I like poetic titles but sometimes people can go overboard with them, trying to top themselves and others (I'm including of fanfic). Having simple titles are good too. Sometimes you have to go back to basics.
Provenance of Titles
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
- Start date
One of my favorite TV shows has a massive spoiler in the final episode title and I keep wondering what they were thinking. It's so big it would spoil the entire show if you hadn't seen it and looked up the episode titles. If I ever had a chance to ask the show runners why they did that, I would.
When I worked in a bookstore we like to come up with funny titles based on the trends we noticed in the industry.
My favorites were
"Love's Loving Love" and
"Love Nazis On Skull Island"
The latter being the ultimate book title that combines every popular trend into one book.
My favorites were
"Love's Loving Love" and
"Love Nazis On Skull Island"
The latter being the ultimate book title that combines every popular trend into one book.
I remember one season at Tor when we suddenly realized that half the books on the list were titled Noun of Noun. Moon of Death, Sword of Dragons, Age of Darkness, Jewel of Destiny, Night of Wonders, Galaxy of Stars, Book of Kings, that kind of thing.
Oops.
Oops.
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It's one thing if they're all in one series - it links the titles together. Quite another if they're all very different.
It was random of selection of titles: sf, fantasy, alternate history, etc. And, to be fair, each title worked for each book. It was just funny to see them all in the same catalog.
(As I recall, we didn't ask any of those authors to change their titles.)
And then, of course, there's "Provenance of Titles."
(As I recall, we didn't ask any of those authors to change their titles.)
And then, of course, there's "Provenance of Titles."
Since the only person who'd notice the similarity would be someone who had access to the list. Casual readers with favorite genres wouldn't.
Exactly. And individual editors, working individually, wouldn't notice until all the books from all the editors were listed in one place.
Had another case recently where an author came up with a terrific title. Unfortunately, we had just published another book with the same title only three months earlier. (It was a song title.) That was just inviting confusion, so . .. back to the drawing board.
If it had been a different publisher, or a different genre, or from years and years ago, that might have been different, but these books were just too close together.
Had another case recently where an author came up with a terrific title. Unfortunately, we had just published another book with the same title only three months earlier. (It was a song title.) That was just inviting confusion, so . .. back to the drawing board.
If it had been a different publisher, or a different genre, or from years and years ago, that might have been different, but these books were just too close together.
Ah, Watchmen #5....
And, according to Amazon, several other books . . . including a Deep Space Nine novel!
But did any other example use the title so fittingly? This was the issue that had both page layout and story symmetry from from the front of the issue to the back, meeting in the middle spread.
And Alan Moore has said he wishes he had never written it.
That specific issue? Source?
Anyway, something like that would really have been Dave Gibbons's baby, I imagine. Moore wouldn't have laid out the book's visuals from cover to cover. He wrote the words.
Anyway, something like that would really have been Dave Gibbons's baby, I imagine. Moore wouldn't have laid out the book's visuals from cover to cover. He wrote the words.
As I understand it, Moore's scripts for WATCHMEN were unusually detailed and specific with regards to every visual detail. So he was very much involved with design and layout of the comics.
I think most of his scripts are heavily detailed.
Moore did what every comic book writer has done since they started telling original stories: he told Dave Gibbons, his artist, exactly what to draw, and composed a script around the art he was provided, meaning he wrote a story that told itself from the middle out in both directions. All Dave Gibbons did was draw what he was told to draw.
And Alan Moore has stated in several interviews in the last twenty years or so that he wished he had never written the entire miniseries. The way he phrased it, Watchmen had done severe damage to the way comic books have been written ever since. Many other comics professionals agree with him, by the way.
I found the quote that gave "The Shocks of Adversity" its name by chance in a novel I was reading (The Lacemaker by Laura Frantz) - "True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation." -George Washington
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