The Belle Curve.
I'm thinking YA. Southern American high school. Weight issues, realistically handled. Or a transgirl. Or both.
The Songs of Unknown Birds.
Issues of identification in birdwatching analogously linked with mysteries of personal identity. Possibly concerned with an adoptee's adolescent crisis?
Hunting the Eidolon Duck.
An Eider Duck is a real duck. So an Eidolon Duck would be a phantom duck. And it just seems there ought to be - someplace - to go with that.
The Good Sprout.
Where the Bad Seed meets a good sport...
Givers, Takers, Movers, Shakers
A history of utopian communalism? Certainly a community-based narrative, not primarily concerned with a single protagonist.
Cry Me a River
A history of sarcasm. Must include one whole chapter distinguishing sarcasm from irony.
All's Well that Ends
A comedy centering on a disastrous high school production of a certain Shakespeare play.
Showing posts with label titles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label titles. Show all posts
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Gee, I Love Language
My husband passed on a library book to me, Kat Zhang's What's Left of Me. He explained that the premise is a world in which everyone is born with two personalities, one of which fades over time and eventually goes away. Except this time, it doesn't. "The story's narrated by the recessive personality," he said.
It is possible that, until this book was written, or even until we had this conversation, the term "recessive personality" had never been used before. It wasn't needed. But as soon as we needed it, boom, it came to hand, perfectly comprehensible to anyone who grasps the premise.
That is one good tool we've got there.
---
BTW, if you live in the US and are eligible, it's Voting Day! Have you done your bit to preserve democracy yet? Better get on it!
It is possible that, until this book was written, or even until we had this conversation, the term "recessive personality" had never been used before. It wasn't needed. But as soon as we needed it, boom, it came to hand, perfectly comprehensible to anyone who grasps the premise.
That is one good tool we've got there.
---
BTW, if you live in the US and are eligible, it's Voting Day! Have you done your bit to preserve democracy yet? Better get on it!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Something Like That, Anyway
Damon hasn't read the lesbian western yet, but he skimmed it and noticed that an awful lot of the things characters do depend on the lie they're using to cope with the world. Some characters lie to themselves; Len in particular lies to the world in order to best live with herself.
His first stab at a title, better than all the ones I've come up with so far, is A Lie Worth Living With.
I think he's put me on the right track here, but that title says "contemporary" to me, not "historical" or "western."
It might be good enough for a working title to use on the query, though.
His first stab at a title, better than all the ones I've come up with so far, is A Lie Worth Living With.
I think he's put me on the right track here, but that title says "contemporary" to me, not "historical" or "western."
It might be good enough for a working title to use on the query, though.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Titles Len's Story Will Not Have
Fistful of Specie (This phrase is used in the text; I didn't notice till I did the backward revision).
Len and Bean Go Over a Cliff.
The Trail of the American Horse.
An American Transvestite in Texas.
Secrets of the Purple Sage.
Western Disguise.
The Making of a Man, from Scratch.
Frontier Masquerade.
Found with the Wind.
Letters on the Western Wind.
Oh Western Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow?
Leaving Homestead.
Inventing Len Hausman.
Three days of insomnia reduces the inhibitions, which I suppose is a good thing. Uncomfortable, though.
Len and Bean Go Over a Cliff.
The Trail of the American Horse.
An American Transvestite in Texas.
Secrets of the Purple Sage.
Western Disguise.
The Making of a Man, from Scratch.
Frontier Masquerade.
Found with the Wind.
Letters on the Western Wind.
Oh Western Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow?
Leaving Homestead.
Inventing Len Hausman.
Three days of insomnia reduces the inhibitions, which I suppose is a good thing. Uncomfortable, though.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: Somebody Else's Title
A few years ago my husband and I were in Austin - I don't remember if this was in conjunction with a writing event or Melissa Etheridge's last tour - and he wanted to eat at Clarence Stubbs's Barbeque Restaurant. This is my fault because I'm the one who introduced him to Stubbs's sauce (the trick to finding good commercial barbeque sauce is simple: examine the ingrediant list. If it contains the words "high fructose corn syrup," don't get it.). He doesn't often get to eat at barbeque restaurants with me because they're such a waste of time for vegetarians, but I can eat anywhere that serves a baked potato and I'm usually the one choosing the restaurant in Austin, so we went.
Stubbs's has a stage in the basement and is one of a number of establishments that hosts a Gospel Brunch on Sunday mornings. We weren't there for that, but the restrooms are also downstairs, so I went down and saw the stage. It's a nice rustic-looking venue; no idea what the acoustics are like. And in the stall I read the words: "I am an athiest at the Gospel Brunch."
Which is a perfect title. For a memoir. For someone in the music industry (probably Our Lady J); or someone who has done her best to pursue her own identity while not cutting herself off from the family and friends whose identities are publicly perceived as inimical to hers; or for the person who wrote those words. Who, if you run across this - c'mon, write it already!
Except she was probably 18 when she wrote the graffito and too young for memoir. Twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, though, she has the title all ready to go.
It is not unusual for writers to have to deflect people who approach them to "collaborate;" who, by "collaborate" do not mean "we write the story together" but "I give you the idea, you do all the work, and we split the profits 50/50." Anybody who has read a few of these garage sales understands now why this doesn't work. We all have to work out our own ideas and don't have time or energy to deal with anybody else's. But when you're in idea generation mode all the time, tripping over them every time you go to the restroom, some of the ideas you have aren't your own.
I'm not in the music industry. I'm not an athiest - and "agnostic at the Gospel Brunch" doesn't have anything like as good a ring. I can't imagine I'd ever write a memoir. A life spent reading, writing, and doing house and yardwork isn't memoir material. So this is somebody else's title and I can't do anything with it, but pass it on and hope the person who belongs to picks it up eventually.
Stubbs's has a stage in the basement and is one of a number of establishments that hosts a Gospel Brunch on Sunday mornings. We weren't there for that, but the restrooms are also downstairs, so I went down and saw the stage. It's a nice rustic-looking venue; no idea what the acoustics are like. And in the stall I read the words: "I am an athiest at the Gospel Brunch."
Which is a perfect title. For a memoir. For someone in the music industry (probably Our Lady J); or someone who has done her best to pursue her own identity while not cutting herself off from the family and friends whose identities are publicly perceived as inimical to hers; or for the person who wrote those words. Who, if you run across this - c'mon, write it already!
Except she was probably 18 when she wrote the graffito and too young for memoir. Twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, though, she has the title all ready to go.
It is not unusual for writers to have to deflect people who approach them to "collaborate;" who, by "collaborate" do not mean "we write the story together" but "I give you the idea, you do all the work, and we split the profits 50/50." Anybody who has read a few of these garage sales understands now why this doesn't work. We all have to work out our own ideas and don't have time or energy to deal with anybody else's. But when you're in idea generation mode all the time, tripping over them every time you go to the restroom, some of the ideas you have aren't your own.
I'm not in the music industry. I'm not an athiest - and "agnostic at the Gospel Brunch" doesn't have anything like as good a ring. I can't imagine I'd ever write a memoir. A life spent reading, writing, and doing house and yardwork isn't memoir material. So this is somebody else's title and I can't do anything with it, but pass it on and hope the person who belongs to picks it up eventually.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: Robin Hood and the Templars of Doom!
I wish I could claim credit, but "Robin Hood and the Templars of Doom" isn't my idea; it's the title of the cover story for Fortean Times #259 (which I got this week, after everybody in England had received #260). Another great article title this issue: "Lost Graffitti of the Templars." Well, I think they're great; although Templars have become a cliche among people who want to give a psuedomystical and psuedohistorical tone to their derivative psuedoFortean TV shows and movies without doing any research.
So I'm going to say up front: If you don't want to do the research, stay away from this week's sale idea, because you'll spoil it. It comes to you straight from the FT cover story, and it's something there's no possibility of my doing, but it could be a good novel, or series of novels, of the Reimagining Stories Everybody Knows genre.
The author of the article, John Paul Davis, examines the earliest ballads - in which Robin is a yeoman, not an outlawed earl, and his king is Edward, not Richard/John - for clues to who, if anyone, he might have been. He starts with figuring out which Edward, to place him in time, and then studies behavioral cues. Did you know (I did, because I went through a Robin Hood phase in junior high) that Robin and his Merry Men particularly venerated the Virgin Mary and were sworn to protect women? If you want to know the whole argument you'll have to get yourself a copy of #259, or his book Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar, but the crux is, he thinks that the Templars in England, forewarned of the action against their order on the Continent, had time to disperse and hide among the general population or live in outlawry in the woods. Given that they were a monastic order as well as knights, with all the vows and discipline of both sets of people, a group of them banding together in the forest and doing their best to fulfill their vows even in outlawry is not only possible, but probable.
Remember, the Pope wasn't infallible in those days. (And even today, he's only supposed to be infallible on certain subjects.) Religion was as much about politics as religion. At one time, there were two popes. In Galileo's correspondence with his daughter, a nun, we are treated to the picture of her and her cloistered sisters rooting for him to win his little dispute with the Pope over which heavenly body circled which, cheering when he won a point and grieving when the Pope retaliated. In the ballads, Robin Hood and his Merry Men are both actively religious and frequently at odds with church authorities. He even dies at the hands of an abbess, who pretends to help him and instead bleeds him to death.
I don't know if it's true. I don't care. But I can see the big thick paperback novels ranged on the shelf, can't you? The cover design would include some clever amalgamation of arrow and Templar cross.
Good books can be written using the Templar material. Catherine Jinks proved it in Pagan's Crusade. Just stay away from Rosslyn Chapel and do it properly, okay?
So I'm going to say up front: If you don't want to do the research, stay away from this week's sale idea, because you'll spoil it. It comes to you straight from the FT cover story, and it's something there's no possibility of my doing, but it could be a good novel, or series of novels, of the Reimagining Stories Everybody Knows genre.
The author of the article, John Paul Davis, examines the earliest ballads - in which Robin is a yeoman, not an outlawed earl, and his king is Edward, not Richard/John - for clues to who, if anyone, he might have been. He starts with figuring out which Edward, to place him in time, and then studies behavioral cues. Did you know (I did, because I went through a Robin Hood phase in junior high) that Robin and his Merry Men particularly venerated the Virgin Mary and were sworn to protect women? If you want to know the whole argument you'll have to get yourself a copy of #259, or his book Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar, but the crux is, he thinks that the Templars in England, forewarned of the action against their order on the Continent, had time to disperse and hide among the general population or live in outlawry in the woods. Given that they were a monastic order as well as knights, with all the vows and discipline of both sets of people, a group of them banding together in the forest and doing their best to fulfill their vows even in outlawry is not only possible, but probable.
Remember, the Pope wasn't infallible in those days. (And even today, he's only supposed to be infallible on certain subjects.) Religion was as much about politics as religion. At one time, there were two popes. In Galileo's correspondence with his daughter, a nun, we are treated to the picture of her and her cloistered sisters rooting for him to win his little dispute with the Pope over which heavenly body circled which, cheering when he won a point and grieving when the Pope retaliated. In the ballads, Robin Hood and his Merry Men are both actively religious and frequently at odds with church authorities. He even dies at the hands of an abbess, who pretends to help him and instead bleeds him to death.
I don't know if it's true. I don't care. But I can see the big thick paperback novels ranged on the shelf, can't you? The cover design would include some clever amalgamation of arrow and Templar cross.
Good books can be written using the Templar material. Catherine Jinks proved it in Pagan's Crusade. Just stay away from Rosslyn Chapel and do it properly, okay?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: The Secret Staircase
One of my first drawer manuscripts was titledThe Secret Staircase. I was ten, I think. I wrote "The Secret Staircase" on the top line of the paper, skipped a line, wrote "Chapter One," and started introducing my characters. They were Claire (12,) Maud (10 and the protagonist), and Mavis (8). They lived in the mid-nineteenth century in a classic Queen Anne house and I spent several chapters describing how they lived without ever figuring out where the secret staircase was, why it was in that house, or what the plot would be.
I thought about using the title again, about 20 years later, and made a serious attempt to think about how to make it work with my limitations and talents as a writer. As an adult I prefer to set stories in places I know well, so I needed a reason for a secret staircase in one of San Antonio's historic houses, and a reason for it to be key to the plot. Our historic houses aren't generally as big as all that (the one I live in now is about typical, at 2,000 square feet) unless originally built as hotels, boarding houses, or apartments. I decided that when the house was converted to apartments in the mid-twentieth century the narrow back staircase used by the servants was sealed off. The girls in the apartments at its foot and head would discover it and find a way to go backward and forward in time using it. That was when I first became interested in Reconstruction as a time period; but I never got the spark that turned the mechanical operation of putting a plot together into a book. The only characters with faces and voices were two people in the past: the ex-slave cook-housekeeper, and her son, a State Policeman under Congressional Reconstruction. Even they were distant, on the far side of a sea of research.
So I let it be. I may tell their story someday. I'm finding that, though not nearly the open untapped field the Pleistocene is, Reconstruction cries out for a different sort of treatment than it's generally had in fiction. And The Secret Staircase is a good title. But I may not ever be able to use it and anyway, titles can't be copyrighted. So take it if you need it.
I thought about using the title again, about 20 years later, and made a serious attempt to think about how to make it work with my limitations and talents as a writer. As an adult I prefer to set stories in places I know well, so I needed a reason for a secret staircase in one of San Antonio's historic houses, and a reason for it to be key to the plot. Our historic houses aren't generally as big as all that (the one I live in now is about typical, at 2,000 square feet) unless originally built as hotels, boarding houses, or apartments. I decided that when the house was converted to apartments in the mid-twentieth century the narrow back staircase used by the servants was sealed off. The girls in the apartments at its foot and head would discover it and find a way to go backward and forward in time using it. That was when I first became interested in Reconstruction as a time period; but I never got the spark that turned the mechanical operation of putting a plot together into a book. The only characters with faces and voices were two people in the past: the ex-slave cook-housekeeper, and her son, a State Policeman under Congressional Reconstruction. Even they were distant, on the far side of a sea of research.
So I let it be. I may tell their story someday. I'm finding that, though not nearly the open untapped field the Pleistocene is, Reconstruction cries out for a different sort of treatment than it's generally had in fiction. And The Secret Staircase is a good title. But I may not ever be able to use it and anyway, titles can't be copyrighted. So take it if you need it.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: Fun with Titles
Before we get started today, I'd like to say Happy Birthday to our late lamented role models and world-changers, JRR Tolkien and Lucretia Mott. A world without the Huge High Fantasy Trilogy (and hobbits) and voting women would be a world impoverished indeed.
Anyway, to the subject at hand. This week I couldn't find the Elmer's glue (I knew we had some; it's as much a state of nature to have a half-dried-up bottle of Elmer's in the house as it is to have dustbunnies), and standard procedure for losing things is to ask my husband if he's seen it - finding things is his mutant ability - but I didn't want to interrupt him at work over something so trivial, so I started an e-mail, heading it: "Mystery of the Missing Glue." The first line of the e-mail was: "Change one letter of that, and you've got a pretty good title for a Nancy Drew story." Then I glanced sideways and spotted the glue hiding under some stuff my husband was supposed to file that was leaking out of his in-box, so I went on to other subjects.
"Mystery of the Missing Clue" really is a good Nancy Drew title, though. And it reminded me of the title I thought up, oh, years ago, that would be guaranteed to catch the eye of the 10-year-old mystery buff scanning the spines of library books for key words: "Secret of the Mysterious Hidden Clue." It's a can't lose proposition, as far as getting the kid to pick it up is concerned. Slap a decent cover on it - something with an innocent assortment of Meddling Kids in the act of finding something that the menacing shadow sneaking up on them doesn't want to find - and it's a sale. Or a check-out. Few kids have the allowance necessary to really feed the ravenous mystery habit, which requires at least three fresh titles a week, so it's a blessing that librarians gave up their prejudice against stocking Nancy Drew sometime in the sixties.
Of course, if you suck people in with a title that good you'd better deliver, and I find I enjoy playing with the possibilities more than pinning down that particular story. It could be a parody (ala Whales on Stilts, but I couldn't ever do that as well as MT Anderson does), or it could be part of a series (but then I'd have to come up with equally good titles and stories about the same person over and over), or it could be a stand-alone with a mystery buff using her knowledge of the genre and discovering that knowledge's benefits and limitations in the real world, or -
And then there's the clue. What is it? How can it be a clue if it's hidden? What's it the clue to? How dangerous is it? You can't let down that demanding ten-year-old mystery buff if you want a return reader.
So rather than just leave it as the shining, vague, but perfect mystery in my head, I'll toss it out there.
Anyway, to the subject at hand. This week I couldn't find the Elmer's glue (I knew we had some; it's as much a state of nature to have a half-dried-up bottle of Elmer's in the house as it is to have dustbunnies), and standard procedure for losing things is to ask my husband if he's seen it - finding things is his mutant ability - but I didn't want to interrupt him at work over something so trivial, so I started an e-mail, heading it: "Mystery of the Missing Glue." The first line of the e-mail was: "Change one letter of that, and you've got a pretty good title for a Nancy Drew story." Then I glanced sideways and spotted the glue hiding under some stuff my husband was supposed to file that was leaking out of his in-box, so I went on to other subjects.
"Mystery of the Missing Clue" really is a good Nancy Drew title, though. And it reminded me of the title I thought up, oh, years ago, that would be guaranteed to catch the eye of the 10-year-old mystery buff scanning the spines of library books for key words: "Secret of the Mysterious Hidden Clue." It's a can't lose proposition, as far as getting the kid to pick it up is concerned. Slap a decent cover on it - something with an innocent assortment of Meddling Kids in the act of finding something that the menacing shadow sneaking up on them doesn't want to find - and it's a sale. Or a check-out. Few kids have the allowance necessary to really feed the ravenous mystery habit, which requires at least three fresh titles a week, so it's a blessing that librarians gave up their prejudice against stocking Nancy Drew sometime in the sixties.
Of course, if you suck people in with a title that good you'd better deliver, and I find I enjoy playing with the possibilities more than pinning down that particular story. It could be a parody (ala Whales on Stilts, but I couldn't ever do that as well as MT Anderson does), or it could be part of a series (but then I'd have to come up with equally good titles and stories about the same person over and over), or it could be a stand-alone with a mystery buff using her knowledge of the genre and discovering that knowledge's benefits and limitations in the real world, or -
And then there's the clue. What is it? How can it be a clue if it's hidden? What's it the clue to? How dangerous is it? You can't let down that demanding ten-year-old mystery buff if you want a return reader.
So rather than just leave it as the shining, vague, but perfect mystery in my head, I'll toss it out there.
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