Writing challenge/exercise: long titles
Not sure what to write next? Here's a challenge:
Come up with a title that's at least seven words long (not counting initial "A" or "An" or "The"); for extra credit, have it contain a literary allusion. Then write a story for which the title is relevant but not in a completely direct/obvious way. For more extra credit, have spaceships in the story, but that's not required.
(I realize that for a lot of writers, coming up with a title doesn't have anything to do with writing a story. The point of this exercise is to stretch your brain in an unusual way, and thereby possibly spark an unusual story; but if your writing brain doesn't work that way, then feel free to come up with titles just for fun.)
To get you started, here are some long and interesting titles from published works. I listed several of these a few years back in a slightly different context, but that was at a time when we were seeing a lot of stories with unusual titles; right now we're not, which made me think it would be fun to suggest that people write some.
- And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side
- Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
- The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk
- The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth
- The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
- Golden the Ship Was--Oh! Oh! Oh!
- The House with a Clock in Its Walls
- The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories: and Other Stories
- Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo
- Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand/The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities
- Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream
- Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones
- We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line
- What To Do When Your Relatives from Mars Visit Unexpectedly
- Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
Also feel free to come up with titles that you don't intend to use (and/or that you don't mind other people using) and post them as comments to this entry. Also feel free to mention other long and interesting titles that have been used before on published works. (I'm not counting things like the Harry Potter books or the Tom Swift books, where some of the words in the title are predetermined as part of a series.)
