I honestly didn't know where else to put this but as I have been reading through some of the newer works here on the site, it brought up a question that I've always been meaning to ask which is how do you all come up with some of these story titles?

A lot of them are incredibly catchy and get stuck in your head with the right amount of panche that makes you want to seek them out and read them.

Eleventh Doctor: I never forget a face.

The Curator: I know you don't. And in years to come you might find yourself revisiting a few, but just the old favorites.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-18-22 AT 01:48 PM (EST)
 
>I honestly didn't know where else to put this but as I have been
>reading through some of the newer works here on the site, it brought
>up a question that I've always been meaning to ask which is how do you
>all come up with some of these story titles?

It varies a lot. Sometimes they're the hardest part, other times they just fall into place. Off the top of my head, here are a few examples of different ways they come about:

- Occasionally they suggest themselves in the course of writing, usually when a phrase comes along and I realize, "Hey, that should be the title." The first ep of Romance of Combined Fleet Record, "The Human Experience", got its title this way.

- Sometimes they're helped along by the fact that the whole series they're in has a naming convention; for instance, The Federation Lives Forever episodes are mostly song or album titles, and the one I can think of that isn't ("The Real Relation") is from the lyrics of a song that's featured in the episode. I still have to dig up the right ones for the occasion, but there's a framework to operate inside, which can be good or bad.

- Some are just kind of obvious, either because they're straightforward references to something that happens in the story, or because they're obvious jokes or plays on words related to same. OOTR 4 is a good example of the former; that's the episode where Corwin and Utena give their interrupted wedding a second try, invoking that old saw, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." OWaW 24, "Witch Hunt", is the same kind of thing, but in that case it's a joke, since it's the witch (Lucchini) doing the hunting (for her familiar).

- I dug my own pit trap when I started titling the episodes of Gallian Gothic in French, a language I have only a passing acquaintance with. :)

- Sometimes they're references to other literary works, like the OOTR/DS episode that's a Shakespeare quote (What's Past is Prologue), or Desolation Angel, which is from the title of one of Jack Kerouac's books.

- Often they just pop into my head (or one of the Suspects'), and we all realize that it just can't be anything. Offhand, I can think of DSM Panic! Mission 3, "The Universal Brotherhood of Soldiers of Fortune", in that category.

- And every now and then, a working title I just threw on the file to have something to call it ends up sticking for lack of any better ideas, e.g., Rogue Squadron #4 ("Codename SERAPH BLUE").

Anyway, probably none of that is really all that informative, but I hope it at least gives a sense of how chaotic and unsystematic it all is. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yup, that sounds about right. My own experience naming stories or chapters of stories is very similar. Sometimes there's a theme, sometimes it's an obvious reference to something in the story, and sometimes it's just one of those lines that pops into your head and won't go away. Heck, I even have a few whole stories/ideas based 100% on a phrase that struck me and then blossomed from there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but that's writing in a nutshell...

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

>- I dug my own pit trap when I started titling the episodes of
>Gallian Gothic in French, a language I have only a passing
>acquaintance with. :)

I know what this one feels like.

So there I was, having wedged an idea that'd been floating around in my head for a while together with an entirely unrelated series and had it turn into a story on me.

And then I said to myself "Hey, this is sort of an ontological mystery, isn't it? I'll take some inspiration from .hack//GU, and give each chapter a name that begins with the same initials. And I'll have the short different-perspective bits at the end of the chapters have names beginning with the same initials as well."

I could probably reconstruct when I started running out of ideas, but the exact moment that I started really regretting the whole idea has been lost to time. (And while I don't make a habit of going back and making content changes to finished stories, I might make an exception for some of those names if I ever think of anything better.)

-IA.

(.hack//GU is not an ontological mystery (i think) but it made sense to me at the time)