Provenance of Titles

[Greg Cox]

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.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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

 

[Greg Cox]

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.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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.

 

[Greg Cox]

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.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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

 

[Greg Cox]

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

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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

I guess you're "entitled" to.

 

[Greg Cox]

I guess you're "entitled" to.

Ouch!

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Ouch!

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

 

[Kor]

Trek episode titles should take cues from Beat poetry.

Kor

 

[Greg Cox]

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

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

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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

Phew.

Trek episode titles should take cues from Beat poetry.

Kor

Huh?

 

[Greg Cox]

Trek episode titles should take cues from Beat poetry.

Kor

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

 

[Kor]

Huh?

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

Kor

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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

 

[Nyotarules]

Okay, what I meant to say is, no other main characters. Even Kirk doesn't get his name in a title. (Though Spock does.)

We like to pretend Spock's brain never happened

 

[Nyotarules]

I like the idea of a smutty fanfiction story called Tuckered Out starring Trip and you know who lol (Maybe I should write it)

 

[Greg Cox]

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 . . .

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Death is a common theme.