Original Rant → Part 14~ I have writers block so I decided to make a rant about titles of fanfics

One of the most basic turn offs is a rancid title. Unless the reader is new to fanfics or twelve, they will not look twice at titles like the following.

I am married to _______!?!

Moving in with ______?!?

We did that and made a baby!?!

I like you, so why do you like her?!?

When a reader is looking for a fic to read, there are four things they look for.

The first are the tags- are there tags with my favorite idols, is this the right Junsu, is this the right fan couple, is it this genre also? All of these things the tags tell.

Readers also look at the description- does the story sound interesting, within these first 200 characters, was I impressed by the summary or writing skills?

The rated sign is also taken into consideration. Let’s not forget that readers are either innocent or erts. Some won’t read if the fic is rated, some won’t read if it isn’t, and some will read either way.

The other thing they look at is the title. Is the title sound interesting, is it unique, is it mature, and is it what I am in the mood for?

The title is like a picture, it says a thousand words.

Titles need to sound unique. I am going to use my first fanfic as an example. Push and Pull is not an original eye catching name. Actually, I checked, there are two or three other fanfics with the exact same title. Mine came out first, but the name was thought of again.

Uniqueness help the readers associate the title with the plot. I subscribed to a fic over a year and a half ago and they didn’t update it a single time in that span. However, they recently updated and just going by the title, I immediately knew which fic it was. There had only been two chapters previously, so it wasn’t me remembering the fic itself, but the title triggered a memory of a general idea. When a fic updates after a long period of time, it is important to have this recognition for the readers. A fic with the title Push and Pull, unless the plot was mind blowing, everything has been forgotten after all that time.

The title can’t summarize the fic. A title like “I became a maid for you” summarizes the first few chapters and reveals way too much. It also shows that the author isn’t creative and can’t think in depth. Titles like this are often overly cliché and there are probably ten other fics with the same title in the same fandom, not to mention other fandoms.

What readers want is to be surprised and engaged. Oh, what is “I became a maid for you” about, a secret agent spy the has to stop an evil scientist from taking over the world? No, it’s about some stupid hoe girl that is too poor and stupid to get a normal job and has to work for an idol.

A title can make sense only at the end but can not describe only the outcome. There are those fics that you learn the plot little by little and only at the very end do you make all the connections. Then a fic that describes only the ending would be where all the previous happen, but the title describes the last two chapters only. This is like “And we got married” instead of describing the relationship they had throughout the fic.

This is once again, not summarizing, but having a title that connects to the whole fic as one.

 Vague meaningless titles are a writer’s sinful chocolate. These are your titles that sound really pretty but absolutely do not relate to the fic at all besides maybe one sentence. I’ll give an example of one. I have a oneshot series that I titled quickly just so I could post the oneshots, and the title is worthy of a slap. One Last Song. This is a terrible title because none of the oneshots are related to singing in any way besides one I wrote about composing music. Otherwise, there is no relation to any song being the last or of only one of anything being the final of its kind.

More examples are-

Waking up to your face

Listening to the rain fall

Looking outside at dusk

Breaking dawn

Twilight

New Moon

Eclipse

Shoes lined up from baby to me

And you guys are perfectly welcome to use these examples as a title and even ask me for a review if they have this title. But only if they have these titles.

A good title makes the reader think. Unless reading on Winglin or AFF, you should generally smarter even while reading fanfics. I know my vocabulary has gone up. Phallic objects anyone? As your reading levels mature, your writing levels mature. You don’t want to sound like you just hit puberty and think the world is either full of hope and love or hate and despair. The only way to sound like you know what the hell is going on in the world around you is to sound intelligent. How do you do that? Seems smarter than your reader, simple.

You need to create a title that will have the reader stumped, thinking, ‘what the does this mean, how deep are they going into this?’ Lord of the Flies, for example, or even To Kill a Mocking Bird. Right off the bat you question what it means and try to connect it to the story even when everything just seems to be a story without any relation.

These are also the kinds of titles that you can’t use very often or risk sounding stupid.

Of Daffodils and Weed Stains

One Pill, blue pill, red pill, four pill

Themes from the title repeat throughout the fic. One of the easiest ways to choose a title is to find the thing that is talked about the most often. Not necessarily their love story, or whatever plot you think you have going on. Perhaps every morning your silly OC buys a cup of tea from a vending machine and has to struggle to get her 500 Won out as change. Or maybe on the bus these two lovers take to school (a city bus I might add) there is always this old lady that comments how cute they are and has the ugliest leather bag. Something that can be found reoccurring throughout the fic, maybe even interrupted by whatever you feel is fitting.

When choosing the title, you can’t pick the first thing that comes to your head because it is most likely bull. Titles are very important, no matter how little reviewers grade for it. Some only give it 5 points, others only 10. But the title is the first impression, the thing that readers remember, and the way for readers to find the fic again. Don’t choose some crackpot title just to post the fic faster (like I did in the case of One Last Song) and try to sound like you are at least older than twelve.

Also, a title does not have to be all of the above, in fact, that is probably impossible. Please try to do one of the points though.