WIP Challenge - Check In, Day 12 - Sunday

[the_rck]

Poll #14834

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

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Today I

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planned
4 (57.1%)

researched
2 (28.6%)

wrote
4 (57.1%)

sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

edited
3 (42.9%)

posted
2 (28.6%)

rested
2 (28.6%)

did something else
2 (28.6%)

The way I feel about that is

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Mean: 7.00 Median: 7 Std. Dev 1.85

Horrible 1		0 (0.0%)
2		0 (0.0%)
3		0 (0.0%)
4		1 (14.3%)
5		1 (14.3%)
6		0 (0.0%)
7		2 (28.6%)
8		2 (28.6%)
9		0 (0.0%)
Wonderful 10		1 (14.3%)

How do you come up with titles for your stories? Do you ever start with the title and write the fic from that? Do you struggle with the title as the last step before posting? Are you somewhere in between?

Usually, the title is the last thing I come up with. My working titles tend to be pretty boring and just descriptive enough that I don't forget what that particular document is. To find a good title, I sometimes turn to the dictionary or the thesaurus. Wandering through those volumes can sometimes get me to something I can use. I also keep a file of song and poetry fragments that I think might work as titles some day (I don't track where those fragments come from, however, so I've usually forgotten by the time I use them). Somebody linked me to a site that provides random poems from its database. That can be good for finding titles.

Comments

[rhi]

Either I have a title early on in a fic, or I'm fighting for one until the last of the final draft. If I get stuck, I tend to look for themes or significant elements in the fic and then go look up that key word in Bartlett's Quotations, or put it in Google and search for poetry or lyrics. All else failing, I yell for help from friends.

I love your idea of keeping the snippets, but if I put it anywhere but a doc file, I would lose it in a heartbeat!

[lilly_c]

I usually have my titles when I'm close to finishing a fic and I tend to use fragments of song lyrics for mine, more often than not it's from the song that I was listening to the most when I was writing.

I know when my posting date for kidficstory big bang is. Now I've got to find a beta, which has been difficult so far because Taggart, the fandom I'm writing, is tiny and my searches have turned out to be nothing doing. Earlier tonight I've asked the f-list here and on LJ for a little help with it, I just hope I can get someone to look it over for me before I post next month.

[linaewen]

I'm planning at the moment, but writing needs to happen, as well. I'd be wasting a quiet day with lots of writing hours in it if I didn't try to get some words on the page today!

I don't usually have a title before I start writing; I have to have something there to come up with the title. It usually ends up being a phrase or an idea from the story or the chapter. I do find that I tend to name the story early on, however, because I feel like I need something to call it so I can save it in my story folder. Sometimes I'll call it something and put it in brackets just to give it a name, and then change the name to something more appropriate later.

[juliet316]

I have to come up with the title first, otherwise, with the amount of ideas floating around in my head, there's no way for me to keep everything straight. I don't start anything unless I have a title in place first because of that.

As for how I come up with a title, it's a mixed bag. Sometimes I know right away, sometimes it takes months. Sometimes I get inspiration from song titles/lyrics/poetry/etc., (usually this will be maninly be the case with oneshots/drabbles) but more often than not the situations in the stories themselves dictate what the title will ultimately be. So... I guess it depends on the fic length/plot and whatever inspires me when I come up with the title.