Working Titles
"When Good Fortunes Go Bad" is the working title for my story of the man who takes his fortune cookies too seriously. Depending on comments from my writer's workshop, I may leave it at that. (That's my way of saying that if nobody at the workshop has a better idea, this is it.)
This is not bad, as titles go. It's descriptive, conveys a sense of the story's premise and even hints at the genre - horror. Certainly much better than the original working title of my novel - Griffin's Rip. Sounds like fantasy, right? Actually, it's hard science fiction, hence the change.
I usually wait until I see how the story is playing out before slapping a title on it. That way, I have some idea what I need the title to say about the story. In this case, I knew the story would be much longer than my usual flash fiction and that I wouldn't be able to finish it overnight, like usual. To keep track of the story in my files, I had to title it.
So far I am finding that the title is in some respects driving the story forward. In other words, the story is growing along the lines suggested by the title. Which show just how powerful the right title - or the wrong one - can be.
As for the story itself, it currently sits at 11 pages and approximately 6,741 words, making it already over twelve-hundred words longer than my current longest story and people have yet to begin dying. This could get to be quite long....
This is not bad, as titles go. It's descriptive, conveys a sense of the story's premise and even hints at the genre - horror. Certainly much better than the original working title of my novel - Griffin's Rip. Sounds like fantasy, right? Actually, it's hard science fiction, hence the change.
I usually wait until I see how the story is playing out before slapping a title on it. That way, I have some idea what I need the title to say about the story. In this case, I knew the story would be much longer than my usual flash fiction and that I wouldn't be able to finish it overnight, like usual. To keep track of the story in my files, I had to title it.
So far I am finding that the title is in some respects driving the story forward. In other words, the story is growing along the lines suggested by the title. Which show just how powerful the right title - or the wrong one - can be.
As for the story itself, it currently sits at 11 pages and approximately 6,741 words, making it already over twelve-hundred words longer than my current longest story and people have yet to begin dying. This could get to be quite long....
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