Posted on by steve boyett

Entitlement

typewriterI can’t write a story or novel unless I have a title. In fact I have a folder with a list of titles that have come to me (“The Placebo Plague” — c’mon, don’t you want to know what that’s about? I do). There’s nothing mysterious about it.  In many ways the title is simply my perspective on the work.  It lets me know how I see it. How I want it seen.

To me a title is a kind of lens that colors what follows. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that works I’ve written first and titled later are inevitably my weakest stuff (”Bridge” is one of my worst published, I think, and didn’t have a title till it was done, whereas “Drifting off the Coast of New Mexico” and “Emerald City Blues” are two of my best [I think], and had a title from the start).

Rene Magritte used to randomly pick titles for his paintings, or have friends title them. Not because he didn’t care, but because there was an enormous tissue of implied yet totally subjective meaning generated by the relationship between painting and title. In many ways that’s exactly what Magritte was all about; it’s why semiologists and grammatologists love him. A painting of a giant rose filling up an ordinary room, entitled “The Tomb of the Wrestler.” That engages me. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but the fact that I try to supply information to connect those two signs, painting and title, speaks to how the human brain can’t help but work. I have titles I want to write stories about just so I can expand on them, or understand that initial image (”The Weatherman Cringes at the Storm’s Approach” is an extreme example; “The Ghost of Her Reply” is a more compelling one).

Which brings me to science fiction and fantasy.

One of the ways genres define themselves is by developing so many conventions that they unintentionally caricature themselves. I mean, who outside the genre is gonna read a book called The Dragonriders of Pern or The Sword of Shannara? Partly it’s that Ludlum-esque titling formula (The Personal-Pronoun Noun) acting on readers to let them know what they’re in for; it’s not a huge leap from The Dragonriders of Pern to The Slime Devils of Gralfnab 9. In this way (among many others) F&SF aren’t just ghettoized; they ghettoize themselves. The Wyvvern, The Integral Trees (try saying that one out loud), The Architects of Hyperspace — who are we talking to here? No wonder we (sure, I’ll say “we”) band into paradoxically self-congratulatory and commiserative conventions that sneer at “mundanes” and “muggles” when they cock their head like Victor the RCA dog as they watch us reading God Emperor of Dune or RenSime on the bus and smile condescendingly.

Here’s an opportunity — damn near a billboard — that lets you be intriguing and appealing (Stranger in a Strange Land, Lest Darkness Fall, Voice of the Whirlwind), that lets you pimp yer ride, and instead most of us are chugging around in lumpy primer gray Bondo and thinking we’re all made of awesome.

Every word matters.

7 Replies to “Entitlement”

  1. The title High was attached to my embryonic attempts to write down the story that became Soft Places. Since I wrote the novel in two separate NaNoWriMo attempts, I swiped the title of a Nick Drake song (“The Things Behind the Sun”) to slap on the second half while I was working on it, but abandoned that when I merged the two halves into one, since it fit like a hand-me-down shirt from a relative who isn’t quite your size.

    A have a vague idea for some kind of revenge story entitled “Evening Out” but I haven’t discerned the details yet.

  2. Since you combined the sections you could have combined the titles, too: “High Places.” 🙂 I’m mostly kidding, cuz I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

    “Evening Out” as a revenge story is a wonderful title.

  3. I find it interesting that a title is imperative to your work. I am an artist and I need a specific visual image for a project to succeed. If I don’t have that mental snapshot as a launch point – no matter how sketchy – the project is doomed, commission or collaboration be-damned. You deal in words so your title does double-duty as your mental snapshot. If only a mental image could be used as the title for a visual art piece!

    I do find that the more interactive a piece is, the easier it is to title. Humorous pieces title themselves (often to excess – e.g. a crab made of warm-forged old utensils and encrusted with rhinestones has had 3 possible titles – “Treif”, “Uri Geller at the Tropicana” and “Encrustacean”), whereas the more earnest and somber pieces have only one, and even that can be a struggle. Humor is highly dependent on communicating disjunctions to the viewer, and because of this reliance on interaction with the audience communicating a title stays in reach. But for a more serious piece you are often exploring a single concept in depth and it can be hard to sum up. How much of your process do you want to give away? How much of the discovery process is based on coming into the work without any preconceived ideas? This is why so many artists stick with “Untitled” – they don’t want to invest energy in answering those questions. If they were verbally oriented they would be writers. 🙂

    1. Hey, Deanna! What a trenchant comment. (“Uri Geller at the Tropicana” — that’s wonderful.)

      I don’t mean to imply that titles are the impetus for my stories. In fact most of what I’ve written comes from single, fairly detailed images. It’s the unraveling of the image that suggests a title, and to some extent the relationship of image to title acts as a collaborator in the unraveling of the rest. But not having a title is definitely a speed bump. It nags at me if I keep working on something that I don’ t have a title for, or that has a placeholder title that I know will change. It tells me I just don’t have a handle on the thing.

      I think I understand the reluctance to title more serious works. Not only does an artist not want to give away too much about (or focus too much on) process, but I think an artist also wants to avoid being too “on the nose.” If your title tells you what it’s all about, what the “moral of the story” is, the audience doesn’t have to delve or ask questions. You don’t want to remove mystery.

      But even so I think there’s plenty of room for invetion with titles. I love titles whose meaning grows laminate after the work is read and the title is looked at again. “The Jilting of Granny Weatheral” being one of the more famous examples.

  5. Hi, Chip, thanks for posting, and for your review of ARIEL!

    [NOTE: I’ve edited this comment because it was largely a response (not necessarily a disagreement!) to Chip’s ARIEL review, which puts it far afield from the subject at hand. Anyone interested in my current views on ARIEL is better referred to my forum.]

  6. Agreed. I feel an eminent sense of unease when laboring beneath a title such as ‘Working Title’ or ‘Dark Fairy Tale’ or whatever stand-in I’ve selected. I’ve also got a small collection of titles, such as ‘The Whale Road’ or ‘Blues To Be There’. Glad to see I’m not the only one 😉

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