Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Advancement on Every Front Except a Title

That Second Roman Story Set Entirely In Greece has been molded into second draft form and is starting to look like a finished piece; or rather, a finished piece with no title. I've incorporated some most excellent advice and broadened the Meaning of the Story in a way that continues my examination of the end of an Empire. Still haven't heard anything back from Serpentarius about the first Roman story and now something is wrong with their website. I'm hoping everything works out OK, and by that I mean I hope I get an answer soon because if it's a rejection then the reading period for Paradox magazine is opening up in May.

On the third Roman story, I've got the basic scene list done and tonight I struck upon a couple of great ideas regarding plot and secondary characters. If done correctly, it could even lead to a fourth story. It seems that every time I start looking a few years down the line in Late Roman Imperial history I find another juicy fact that can form the basis of a plot.

1 comment:

Keanan Brand said...

There's a brief article in the most recent issue of Writer's Digest that addresses the subject of titles (page 71, if you get the magazine).

The assertion is that a title should serve at least one of three purposes:
1) as an intro to the story's crucial images and ideas;
2) as a sample of the prose to come i.e. don't put a chatty title on a serious work; and
3) as an inducement to keep reading.

Don't know if that helps you. It still hasn't helped me come up with a title for three stories that still need them.