Wednesday, February 4: Tune It Or Die!
YOUR STORY’S ONE TRUE NAME
by Rob Lopresti
Titles are important. I don’t feel like I really know a story until I know its title. Sometimes I get most of the way through the first draft before the name appears, but it seldom changes once I find it. (Silly but true: one reason for that is the annoyance of having to rename the computer files.)
The odd thing is that when I do have trouble with a title it is usually a story that began with a title. For example, thirty years ago I got a wonderful, silly idea out of nowhere: “My Life As A Corpse.” I loved it. Problem is, I couldn’t think of a story to go with it.
Ah, but a simple change to “My Life As A Ghost,” and I had it. My protagonist has to pretend to be a ghost in order to scare someone to death. Unfortunately he winds up in a situation that might end up making him a genuine ghost. I sent the result to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and they bought it – my first sale to that fine establishment.
But – and here’s the rub — they changed the title to “The Dear Departed.” In more than 30 sales to various magazines, I have never had another title changed by an editor. Go figure.
The title song
A decade later I was listening to a recording of Arlo Guthrie singing “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and I was stunned by the line about the streets being “too dead for dreaming.” What a title for a mystery novel! I realized it had to be set in the same world that produced the song: the folk music scene of Greenwich Village in the early sixties. I wrote the book, but when I found a publisher Bob Dylan’s company wouldn’t give me permission to use that line as a title. So my book became SUCH A KILLING CRIME, with the title taken from a folksong long out of copyright.
Paul complained about obscure titles and I sympathize, but I’m very proud of one monument to obscurity I managed to slip into AHMM.
I wrote a short story about a trio of strangers who manage to screw something up royally and have only a few minutes to figure a way out. They arrange to blame the mess on a non-existent fourth person and, to avoid involving any innocent bystander, they provide a description of the culprit’s appearance and clothing that was unlikely to match anyone the police came across. So if you made it to the last page you finally discovered the reason the story was entitled “A Bad Day For Pink And Yellow Shirts.”
As we say in my songwriting group, “If you’re going to be obscure, be obscure clearly.”
No, Rob, “A Bad Day For Pink And Yellow Shirts” is a great title because it has something to do with the story.
I love a title like that – where you have no idea what it means until you read the story.
My issue is with titles that have NOTHING to do with the story.
Before reading everyone’s thoughts this week, I thought I was lousy with titles… now I am sure that I should never, ever try and give any story a title. Ever. When I finish something, I will simply turn it over to CB for titling.
I found an easy method of coming up with titles for a series that at times it seems I have been writing since the age of four. As it is set in Akron, I began using the names of streets, neighborhoods and places: MAYHEM ON MARKET STREET, PANIC ON PORTAGE PATH, NIGHTMARE ON NORTH HILL, THE PHANTOM OF JOHNNYCAKE LOCK, DEATH ON THE DEVIL STRIP. It has worked pretty well. Doesn’t help much on stand-alones.
Rob, are you sure you really needed permission to use one phrase from a song lyric as a title? Sounds like fair use to me. If you were quoting complete lines from the song, that would be a different matter. Mind you, I’m not a lawyer.
I’m not a lawyer either, Jon, but one interview with one would have killed my advance.
Dick, I have to admit I hadn’t noticed the pattern in the Akron stories, which, as I have said before, I admire very much.
I’m inclined to agree with Jon, that a single phrase does not a violation make. As I understand it, you could have titled your story “Mr. Tambourine Man” without risk. (Titles themselves are not copyrightable.)
I;m not a lawyer, but…
My understanding is that you generally can’t copyright a title but it is illegal to try to confuse the public by making them think your work is related to another’s. (E.G. try calling your next book Star Wars and see what happens.)
It is certainly possible that I could have used the title and Dylan’s company would have never seen it or (less likely) didn’t care if they did. But I wasn’t going to risk losing an hour’s sleep worrying about it.
By the way, the book was published in Italy as Deletti Folk, alias Folk Crimes. That may be the best title of all.
Forgot to mention, I have heard that one author borrowed a title from another and was successfully sued. As I understand it the judge refused to believe author 2 came up with “Repent, Harlequin, Said The Ticktockman,” without benefit of Harlan Ellison’s story.
That’s good to know, Rob. I had figured the worst fate you could suffer for using the same title as someone else would be that you might be considered unoriginal and unimaginative.
One of my titles, “Nothing but the Truth,” has probably been used half a dozen times, but I was naive enough, when I came up with it, to think I was the only one who had. I would think a judge’s decision would probably depend a lot on how common or how unusual the title is. The one you mentioned would be hard to dream up, as you said, without the benefit of someone else’s.
Charles Ardai once wrote a story for AHMM about a murder in a nudist colony. The title?
“The Naked and the Dead”.
A decade or so ago two publishers released mystery novels at the same time with the same title. What was it? I forget.