Sprinkle in some tears, maybe sobbing, and you’ve nailed it.
Alright guys. Title advice coming at you today.
The title will often be the last thing you come up with because it takes knowing your story and the core of your story to really give it an awesome title. So until you finish it’s okay to title it ‘that story with dragons and stuff’ or ‘project that is personally trying to kill me’. Something like that. Then, when you’re done, ask yourself the following question.
1. Who is the most important character?
2. What is the climax/penultimate moment of the story
3. What is the most significant or symbolic object?
4. What are some particularly memorable lines that encapsulate the story’s theme
5. What are the primary emotions of the story
Now you have building blocks. So let’s look at some titles. (Note you can use this for chapter titles too)
The Harry Potter series is named after its main character but ALSO the most important object in the book. JK picks the mystery that needs to be resolved and puts it right in the title. The philosophers stone, the chamber of secrets, the prisoner of Azkaban etc. they’re just vague enough to intrigue was but also interesting
Other works title it by a character’s nickname/title like ‘the great gatsby’ or ‘the princess bride’ or ‘the hunchback of notredame’
Still others title books based on the major plot events/climax. A game of thrones is titled that because it’s where people start fighting over the throne. A clash of kings reflects the war of five kings. A storm of swords represents the peak of the war. Etc. etc.
Some titles even tell you what happens in the climax (though vaguely). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest tells us the fate of our lead and we read to see how it happens.
Then we have our significant object titles. This is especially great for episodes/chapter titles. I’m Attack on Titan there’s an episode called ‘a small blade’. It seems unimportant but it’s a blade that a character asks to be left with so he can off himself if necessary (the character is very depressed at this point). His friend tosses it away and refuses to leave him behind. The message here is: keep fighting. So that’s the object that message represents. Another example is ‘to kill a mockingbird’ we don’t know yet but this is symbolic for the death of an innocent. Symbols are great of titles
Then there’s emotions. A lot of times you get punchy one word titles out of this and I use them for chapters a lot: grief, rage, joy etc. but they can be used in full books too. Like: ‘beloved’ or ‘doubt’.
Then there are book titles taken from famous book quotes. “As I lay dying” comes from the odyssey. “Children of men”, “clouds of witnesses” and one million other titles are plays off bible verses.
But Kallypso, you might say. That’s so much information. How do I choose? Well you can think about your genre. If you’re writing a fluffy love fic, a quote or emotion or symbol is the way to go. If you’re writing character driven fic, a play off of a name. If you’re writing plot driven fic, describe the plot vaguely.
Or try them all! Write a title for each category and see which one fits best. And that is your advice for the morning
[ID: tweet by user evilscrapbook reading: You’re not a monster,“ i said. But i lied. What i really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be.]
The pic is so fake! Sesame Street would NEVER show night air on the show. The characters in Sesame Street all close their windows and draw their blinds as soon as the daylight ends, just in case. To stop the night air from walking around inside the house OR WORSE
If Ariel was under Ursula’s care and grew up to be her sea witch apprentice.
Canonically, Ursula was Ariel’s aunt (but the concept was abandoned then brought back in a book as I’ve heard…)
As a bisexual person I’m keenly aware of how such stereotypes are inevitably harmful to us, but unfortunately when I see bisexuals in fiction who are Evil and stylish and fuck like champions I can’t help but go “oh work” for a sec. It’s a difficult conundrum
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is such a weird theory because it’s like there’s a very obvious explanation for why middle school kids who didn’t have dysphoria before might suddenly have dysphoria. Like huh weird I wonder what very obvious and widely known change that could cause kids to suddenly become very uncomfortable in their gender or sexual identity starts in between the ages of 10 and 14. Guess we’ll never know. Must be peer pressure to *checks notes* become the only gender minority in your whole school singling you out for harassment by your peers. Couldn’t be puberty suddenly giving you new body parts/bodily functions that are wrong for you.
Dude congrats on being the first person to have a new and interesting observation on this post. Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like. It’s the desire to blame something external for who your child is because if you accepted the very obvious developmental explanation you would then have to admit that your child is a different kind of person than you instead of a mold-able mini me that you can force into your idyllic little nuclear family box you were imagining when you had them. Bigoted parents are terrified of their child not being exactly like them so they have to pretend that something like vaccines or peer pressure corrupted them. So much so that they’ll put them through bleach treatments or conversion therapy or whatever in an attempt to fix them before they’ll allow their child to be who they are.
i don’t think there’s anything funnier than saying “god forbid women do anything” in response to women doing the most objectively horrifying actions possible.
ALT
