25 June 2012

Series' titles

Or titles in general. The thing is, I suck at titles. Sometimes a title can come to me before a story is even started and be perfect for it. Sometimes I figure out the title as I write. But most of the time I struggle coming up with them. 

Especially when it comes to contemporary story or series', which makes no sense. Why should they be harder than say, my fantasy stories? Not that I didn't struggle with those as well, but they were easier.

When I submitted Polar Nights, the series couldn't be continued to be referred to as the Svalbard Saga. Or the related series referred to as simply the Related Series. The lovely Megan helped me come up with series' title for those; Arctic Love and Seasonal Love. Similiar series' names because the series' are related. Some characters will even appear across both series.

Now I'm struggling with my other contemporary series. When I first wrote it, it was all a 130K novel named Scarred Souls. But that was a title for Josh and Damian only and the series have evolved into several other characters who want their stories told. Troubled Minds have been the series' name for quite some time now, but I'm not really feeling it. Been toying with names such as Intertwined Fates, London Love or London Life and Love, but I'm not really feeling those either.

All I want is a simple series' name, but I'm struggling with it. It's really frustrating, because I have so many ideas when it comes to this series in particular. I'm back to thinking about Scarred Souls again. The prequel to Reunited, the story of how Josh and Damian met, is named Scarred Souls. But it is Silver who says the two words to Damian, and now that I think about it ... every character has scars, physical or emotional ones. So why not just call the series by it's original name? It's what it's always been called.

I'm liking this a lot better than anything else I've come up with. I think that maybe this time it'll stick. Because everybody's wounded in some way; certainly these characters. I'm still missing titles for a lot of the stories I have planned, but I'm sure they'll come to me in due time. If they don't, I'll have to angst over it then.

Do others feel like me when it comes to titles? Why are they so hard? Why do some come so easily, and others not at all?

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