Titles again

[mrissa]

I was thinking about titles, because I am two discs into watching Last Exile from out of the alecaustin-box, and I still don't know why it's called that, and I was wondering how much that would bother people. Discussion of differences in how much it bothers you for TV series vs. book series vs. etc. welcome in comments.

[Poll #1638546]

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

My two favorite authors are Elizabeth Bear and Steven Brust, so you should not be surprised that I don't mind being baffled by series titles. Or anything at all. Wanting to be baffled by my entertainment is kind of my default state (except for Carter Hall, who is so delightfully straightforward that it confuses the hell out of me).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Carter has just gotten to use the phrase "when a woman lost to faerie and a hockey player love each other very, very much." Which sort of counts as straightforward.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Gosh, he's awesome.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's terrific.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

*grinning thumbs up*

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I loathe art which has the title "Untitled". Call it something dammit.

TV shows are a little different. I didn't answer your poll because tv show titles have multifaceted purposes. House isn't about a house and Castle isn't about a castle, but you find out fairly quickly why they are so named. It may not be immediately apparent that Hawaii Five-O is the name of the police unit, but the title tells you what to expect in terms of locale. Mad About You, Better With You, Modern Family etc are descriptions of the situation of the sitcom and don't require much more than a reference.

But you're not asking about them, are you. Offhand, I can't think of a tv series where the name adumbrated understanding of the show. If you want me to watch, the show title better have some relevance. This can backfire: I've never seen Lie To Me partially because of the title. On the other hand, you don't find out how important The Prisoner is until the end of the first show (of the classic series), at which point the title is all encompassing.

Aside: I still don't know what The Hidden Menace refers to. On the other hand, it's a bad enough movie that I don't care.

As for made up words as (or in) a title: Well, if the unfamiliar letters are a name, fine. If you want to invent a concept and use it in a title, that's trickier; finding out what it is better not be spoiler material, or your story will be ruined soon.

Um, have I answered your question? It doesn't seem so.

Yes, I'd enjoy the snippet.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I would like to understand the title by the end of the entire series. If it's multi-season and planned in advance, sure, take your time, but I would like an explanation eventually, even if it's in the last five minutes.

I suspect I got this from anime which sometimes acts this way, and also occasionally has the thing where the title just isn't adequately translatable and so kind of accretes meanings as you go, but you always know there's a real concept there.

[elsmi.livejournal.com]

This was my thought too.

[pameladean]

And mine!

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I knew there was one I meant to include and forgot.

[mastadge.livejournal.com]

I really like when each individual season/series has a title. That was one of the things I really liked about [i]Babylon 5[/i]. Especially in shows where each season is a big story arc, I think it would be fantastic if instead of just Season 1, Season 2, etc they actually gave the big stories titles.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I've heard too many stories about how the title was changed on the author, or simply dictated by editorial fiat, to pay much attention to them. Yes, sometimes I pick something up and peer at it based on the title, but I'm always perfectly willing to put it right back down and walk away. I've stopped thinking of titles as 'hooks' at all.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, they're still "hooks"--they're just not always authorially selected hooks. If you have a good editor, they have some notion what will hook readers also.

[firecat]

Heh, I just finished Last Exile, and so I'm sitting on my spoilery hands.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, on days when I watch it with my workout I go through a disc a day, so you shouldn't have to sit too long, even with days when I do something else.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Is Carter taking Jessica out so that her parents can have a ...

Tam and Janet eeeeeveniiiiiing ....

[brooksmoses]

Ow.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

By the time Jess is 7, Carter is already banned permanently from that joke, I believe. But has made it severalmany times in order to get banned.

No, in this case it's that Daddy and Mommy for some strange reason do not think that Halloween is the most fun holiday ever and Uncle Carter's presence has been requested to adjust for this proble

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It's 2 a.m. on the last night of World Fantasy, so the reliability of my memory is suspect, but in all the examples I can think of right now (books and TV), the general meaning of the series title is clear by the end of the first episode/volume/whatever. Often it's sooner, but certainly by then. I think I would be annoyed if I didn't understand the title after that, because I would start to wonder if it had meaning, or just sounded good to the author.

[zelda888.livejournal.com]

What I would *like*, please, is a proper collection of Carter Hall stories. You post all these tantalizing bits, but I have come late to this party and do not have the background knowledge. Someday my tuits will be round and I will get the relevant back issues of On Spec, but won't you and some obliging publisher do all the work for me?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What I would like is a publishing industry in which short story collections were widely known to be profitable and publishers fell all over themselves to put them out, even from people who had never sold novels. Oh, what a happy, happy publishing industry that would be.

Sigh.

I mean, I still do have hopes of someday selling a proper collection of Carter Hall stories. But if it does happen, it will likely happen after selling a Carter Hall novel and discovering to my great joy that it is at least mildly profitable. Which would be nice. But there are a few key steps between here and there.

(In case anybody comes along here and suggests that I self-publish a collection: do you know what self-publishing is? It's like being a writer, only you get to do the work of all the other jobs in the entire publishing house short of actually running the printing press. I have a friend who self-published a short story collection for the love of it, because he knows how hard it is to sell short story collections. So I know how much damn work it was, because I have watched it done. My current level of health makes it hard to keep up on the amount of actual writing I want to do, and cover designers, publicists, etc. work hard at jobs I have never particularly wanted to do. Self-publishing a collection of Carter Hall short stories--or any other short stories--does not at the moment look like it's in the cards.)

[zelda888.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know... *wistful expression*

But when either of those happy days comes-- novel or collection-- I'll stand ready to buy multiple copies. *hopeful expression*

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I don't watch TV, so I have no opinion on titles of TV series.

The kind of book titles I really like best are the ones that look as if they mean something but they actually mean something else. Like When Gravity Fails. That's why I wanted to call Among Others "Night's Plutonian Shore".

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And Small Change was a series title that became very apparent very quickly in both its directions. So.

I'm afraid that I can almost never say "Plutonian" without thinking very hard about it, because my brain says, "I know what word goes here!" and goes on with plutonium without my consent. A difference in what we spent our late teens talking about all the time, possibly.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Possibly.

That said, Night's Plutonium Shore sounds like an awesome title to me. I can imagine the shore glowing in the dark and poisoning everything around it, and of course, decaying into a rather more decay-product-laden sort of shore, which would not be any less hostile to life, just less prone to engage in spontaneous sustained fission events.

Um. Titles. This was supposed to be about titles, right? I'm fur 'em.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I can make a stab at it if you want....