I Suck at Titles
I admit it, I do. I suck at naming things.*
For example, when it came to naming children, I was allowed to come up with boy names, with Sally getting a veto option, and she would get to name the girls, with me having a veto option. When it came to naming my firstborn, I went with what I knew. I named him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Second (whom we’d call “Reese” as not to confuse the two of us). It worked for a couple of reasons: I got to retroactively declare myself “Maurice the Great” and I got to declare my son the beginning of my dynasty. When son number two came along, my original plan was to name him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Third. My reasoning, follow me on this, was that in case something happened to Reese, I’d still have someone to carry on the dynasty. And we could call him “Tre”. Solid, solid reasoning on my behalf … vetoed by the wife.**
It’s rare that I start with a good title. “Pimp My Airship” might have been the last time I was perfectly happy with a title and even then I had the title before I had the story. In the end, I don’t know if the tone of the story matched the title, but I kept it anyway.
Most times I have working titles, a place holder while I come up with something that will work. To pull back the curtain on my creative process, I have a story which sold (which I’ll announce later) that had the working title “Virtual Babies.” Shock of all shocks, it’s about virtual babies. Eventually the title became “A Stone Cast into Stillness”, but my editor has been beating me to death with my working title. Just a subtle reminder that I don’t crap gold. *** Which means it’s probably a good idea that I never let my Angry Robot editors know that my original working title for King Maker wasn’t “The Knights of Breton Court” but “Black Camelot” (hey! I was watching “Black Caesar” at the time. DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!!!).
This originally was meant to be a random tweet. But I couldn’t figure out a way to reduce my rant to 140 characters. That’s why God created blogs.
*This is an entirely different conversation than the one about Pen Names. Though it ends the same: me making the mistake of sharing said name with a “friend” and that friend then beating me to death with it.
**Instead, we end up naming him Malcolm Xavier, after one of my heroes, Malcolm X. Sally wanted the “X” to stand for something, and I could live with the allusion to Professor X of the X-Men. This was also before my Malcolm X came out blonde and blue-eyed.
***In fact, our running IM discussion while I was writing this blog went like this:
Me: I'm two paragraphs into my latest blog and haven't had a WHIFF of a point yet.
HatedEditorWhichShallRemainNameless: sounds like your short story first drafts. ZING!!!
Cause he’s got jokes.
For example, when it came to naming children, I was allowed to come up with boy names, with Sally getting a veto option, and she would get to name the girls, with me having a veto option. When it came to naming my firstborn, I went with what I knew. I named him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Second (whom we’d call “Reese” as not to confuse the two of us). It worked for a couple of reasons: I got to retroactively declare myself “Maurice the Great” and I got to declare my son the beginning of my dynasty. When son number two came along, my original plan was to name him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Third. My reasoning, follow me on this, was that in case something happened to Reese, I’d still have someone to carry on the dynasty. And we could call him “Tre”. Solid, solid reasoning on my behalf … vetoed by the wife.**
It’s rare that I start with a good title. “Pimp My Airship” might have been the last time I was perfectly happy with a title and even then I had the title before I had the story. In the end, I don’t know if the tone of the story matched the title, but I kept it anyway.
Most times I have working titles, a place holder while I come up with something that will work. To pull back the curtain on my creative process, I have a story which sold (which I’ll announce later) that had the working title “Virtual Babies.” Shock of all shocks, it’s about virtual babies. Eventually the title became “A Stone Cast into Stillness”, but my editor has been beating me to death with my working title. Just a subtle reminder that I don’t crap gold. *** Which means it’s probably a good idea that I never let my Angry Robot editors know that my original working title for King Maker wasn’t “The Knights of Breton Court” but “Black Camelot” (hey! I was watching “Black Caesar” at the time. DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!!!).
This originally was meant to be a random tweet. But I couldn’t figure out a way to reduce my rant to 140 characters. That’s why God created blogs.
*This is an entirely different conversation than the one about Pen Names. Though it ends the same: me making the mistake of sharing said name with a “friend” and that friend then beating me to death with it.
**Instead, we end up naming him Malcolm Xavier, after one of my heroes, Malcolm X. Sally wanted the “X” to stand for something, and I could live with the allusion to Professor X of the X-Men. This was also before my Malcolm X came out blonde and blue-eyed.
***In fact, our running IM discussion while I was writing this blog went like this:
Me: I'm two paragraphs into my latest blog and haven't had a WHIFF of a point yet.
HatedEditorWhichShallRemainNameless: sounds like your short story first drafts. ZING!!!
Cause he’s got jokes.
Labels: writing, writing life
posted by Maurice Broaddus at 3/10/2010 12:58:00 AM
6 Comments:
haha... thanks for that. I always wondered where the names came from. I thought you were just a really big Malcolm in the Middle fan. If you have any more children.... you must name it Dewey, regardless of it's gender. Don't act like you're not a little bit tempted.
Yeah, me too. Titles are hard. But I'm really grateful you didn't name Malcom "Maurice the Third". Glad Sally's got a good head on her shoulders.
I know what you mean. I never used to be all that good at titles either. (Probably a bit better than Black Camelot! Sounds like a musical. Anyway, these days don't publishers of mass-market fiction want snappy one or two-wordtitles - that *aren't* a reference to other fiction, unless it's poems or Shakespeare, if you're a posher mystery novelist like Ruth Rendell! Well I was going to write a novel once about sort of a Roman gladiatrix - and guess what I was going to call it? You've guessed it! Short and sweet hits the mark. That posh British male historical novelist does it too: cf. Pompeii. And Joanne Harris - you must have heard of her but did you know she was also a fantasy writer? Try "Runemarks"!) When I occasionally compose non-spontaneous stuff I use working titles. I used to be no good at at all at names either; resorted to telephone directories; stopped me writing actually for a good few years but now there are websites to help. Is there a "title generator" website? Have you tried it?
actually, there are a few title generator web sites. not that i'd use them: they're mostly joke sites.
"I suck at titles."
You and me both. I also have a hard time naming characters (though never sinking to the Epic Fail level of Jerry "Left Behind" Jenkins).
honestly, i now keep a file of names for just that very reason. as i come across interesting names, i jot them down and put them in the file.
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