titles, sometimes I have them straight away and other times nothing fits. I often use song titles or very small sections of lyrics. The fic I'm working on at the moment has the same title as the Nietzsche aphorism that inspired it. Using the OED/OET doesn't work for me.
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Date: Thursday, January 17th, 2013 23:53 (UTC)I never agonise about titles, I just pick one and use it as a working title. If I do not come up with a better one, I just use the working title.