back on titles

[mrissa]

Well, despite still being miserably, miserably sick and missing out on time with my grandparents, I managed to do a few quasi-useful things today. Occasionally my brain decides to pretend to be Zed or Elise and makes up a whole bunch of titles all at once. I write them down in case I need them later. In the mix this time was a theory about What We Did. Remember, if I don't use What We Did to Save the Kingdom for this book, I will write a lighter, YA fantasy for which it could apply. So for those of you who love it: no vote in this poll is a vote against me having a book called What We Did to Save the Kingdom, it's just a vote against applying that title to this book.

[Poll #1341256]

Also, I have now tried all the kinds of tisane in the house and sorted them for which ones are to go find themselves new homes and which ones are to get drunk up by me. Possibly soon. For whatever reason, hot chocolate does not appeal with this kind of sick, so I go through a lot of tisane.

I have been telling people that the people who make Numb3rs were sending a message by having an episode where Alimi Ballard's character is revealed, casually and respectfully, to be a comics geek, and that episode guest stars Christopher Lloyd and Wil Wheaton. And that message was, "Dear Mris, We love you and want you to be happy. Mwah! --The People who make Numb3rs." Well, I watched the next episode after that one, and it turns out that there was a postscript: "P.S. We really really mean it." Because the next episode was full to the brim of Enrico Colantoni goodness. To the brim! Could barely have fit more Enrico Colantoni in it! I attempted to squee, but it came out croaky and I will try not to do that again for another few days at least. But! Enrico! Squee! (It doesn't hurt when I type it.)

Now I have no idea what they could do to follow up on this in the next episode, since Madeline Kahn is dead, and I checked several other people's IMDB pages and verified that Fyvush Finkel, Tina Majorino, Percy Daggs III, Walter Koenig, Claudia Christian, and Francis Capra do not appear in Numb3rs any time soon, much less all together in the same episode. Ah well. It was still a lovely pair of episodes.

Apparently I totally do not mind fan service when I am the fan being served.

Comments

[aedifica]

I really like What We Did To Save The Kingdom as a title, but I think it would sell better as YA. Before The Kingdom Falls is fairly bland, Before The Kingdom's Fall is slightly better, and Before The Kingdom Fell has some punch, the kind of thing that I think would get me to pick the book up and see what it was about.

Madeline Kahn is dead? That's sad. I suppose that's why I haven't heard of her being in any movies lately.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Alas, she did not even see this millennium, no matter which year you count as the new millennium. She died in '99.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Before the Kingdom Fell is the best of the three Befores, to my way of thinking, but... What else you got?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"I didn't get nothin', I had to pay $25 and pick up the garbage."

[aedifica]

"And they all moved away from me on the bench there..."

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the Before ones work for me, because I don't care about The Kingdom as the subject of the title, but I do care about the We who are saving it.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

What We Did has a lot more character; the other three seem much more generic.

Of course I'd have to read the specific book to have an opinion about any title for any specific book, so I ignored that poll option, which in some sense is my real answer.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And...um...didn't you? For some reason I thought you had.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read a book under that title. My comments on title *then* apply to that book. My comments in this thread were more generic, about that title in general.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Got it.

[moiread]

None of them really tickle me, though I guess I'd have to have read the book to say for sure. I think Before the Kingdom Falls is the best of the Before trio, however, because I think past tense implies that the kingdom was lost and Before the Kingdom's Fall specifically rings awkward to me.

This probably isn't much help.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, "not this" is still useful data, or I wouldn't have included that option in the poll, even in the form of a Butch Cassidy reference.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I don't like them much, and I don't think they fit the book very well either. I continue to think that you need to get the geometry into the title somehow.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And what a persuasive icon with which to make that point!

"Mathman, Mathman! Titles with geometry! Mathman!"

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have thought that a Minnesotan would think so highly of Mathman, what with the Michigan helmet and all . . .

"What We Did" works better for me, of the available options. But I clicked the "would have to read" ticky thing.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I voted for Before the Kingdom Fell because the present tense seems awkward in a title, and Before the Kingdom's Fall doesn't do it for me. Plus, people should use the word "Fell" more often.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Regardless of which title I use, I will try to use "fell" more often to oblige you. Um. Without actually having to do so more often than I have, because that's sort of not the goal.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Numb3rs and NCIS are my favorite shows because the geeky people in them are my kind of geeky people. I also love the family relationship on Numb3rs.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

NCIS is on my library list.

I love the family relationship on Numb3rs, too. And I love the fact that while they don't tell each other everything, the stuff they don't tell each other is plausible to me, not idiot plot stuff and not mean, broken-family-relationship stuff.

So many TV families don't like each other. The Eppeses may drive each other crazy sometimes, but they like each other as well as loving each other.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

I like What We Did to Save the Kingdom the best, and I'd happily see it on an adult novel, but it seems to work for YA better.

Not crazy about the other three, they don't seem to flow. I wonder, would Before Kingdom's Fall work better? If "the" was dropped? It still sounds something generic, but it hits my ears better.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmm. This must be a difference in speech patterns, then, because Before Kingdom's Fall flows badly to me.

(There are a few authors whose prose is much easier to read now that I've heard them read it out loud, because there are patterns of emphasis that were so foreign to my experience that I couldn't figure them out without hearing them. And there are a few bits where editors have clearly not been familiar with my home dialect, because they've suggested "corrections" that make it clear that the meaning of the original sentence was opaque to them. Often I end up proposing some third rephrase that preserves my intended meaning but puts it in a form more people are comfortable parsing.)

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I still like What We Did to Save the Kingdom best. If I read the book, which is what I clicked, I might find one of the others fit as well.

[hypatia-j.livejournal.com]

I actually liked Before the Kingdom Fell better, but was worried that it could be read two or three different ways: 'Prior to the kingdom's fall', or 'in front of/prior to the fell(adj) kingdom', so I ended up choosing kingdom's fall instead.

But maybe ambiguity is a good thing, ymmv.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

I'm in the "depends" category; I like "What We Did" a lot for its uniqueness, but it definitely makes some implications about the style and substance of the book -- it's not a title for a tragedy. "Before the Kingdom Fell" is my favorite for a grimmer tone.

Of course, those two titles make completely opposite implications about how the story will end; the first suggests that we did, in fact, save the kingdom, while the second suggests that we didn't, and you're about to find out why.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

On the latter paragraph, I will say: it's complicated.

[cloudscudding.livejournal.com]

I like Before The Kingdom Falls because it leaves some tension in as to whether or not the kingdom will fall.

Of course, I Fail at titles.