I finished “Untitled Stephen Regan Story #1″ earlier this week. It’s not much of a working title, is it? I often struggle with titles. It’s a good thing I don’t have children. They’d have been named “Work in progress” for the first three years of their lives.
Usually, whatever triggered the idea for the story also supplies a title. For example, “Big Little Blonde” came from a passage in a Ross MacDonald novel that I had jotted in my notebook. The line suggested a character, the character suggested the story. For “Untitled,” though, the original idea was too diffuse to provide a working title. I’m actually surprised that I finished it so quickly–a good working title often serves as the spine of the story and can keep it focused.Without one, it’s easy to ramble. On the other hand, I had a good working title in “Blonde” but had so much trouble with focus that it spun off an entirely new story and I very nearly let the whole idea wither and die.
“Untitled” will have to find a title in revision. Meanwhile, I completed a second story about the same protagonist this morning–more of a vignette than a story–with the working title “Losing Faith.” It has been a good week. I wish I knew what I’m going to work on tomorrow.
1 response so far ↓
1 Terry Odell // Jan 14, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Titles are my downfall. Hate dealing with them. Have finally come up with a working title for my novel, which has been filed under “new book” in my computer since word 1.
And then there was the book I got my rights to, and sold to a different publisher. Not only did we revise it, but we had to come up with another title. A painful process, but at least my editor helped.
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