Titles: a superfluity
Jul. 6th, 2012 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceGeoff Ryman says that writers like to clear their throats. This is a good; it gives employment to editors, that they may cut superfluous paragraphs at the start of a story, superfluous chapters from early-draft novels.
I am as guilty of this as anyone, except that I do not call it guilt. I refuse to recognise the thing as a fault; I like the sound of a writer feeling their way into a story, tuning up, warming up. I think it's a part of the performance. Once - deliberately - I wrote a story that had three separate beginnings, and I defended every one of them.
Separate-but-linked: as you know, Bob, most of my stories don't start with the opening paragraph, no. They start with the title. It's an inherent part of the process, and I'm rarely comfortable even thinking about a story let alone writing it unless it has a title sat astride it.
I've recently been commissioned - with money, yet! - to write a ghost story set during the American Civil War. Knowing as I do almost nothing about the American Civil War, I was glad to be nudged towards a known, recorded incident. Okay, I thought, I can do that. Background, location, events: tick. Opening line, yay. No idea what the story is, but we're all set to start - except, oh. Need a title. Okay, go for a walk, think about that...
People, I came home with two titles. I have no idea where either of them would lead the story, but they're both deliciously viable - and I can't choose. I can't play favourites, between two charmers.
So for now at least, this unwritten story has two titles.
"Like Quicksilver for Gold: or, The Bridge Truth Is To Beauty."
There. I can work with that. Those. That.
I am as guilty of this as anyone, except that I do not call it guilt. I refuse to recognise the thing as a fault; I like the sound of a writer feeling their way into a story, tuning up, warming up. I think it's a part of the performance. Once - deliberately - I wrote a story that had three separate beginnings, and I defended every one of them.
Separate-but-linked: as you know, Bob, most of my stories don't start with the opening paragraph, no. They start with the title. It's an inherent part of the process, and I'm rarely comfortable even thinking about a story let alone writing it unless it has a title sat astride it.
I've recently been commissioned - with money, yet! - to write a ghost story set during the American Civil War. Knowing as I do almost nothing about the American Civil War, I was glad to be nudged towards a known, recorded incident. Okay, I thought, I can do that. Background, location, events: tick. Opening line, yay. No idea what the story is, but we're all set to start - except, oh. Need a title. Okay, go for a walk, think about that...
People, I came home with two titles. I have no idea where either of them would lead the story, but they're both deliciously viable - and I can't choose. I can't play favourites, between two charmers.
So for now at least, this unwritten story has two titles.
"Like Quicksilver for Gold: or, The Bridge Truth Is To Beauty."
There. I can work with that. Those. That.