Provenance of Titles

Not sure I've ever started with a title, although I've got a few filed away in the back of my brain waiting to be used if and when the occasion arises. You start with the story and the title is either obvious or comes later.

I spend a lot of time talking to authors about titles, and often asking for new ones, so I know from experience that the first title an author comes up isn't always the best one. Sometimes you just have to keep pressing them for alternatives until they come up with the perfect title.

As an editor, I tend to play hardball with titles, which are too important to be left in the hands of the author alone.

 

Is it a sci-fi thing to use poetry in titles, particularly obscure poems? I like longer titles better than one word ones myself.

 

I don't think it's specifically a sci-fi thing, although we do it a lot.

Just for fun, I just did a search on Amazon for books titled "The Road Not Taken" (after the Robert Frost poem). I found sci-fi, nonfiction, romance novels, even a SUPERNATURAL tie-in, etc.

And I'll fess to using that one for an ALIAS novel years ago!

"The Forest of the Night" (from William Blake) got multiple hits as well, although mostly from horror and sci-fi authors.

 

I just tried that for two of my Biblically-themed Trek fanfictions. Won't tell you what the titles were (based on Bible verses, though), or what the plots were. One got 3 partial hits, and the other got three pages of partial or identical hits.

 

Blake's "Tyger, Tyger" is a funny case in that all its opening verses have been turned into a sci-fi title at some point!

"Tyger, Tyger," "Burning Bright," "In the Forest of the Night," "What Immortal Hand," "Fearful Symmetry," ec.

 

I guess some poems have more ethereal, sci-fi-ish qualities than others.

 

I suspect "The Wasteland" has been mined heavily, too, but don't have the energy to look it up!

 

I guess you're "entitled" to.

 

Ouch!

 

Wasn't criticizing you. Just a play on words. You know that, right?

 

Trek episode titles should take cues from Beat poetry.

Kor

 

Oh, absolutely. I was groaning at the pun, that's all!

 

Phew.

Huh?

 

"HOWL!" would be a good title for a werewolf episode.

 

The literature of the Beat Generation, the increasingly forgotten counterculture movement of the 1950s... Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, et. al.

Kor

 

I also like poetic titles more than a title with a character's name in it.

 

Just for fun, I did a title search on "The Dying of the Light" (from Dylan Thomas). Ohmigod, has that been popular as a book title . . .

 

Death is a common theme.