Titles

I'm curious how many of you have trouble with titles? Do they allude you? Do you have a hard time summing up your book with one phrase, or do you not bother with trying to make the two line up that way?

I've found my problem with novel titles is coming up with too many. James Scott Bell wrote in his book Plot & Structure about different ways to come up with new, fresh plot material. One of the ways, interestingly enough, was to come up with the title first. I was surprised, as I have about two pages in my "idea notebook" fully dedicated to titles. My personal preference is play on words.

Bell says you can think of a title that will set your mind "zooming, looking for a story." He suggests looking at poetry, the Bible and quotation books (like Bartlett's) for ideas of titles. For my current WIP, I went with a line from Darrell Evans' song "Trading My Sorrows," although I struggled between Blessed Beyond the Curse and Ward of the Heart (which was a play on the phrase "ward of the court," but I didn't think anyone would get that who wasn't in social service circles).

Q4U: How do you approach titles? Do they come first? Last? Or do they come at all?

Bibliotherapy for a Writer

Bibliotherapy is one of my favorite ways to structure therapy, especially for children. Frequently I use it with adults. So what it is? As the name might imply, it's using books in a therapeutic way to either 1) bring home a message or moral, 2) bring insight into the reasons BEHIND the symptomology, or 3) bring encouragement that other people, going through the same things my client is, have been there and made it through.

So, I'm taking my own advice and have now at my disposal, about 6 different books that should help me with the writing craft. I'm currently reading three at the same time: How To Find Your Story by Jeff Gerke, Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer by Renni Browne and Dave King, and Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell in the Write Great Fiction series.

Already I have my black moment (which is pretty knockout!) and I'm only on page 14 of How to Find Your Story! That's what I call having a good resource!

Will review the books on here when I'm done. Stay tuned.

Chapter Two Switcheroo

Okay...I was just reading over on Camy Tang's Story Sensei blog about writing your first page. (Read her post here.) AMAZING. What struck me was James Scott Bell's technique of switching your second chapter for the first chapter (with obvious tweaks needed to set the story and characters up). I had a crit partner actually suggest something similar, and I took her up on it - just to see if I woud like it. And I do! I think I was hitting my reader with too much backstory too soon...and now I really like the feel of my beginning.

Heck yeah. Love it when it comes together! So thanks to Camy and James Scott Bell!