Untitled

This blog is intentionally titled "Untitled" because that's what I want to talk about: Titles!

When do you title? Before you start? Somewhere in the middle? At the end? Never?

Until your story gets a title, what do you call it?

Where do you get your titles? Do they just come to you or do you have some magic words you say and your title appears?

So I know it's like three questions, but it's all about titles! So here's my deal:

Very rarely do I get titles to start with. I always feel that if I'm trying to write to a title, the story isn't going to come out well. Usually I get some type of title in the middle or at the end. But I do want to say I never title my stories and the reason I say that is because I have so many works in progress!

Until I title my stories, they are labeled "Untitled" (see my WiPs lists and see how many "untitled" stories I have!) I usually have names that I call them. For example, I'm working on my Breaking Out of Your Box story, so in conversation I call it my BOYB story. I also have my Keeping Warm in February story, which I refer to as, you guessed it, my KWIF story! Other "Untitled" stories I tend to reference by their fandom (as I do write primarily fanfic). So I have my CSI/BSB story, my Criminal Minds story, etc. If a story is for a challenge (like Fic-100), it gets called my "Fic-100" story. Of course this goes on until said stories get titles.

When my stories do eventaully get titled, I find myself titling them after songs. Sometimes there's a reason. For example: My Fic-100 story. I started on it back in June of 2006. (I decided that June would be a good month to attempt to do a NaNo because it has the same number of days and I was out of school for the summer, unlike November which kills me every year.) Well, I didn't get very far into it before I shelved it. I came back to it a couple years ago. Now here's the premise of the story: FMC is married to her favorite Backstreet Boy, only she doesn't know it! (I know...a little far fetched, but still way fun to write!) Anyway, between the time I started writing my story and the time I picked it up again, the Backstreet Boys had released a new album. On said album was a song entitled "She's a Dream." I found out that the Backstreet Boys actually co-wrote the song together. Upon listening to said song a bazillion times (seriously), the song was about a girl essentially dating one of the Backstreet Boys and not knowing that they were celebrities. Um...can we say life imitating art? So of course, Fic-100 story got titled: "She's a Dream."

So tell me about titling your stories.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!