During the discussion that lasted through several
posts a few weeks ago here at Spacefreighters concerning a trend toward lurid
covers and titles in SFR, I neglected to mention I was having my own little
title crisis over Book 4 in my Interstellar Rescue series.
At that time, I was nearing the end of the
first draft of the novel, which, for anyone else would be a second or third
draft, since I edit as I go. I had a working title, which was everything you don’t want a title to be: vague, dull,
tied to nothing in the plot or characters and of no use in determining what
kind of book this was. I assumed when I began revisions of the draft, something
more exciting would come to me.
Here's a hint: Gen. MacArthur says goodbye. |
Well, guess what? I went through the
manuscript, actively looking for title hints as I cut slow passages and
sharpened dialogue, and . . . nothing. Nada. Zip.
I have a pattern for the titles in my series—three-word
song titles, the first of which (Unchained
Memory) was slightly modified. But the only song titles that presented
themselves for this book steered the reader too much in the direction of
romantic suspense or contemporary rather than SFR. Or they applied to the
romantic plot and not the external plot (or vice versa). Or they made no sense
at all unless you had read the book until the end. (I don’t know about you, but
I hate it when I have to really think about how the author came up with that
stupid title!)
I played word association games. I asked my
walking group. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to
sleep. I even considered running a contest to let my readers come up with the
title. I’ve never had such trouble performing this basic function of writing
life. And even now I worry that people will hate my choice, or not understand
it, and won’t buy the book because of it.
Buddy Holly belts one out. |
At least I have a plan to help readers with
the understanding part. No one will have to spend more than a minute wondering
where I came up with this title and what it means to the book they’re about to
read, a story about a Rescue agent who brings his ailing father home to Earth to
hide him from an alien assassin and falls in love with the extraordinary woman
chosen to care for him. They’ll simply open the book and read this:
“Old
soldiers never die. They just fade away.”
--General
Douglas MacArthur
“A
love for real, not fade away.”
--Buddy
Holly
The title? Not Fade Away: Book 4, the Interstellar Rescue Series, a tribute to the Buddy Holly classic. Maybe not
perfect, but it beats Follow the Sun,
Daddy’s Home, Down to Earth, Last Starship Home and, especially, My Secret Alien-Fighter Lover.
Cheers, Donna
Titles are a mixed bag for me. They often come during or after the first draft, but I'm editing one at the moment that *still* doesn't have a proper title. It's second in a series. Book One has a legal phrase as the title so I've been trying to come up with something that ties in but reflects the book's own theme. I think the problem is maybe I'm not entirely certain of its core theme myself...
ReplyDeleteIt sometimes takes a while for me to come up with a title. Like you, I don't go for the tropes. And anything with 'Daddy' in it... Anyway, I like what you've come up with. It's intriguing.
ReplyDelete