Frenzied Scripting 2: Engineering the Title

At the moment, as I've said, it's Swamp Opera. Which isn't really working. So, today, I spent a little bit of time coming up with some other options. Here are the best ones I've got:

#1. The Songs We Sing to Ourselves

I mentioned this one the other day. It stems from a line within an early version of the script. A line I'm rather fond of, obviously. I'm not really a big fan of making sure your title gets into the text of the script or the other way around, though. There's just no way it doesn't come across as forced, somehow. But in this case, I could live with it because it's not a precise mirror of the text. And it resonates fairly well with the overall arc of the story, especially if I change a detail here or there, including the job of one of my main characters. At the moment she's a writer, a novelist, but if she was a singer...

The line, by the way, comes from a pet metaphor of mine. I was, at one point, obsessed with the different ways that media, that culture could be used. Are used by the societies that create them. How they can be used to influence, to teach, but also to reinforce the values and messages that a particular society finds to be important. The songs we sing to ourselves then, are the stories we tell one another. The ones that make us feel good, feel reassured about who and what we are, even what we're doing. They're different from the stories we tell to others which are something akin to propaganda. Although not in a negative or pejorative sense. The process of cultural diffusion is too unfocused, too nebulous, to be directed into such hostility. Not for long, anyway, and not unless you really know what you're doing (If you do, of course, culture can be a huge weapon in a state, a civilization's arsenal. But I'd be hard pressed to think of an example of any nation that's done it right for any extended period of time.). It's more like advertising, like convincing those outside your culture of your identity. Both are important concepts for this script – or separate facets of one, vital concept – but in the forefront enough to really merit the titular allusion?

#2. Sunk Costs

Ah, that's right. It's another one of my favorite conceptual toys, the sunk cost fallacy. Which is another idea that's really central to this script. Because, although I haven't really talked about the issue yet, it's really concerned with occupation and imperialism and the costs thereof. The protagonists of the piece are part of an expedition out to modernize, to civilize, a distant outpost of their great and powerful state. But what they find there is far from the unsophisticated, uncultured primitives they expect. Because they've been thrown into a flash point of old, established cultures that are primed to push back against outside domination. And a great deal of the story is about just how much that great state is willing to spend, just what those protagonists are willing to sacrifice in order to bridge that gap.

It's also, by the way, a bit of a punne or a play on words. Because, spoilers, but the sinking of at least one ship is going to be a key plot point. The world, the area, I'm dealing with here is one that's made up of islands and archipelagos, ships and sea travel are central to the setting. And one way of reading the story is that it's the characters dealing with the hidden costs of that sinking. So, it's working on a few levels from simply sounding kinda cool to highlighting an important thematic element. But I'm worried it's just a bit too inside baseball for its own good. That I'm trying too hard here to come up with something clever, a reference that no one will get, instead of something that people will respond to.

#3. Ghosts on the Wind

This one gets into the discussion on the strength of the imagery alone. The sheer poetry of something ethereal, insubstantial, handled by something invisible. Like cold fog melting away under the morning sun. Like a faint scent wafting from the plate you've just cleaned. It's about something fleeting, something that you can't ever hope to grasp slipping out of reach.

Another writer, another artist might say “the dying of the light” or “sands through the hourglass” because, like those, it's a metaphor of destiny, of life, for the temporary, transitory nature of existence. And that's also a large component in the story. The concept that we have but a brief time, only brush ever so lightly against each other, and it falls upon us to make the most of it.

In the story itself, however, it refers to the antagonists. A group of guerilla fighters working to subvert and sabotage the occupation of that distant land. Hardened fighters, underdogs against an overwhelming foe, who strike and fade away like, well, ghosts. As such, it's another title that works on several levels at the same time. Which, in case you can't tell, is something I like. Efficiency is the calling card of good design. Economy of effort. You only have an audience's eyeballs for so long, it pays to cram as much data as you can into whatever you're streaming to them. Whether they unpack it or not is a gamble but what you can be sure of is they won't, if there's nothing there in the first place. So, I don't mind expending so much time and effort on thinking about the consequences of something that only a small handful will ever appreciate. Better that some connections are there to be drawn than none at all.

The problem here, though, is while I like this title, I just might have another story it fits even better.

Don't think I have a winner yet, then. Torn, again, by which path to follow, which option to select, and which avenues to foreswear. Thoughts? Opinions? Crickets? Let me know.