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anghraine and tielan
Look at the most recent 20 fanwork titles on your AO3 account. (I'm assuming this isn't the most recent begun/completed fics, but the most recently updated for any reason.)
1. How many are you happy with? Eight. Which is high, for me; I routinely hate my titles, but two of those come from canons with really strong naming conventions that I could just go with and and one was an episode tag where I could play off the name of the episode and one was based on a musical and so I could just take a line from one of the songs in the musical and whaddaya know, it both fit and commented on the story and canon!
2. How many are ... not great? Three or so? I don't often hate my titles, so it's not like they're terrible, just, you know, mostly mediocre.
3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute? Eight. It's usually more, but as I said in question 1, some fandoms and types of story are more helpful in naming fic than others.
4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning? None! Titles are pretty much always the last thing I think of, even if it doesn't quite qualify as "scrambling at the last minute." Although I just uploaded a ficathon fic (not yet revealed, and hence not in this list) where the title was the first thing I thought of and the entire reason I chose that fandom to write for in the first place (it wasn't what we matched on).
5. How many are quotes from songs or poems? Five, I think? There are two that I have no idea, which probably means I was going through, like, poetry.com searching on keywords and stuff.
6. How many are other quotes? Does, like, a saying count? If so, one. "Home Is Not A Place " (Star Wars Legends, Zahn Trilogy)
7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork? Undoutedly "In Which Mrs. Jane Dupree Has An Adventure (The Finding Herself Remix)" (the poetry of A.A. Milne) and "In Which Cimorene Settles In as King's Chief Cook and Librarian, and Deals with Politics" (Enchanted Forest Chronicles), those being the ones where I used the canonical naming convention of telling you exactly what's going to happen in that chapter/fic. Probably also "Kitty and Georgy (The Healing Old Hurts Remix)" (Pride & Prejudice) because again, the remix title format is designed to explicitly tell you the content of the story. "Assisting Mr. Wayne" (Batman Beyond) is also pretty, hm, self-explanatory. I'm not sure that any of them are more or less reflective of the plot than any of the others, it's kind of a tie.
8. Which best reflects the theme of the story? Definitely "Will the cycle be unbroken" (BSG 2003) because it's all about time travel to stop the awful march of "all this has happened before, all this will happen again."
9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/POV of the fanwork? "Here We Are Together" (My Fair Lady) for the simple reason that it's quoting the canonical words of the viewpoint character.
10. Which is your favourite title? "Will the cycle be unbroken" (BSG 2003) because it flows so organically from the story. Also, I came up with it in the middle of the writing process, which is one of the reasons it fits the story so well. It matches both in theme and content, because to come up with the hybrid dialogue I spent a lot of time searching for quotes and lines of poetry I could adapt; the hybrid says very little that isn't a quote or allusion in canon, and I wanted to follow that convention. So a modified quote felt very apt.
anghraine and tielan Look at the most recent 20 fanwork titles on your AO3 account. (I'm assuming this isn't the most recent begun/completed fics, but the most recently updated for any reason.)
1. How many are you happy with? Eight. Which is high, for me; I routinely hate my titles, but two of those come from canons with really strong naming conventions that I could just go with and and one was an episode tag where I could play off the name of the episode and one was based on a musical and so I could just take a line from one of the songs in the musical and whaddaya know, it both fit and commented on the story and canon!
2. How many are ... not great? Three or so? I don't often hate my titles, so it's not like they're terrible, just, you know, mostly mediocre.
3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute? Eight. It's usually more, but as I said in question 1, some fandoms and types of story are more helpful in naming fic than others.
4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning? None! Titles are pretty much always the last thing I think of, even if it doesn't quite qualify as "scrambling at the last minute." Although I just uploaded a ficathon fic (not yet revealed, and hence not in this list) where the title was the first thing I thought of and the entire reason I chose that fandom to write for in the first place (it wasn't what we matched on).
5. How many are quotes from songs or poems? Five, I think? There are two that I have no idea, which probably means I was going through, like, poetry.com searching on keywords and stuff.
6. How many are other quotes? Does, like, a saying count? If so, one. "Home Is Not A Place " (Star Wars Legends, Zahn Trilogy)
7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork? Undoutedly "In Which Mrs. Jane Dupree Has An Adventure (The Finding Herself Remix)" (the poetry of A.A. Milne) and "In Which Cimorene Settles In as King's Chief Cook and Librarian, and Deals with Politics" (Enchanted Forest Chronicles), those being the ones where I used the canonical naming convention of telling you exactly what's going to happen in that chapter/fic. Probably also "Kitty and Georgy (The Healing Old Hurts Remix)" (Pride & Prejudice) because again, the remix title format is designed to explicitly tell you the content of the story. "Assisting Mr. Wayne" (Batman Beyond) is also pretty, hm, self-explanatory. I'm not sure that any of them are more or less reflective of the plot than any of the others, it's kind of a tie.
8. Which best reflects the theme of the story? Definitely "Will the cycle be unbroken" (BSG 2003) because it's all about time travel to stop the awful march of "all this has happened before, all this will happen again."
9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/POV of the fanwork? "Here We Are Together" (My Fair Lady) for the simple reason that it's quoting the canonical words of the viewpoint character.
10. Which is your favourite title? "Will the cycle be unbroken" (BSG 2003) because it flows so organically from the story. Also, I came up with it in the middle of the writing process, which is one of the reasons it fits the story so well. It matches both in theme and content, because to come up with the hybrid dialogue I spent a lot of time searching for quotes and lines of poetry I could adapt; the hybrid says very little that isn't a quote or allusion in canon, and I wanted to follow that convention. So a modified quote felt very apt.
