PRIDE’S CHILDREN IS RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Part of the background of the novel I’m working so hard to get ready for publication is my fascination with celebrities, a tiny but life-long sideline of mine: in Mexico growing up, we read HOLA – which told you everything going on with anyone who was anyone, including the royal houses of Europe.
In the States, as an adult, I indulge this by reading People and similar magazines – at the dentist/doctor’s office. There is so much repetition, that once you have a good base, keeping up isn’t as hard as you think – you just tuck each new bit (which will probably recapitulate everything that ever happen in the celeb’s life) into your matrix of ‘data,’ and come back to it in a couple of months.
Life is a Soap Opera
I may have mentioned at some point that I have serialized Pride’s Children, Book 1, on several sites – to make connections in the online indie world, meet people, get new readers and their feedback.
One of these sites is VentureGalleries, and one of the two guys who runs it, Caleb Pritle, III, has been putting up chunks several times a week.
He chooses a 1000-1200 piece at a time, adds an episode title, and puts it up on the site.
He has the most outrageous episode titles, but the interesting thing to me has been that every one of them is lifted from somewhere in the episode.
When in the world did I write THAT?
The episodes aren’t quite scenes – his choice of divisions is to give serial readers a predictable size and approximate time-length piece, to be read on things like mobile phones.
So, for the fun of it, I’m going to go through the episodes he’s put up, and list them with their titles, and you’ll see what I mean.
One important bit: Caleb is an old newspaperman (I mean ‘experienced,’ not ‘agèd,’ when I say ‘old’) – and headlines have to grab. And he has a sensationalist turn of mind anyway – check out some of his books.
I honestly can’t remember writing some of these gems (the titles), but they are always IN the episode.
I’ve learned a lot about titles and grabbing attention from reading what he has been doing with my own words.
Thanks, Caleb!
Some ‘interesting’ episode titles:
3 – To hell with safe choices. She was going for…
6 – Did he have an affair with his co-star?
13 – Whatever the cost, her beauty was worth it.
14 – Love them, leave them, you never get to keep them.
24 – He liked living in the lap of luxury.
27 – It might be better posting an armed guard.
35 – For a writer, she was woefully inarticulate.
47 – She was jail bait, a child playing dress-up.
68 – Seeking sanctuary in the middle of the night.
74 – He sulked away like the coward he was.
86 – A woman who doesn’t gossip is a rare…
93 – Sincere flattery almost always worked.
99 – Sex changed everything and could never be undone.
109 – She had planned to expend her sexual tension.
116 – Why had she revealed her sordid secret?
128 – Would they fight a duel over a movie role?
136 – Hell’s deadline for tips was midnight.
144 – Was her mother sleeping around with movie stars?
152 – The most erotic thing a woman could do for a man.
158 – Why did she pray for the unborn baby to die.
163 – Was he on his way to hell?
He’s not done yet, so there will be more for me to shake my head at
They have ebooks and regular books and blog posts – always something going on.
This isn’t the full list – it’s not all posted there yet – but I can remember shaking my head at his ability to turn my simple words into lurid headlines when a particularly good one came across my desk.
How do you title your work, and what grabs your attention?
Thanks to Quozio.com for the ability to make quotes.
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