Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: thoughtful
  • Music: Katy Perry, "California Gurls."

A rose by any other name...might not get planted.

First up, Edmund Schubert at Magical Words posted this lovely set of thoughts on the naming of stories, and why it matters. Go forth, read, consider, and take a look at your own works in progress. And now...

I have always had a very love/hate relationship with titles. A good title makes everything wonderful. A bad title does the exact opposite. Most of my songs have titles that are so generically descriptive as to be direct quotes, usually taken from the chorus, usually forgotten in favor of "let's do that one, you know, with the buffalo stuff in the chorus." (This does not apply to "Wicked Girls," which couldn't have had a different title if I'd wanted it to.) Titling songs is hard.

Titling books is a little easier, because most of my books come sort of "pre-bundled" with their titles. There are books in the InCryptid sequence that have titles and point-of-view characters, and not very much else. This can be disconcerting when a book gets re-titled on me, as happened with Feed—a decision I think was absolutely the right thing for the book, but after literally years of calling it Newsflesh, it took me a while to change gears. It was easier when book two became Deadline two-thirds of the way through the writing process, because it had already had one name change (from The Mourning Edition). I really don't know what I'll do if I'm ever told I have to change a title I'm really emotionally attached to, like Professional Goreography, or Sit, Stay, I Hate You.

My short story titles are the ones I'm really proud of. The long, Tiptree-style titles. "Dying With Her Cheer Pants On." "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells." "Laughter at the Academy: A Field Study in the Genesis of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD)." "A Citizen in Childhood's Country." The short, accurate but interesting titles. "Lost." "Indexing." "Knives." "Let's Pretend." Again, the titles usually accompany the stories they describe, and changing them is even harder than changing the names of books, but some of them make me really, really happy.

(And if I ever publish a collection of short stories, I am going to fight like a cat in a sack to title it Dying With Her Cheer Pants On. Because dude, would that not be an awesome book to read on the train? Knowing me, and knowing my overall body of work, it's more likely to be called The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells, but a girl can dream.)

I guess it's sort of like naming babies. All the care in the world to find something that fits, something that's right, and most of all, something that won't rhyme with any unfortunate swear words or insults (for those halcyon playground days). And half the time, we grow up and shorten or change the names our parents gave us—so Rosemary and Rue becomes Rosemary, Newsflesh becomes Feed, and Dying With Her Cheer Pants On becomes "no, really, it's about cheerleaders fighting an alien invasion."

Titles are evocative and magical and strange and enticing, and can make the difference between an impulse buy and a dismissal.

Food for thought.
Tags: contemplation, writing
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  • 30 comments
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archangelbeth

September 14 2010, 20:52:43 UTC 6 years ago

Until one hits name-recognition of the stage of, "Is that the next by that author? To the registermobile, bookman!" (E.g., "Is that the next Mira Grant/Terry Pratchett/Bujold/McGuire...")

Then it doesn't matter as much, since people will press the book into new readers' hands, saying, "Yes, the cover's horrible, but ignore that..."

Of course, getting to that stage is fraught with titles and covers and whatnot. O:(

galdrin

September 14 2010, 21:41:48 UTC 6 years ago

Well the comment I cited was discussing the difference between an impulse buy and a dismissal, which, to me, implied an author's work I may not be familiar with as I browse the shelves. Rosemary and Rue attracted my attention, firstly from the title, then the cover, which led me to read the back cover.

On the other hand Cat Valente, an author with whom I am familiar and have some of her previous works, has a new book coming out shortly ... the title was questionable except for the mention of Prester John, and the cover, even having been re-done, completely turns me off purchasing it:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/26uslcb

archangelbeth

September 14 2010, 21:53:30 UTC 6 years ago

True, true. Just thinking that in isolation... there are other things that can matter. ("Is that a new C.J. Cherryh book I see before me? Does it say it's part of the Foreigner series? *SNAFFLE*")

Ooo, that's an interesting cover for me! *goes to see if she can get a sample out of iBooks* What turns you off it?

I think our individual reactions go to show that one person's "intriguing!" is another person's "...meh" or "ugh!" I wonder if eBooks will someday see a proliferation of covers based on someone's prior orders? I can already search the web, with Stanza, to see what covers are available for my Project Gutenberg free books, and select which cover I like...

galdrin

September 14 2010, 22:10:18 UTC 6 years ago Edited:  September 14 2010, 22:11:24 UTC

After the quality of the work that was done for her duology, The Orphan's Tale's the cover on this new one has a very cheap look to it, like a newcomer who got hooked up with some small-time press that put a no-name artist to do the cover - a big let-down from a Tiptree Award winning/World Fantasy Award nominated/Mythopoeic Award winning author.

archangelbeth

September 14 2010, 22:28:03 UTC 6 years ago

Huh! For me, it was evoking the style of early Mercades Lackey books, like By the Sword -- a not-quite line-drawing, not-quite painting kind of style. *beth does a little searching* Oddly, the Orphan's Tales books -- especially the first one -- have the covers that leave me going, "Eh, another Generically Moody cover -- looks like a riff on the Forgotten Beasts of Eld." ( http://www.patriciamckillip.com/Books/eld.htm -- second cover down; the one I read as a kid.)

Art selection is tricky.

seanan_mcguire

October 20 2010, 18:27:01 UTC 6 years ago

Just as a note? Having now read The Habitation of the Blessed, wow, is it worth it.