Meme.

[jadesfire]

I'm still a bit fragile and anxious and prone to the urge to hide under my desk when things get too much, but as my Big Bang fic is ready for submission and my gateverse_remix story just needs final-betaing, (I'm still working out just how cheeky it is to send it to the guys who turned around 45,900 words overnight for me and say "O HAI THER NEED THIS BY SATRDAY") I figured it was probably safe to come out and play for a while.

Also, I updated my fic list yesterday, sorting out links and adding stories, so this seemed to be a good chance to play the Titles Meme that I missing while bashing out the Big Bang.

Pick five (or two or ten) of your fics and explain what the titles mean and/or how you came up with them



90% of my titles come from the quotes that I love to put at the top of my stories. I picked up the habit from early exposure to Dorothy L Sayers, and have never gotten out of it. In my dream-life, I live in a sort of 'Busman's Honeymoon' world, where I happily and easily quote Shakespeare and Donne in everyday conversation. I don't think the fact that my husband and I can hold entire conversations based on the Discworld and Singin' in the Rain is quite the same, somehow. But quotes are incredibly useful for setting the tone and feel of a story, as well as providing a short-cut to a title when I need it.

Yours, Mine and His [House]
From Forster M Russell: Every story has three sides. Yours, mine and the facts. Writing the same story from 3 points of view was headache-inducing in the extreme, so I possibly did a small dance of joy on finding this quote, because it saved me coming up with a title. The story was a fascinating exercise though, and is part of my ongoing interest in points of view.

Bibula Harena [SGA]
Although I never explain this in the story, 'Bibula Harena' means 'thirsty sand'. I got a bit carried away with the phrase in early drafts, and Z made me pull it back. In my head, the arena* is virtually another character in the story, and since I have to be able to 'watch' things to write them down, the sand was the most striking mental image I could come up with.

*When I wrote Be Not Without Hope, Chrys pointed out that arenas and fighting have a tendency to come up frequently in my stories [Rise up and fight follows a similar theme]. I think this stems from my conviction that hitting characters with a big stick is the best way to get them to emote.

Smitefulness [SGA]
A pun all of my own - I'm not normally very good at them, so I was quite pleased with this one. Plus, it's a silly word for a silly story that still makes me smile.

Beating Time [Jack, tied into Doctor Who]
I had too much fun with titles for this story. It's in three sections, each of which covers a month, and I had a 'beating' title for each - Beaten, Heartbeat and Beat of Drums. 'The Sound of Drums' was the running theme for the end of DW S3, and I really wanted to tie into that feeling. The idea of a heartbeat, for a character who can't die, just seemed appropriate.

From the Ashes [Jack, tied into Torchwood]
"The Christmas Invasion" has one of the most striking endings in New Who, where the Doctor tells Rose that the white stuff falling from the sky isn't snow, it's the ash of the obliterated spaceship. 'From the Ashes' has all the right connotations for the story, of Torchwood rising out of those ashes into a more public role, as well as resonating with the Doctor Who episode in the way I needed. Unfortunately, whenever I read it, I get the song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in my head, which isn't quite the mood I was going for...

Sic Transit Tempus [Jack, pre-Torchwood]
Ah yes, the ficverse that ate my life. It was never meant to be this way, I swear. It was going to be three series (I have a thing about threes. Don't ask) "The Waiting Years", "The Wandering Years" and "The Watching Years". And how I wish I hadn't tied myself to the letter 'W'. Too late now. But I realised that I wanted to write more about what happened between the stories, and just writing "The W- Years" was deeply unsatisfactory. I'm pretty sure it was crystalshard who suggested "Sic Transit Tempus" - not only because she has my best title ideas (What Not To Buy is also her work), but because she's a huge Babylon 5 fan as well, and "Sic Transit Vir" is one of the classic episodes from the series. The original quote is "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" - Thus passes the glory of the world - which was appropriate for what I was trying to do with the stories, trying to get Jack from Doctor Who to Torchwood in a plausible, satisfactory manner. Time is almost another character in the stories, and this just seemed to work.

and the last one, since apparently I'm more thoughtful about these than I realised:

Ned [Jack, TE Lawrence]
So much research went into this story. The film 'Lawrence of Arabia' had a huge impact on me and the way I thought about films, so I knew how I wanted the story to feel and look. After much digging around, I was confident enough to write it, but the title eluded me for a long time. Originally, I'd planned to rip something out of the opening quotation, but that seemed too much for what is, at heart, an incredibly simple story. So I took the title from the penultimate, and probably most significant, line in the story, which I'd picked up during my research. And it just worked.

Comments

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

*grin* You're much better at titles than you think you are. Thanks for the nod about the title ideas, though!

*passes tea and biccies for under the desk*

I think I may steal this meme.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I'm good at choosing quotes and picking my friends' brains. These are useful lifeskills ;)

Mmm...biccies *nom*

Have fun with it!