Coming Up with a Creative and Memorable Title: Tips and Exercises

Titles are your first attempt to get readers interested in your story, and we all know how important first impressions are! But coming up with a title that’s not only creative and memorable but also accurately reflects the essence of your work can be a daunting task. So, how do you make the process a bit easier? Here are some tips and exercises to help you come up with the perfect title for your book or story.

-Summarize your story in one sentence: Start by summarizing your story in one sentence. This will give you a clear idea of what your story is about and what themes you want to highlight.

-Play with words: Once you have a clear idea of the main theme of your story, start playing with words related to your theme. Write down different combinations of words that capture the essence of your story. 

-Use literary devices: Utilize literary devices such as alliteration, rhyme, or puns to make your title stand out.

-Look to the classics: Take inspiration from the classics. Consider how each title relates to the specific story and how you can apply that to your own work.

-Get feedback: Share your potential titles with friends, family, or writing peers for their input. Getting feedback from others can help you refine your title and make sure it reflects the tone you intend.

-Try the “Elevator Pitch” exercise: Imagine you have only 30 seconds to pitch your story to a publisher or reader. The longer it takes for you to get to the point, the more work you have to do to refine your idea.

-Experiment: Don’t be afraid to try different titles. You may have to go through several different options before you find the right one.

In conclusion, coming up with a title for your book or story can be a challenging task, but with these tips and exercises, you can make the process a bit easier and come up with a title that accurately reflects the essence of your work and captures the reader’s attention. So, don’t stress too much, have fun with the process, and trust your instincts!

Embracing ChatGPT as Educators

Without growth, life would be a never-ending Groundhog Day, with the same mistakes being made over and over again. This can be especially true in the field of education.

It is crucial to stay informed about new technologies that may enhance the learning experience for our students. One such technology that has recently caught national attention is ChatGPT, an AI program that uses advanced algorithms and a large amount of text data to understand and respond to questions and statements in a way that mimics human conversation.

While the thought of using ChatGPT in the classroom may raise questions, it’s important to remember that new technology, including educational technology, has often been met with apprehension and resistance in the past. Concerns about the cost and time required for implementation, fear of change and the unknown, and the potential for technology to replace traditional teaching methods are all valid and reasonable reactions.

That being said…

The Danielson Framework, widely used to assess and improve teaching practices, is divided into four domains: planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities.

“Flexibility and responsiveness” is part of the instruction domain. This component evaluates how teachers adjust their instruction to meet the needs of all students in the classroom. It looks at how teachers use various teaching strategies, including differentiated instruction, to respond to the needs of their students.

And just like in the movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray’s character Phil Connors breaks out of a cycle of misery by changing his behavior, educators should approach new technologies with the same mindset. By investing energy in learning more about ChatGPT, we can make the most of its potential benefits while being mindful of any potential downsides. Either that or we invest twice as much energy policing the technology we refuse to learn. I hate to evoke an “either/or” fallacy, but I’ve seen it go this way for the last twenty years of my career and I’d like to avoid it this time around.

The OpenAI website and their GitHub page are great resources to learn more about ChatGPT and its capabilities. Additionally, websites such as EdSurge and EdTech Magazine provide tutorials, guides, and resources on how to use ChatGPT in the classroom.

While ChatGPT is still in development and its impact on education is not yet clear, it’s worth exploring how it can be used in a way that enhances the learning experience for our students.

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Dynamic Character Development in 2023

The new year starts with grueling self-inflicted changes, but why do so very few of those changes last? Fiction has the answer, or at least the structure of fiction suggests one… 

Most people are familiar with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. He articulated this story structure in 1949 and it still holds up as a blueprint for a main character’s dynamic change. These short sentences should sound familiar because they are the plot of most of the stories you have read or watched in your lifetime:

A hero leaves the status quo to address an issue. They develop new approaches and attitudes to better deal with this problem because their old ways don’t work. Finally, the hero returns home different than they were before. The end.

Joseph Campbell wrote down seventeen (17) steps, but I am not going through each of them for you right now because each step isn’t exactly relevant to this conversation. 

The part that I want to discuss is the necessary change that the hero goes through to be successful. I used the word dynamic earlier on purpose because dynamic characters change. Characters who don’t change are called static. 

Real change happens when we are forced to adapt to challenges that will not be resolved by doing things the old way. It doesn’t matter whether the new habit is about trusting others, working with a team, learning to work on your own, accepting responsibility, or learning how to let things go, the hero needs to be torn from their comfort and forced to act in a way that is going to help them succeed.

The cold reality is that most of us aren’t willing to go through that in our daily lives and I don’t blame you. Comfort is comfortable. This is often why we see the most growth and change in ourselves after a traumatic loss or an unexpected setback. And that makes it harder, because who wants to change when everything seems okay? Yeah, we know it could be better, but that requires work, and sometimes work is hard to justify when things are just fine.

My suggestion? Put yourself through the Hero’s Journey. What is your antagonist right now? Relationships? Setting time aside to write? Starting a new career? Write down what you have been doing to address it (or avoid it). Are you solving the problem or are you managing your discomfort? 

Once you figure out what you need to get done, you can start figuring out how to do it. Joseph Campbell suggests a mentor. There are professionals who do this, but friends and family members work fine as long as you can trust them. 

Don’t worry about stiff and declarative resolutions. Intentions are more of a direction than a destination, which reduces some of the pressure. 

Did you want to read more books? Get a library card, download the Libby app, and download e-books and audiobooks from your public library for free. Listen during your commute to work or read on your phone while waiting at the dentist’s office.

Did you want to start writing? Find one hour a day in which you are left alone and get typing. It doesn’t have to be a lot of words at first. Just enough to build the habit. Once you develop that inertia, things will be a lot easier.

Achieve your own dynamic character development in 2023.

My intention for 2023 is to talk with people who share my passion for story structure, character development, and all of that nerdy trash because it makes me smile and gives me an opportunity to review how I can get better at what I enjoy doing. 

So why not help me get off to a good start by subscribing and commenting? 

I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve got planned for 2023. 

Talk soon.

J

Learn more about the Hero’s Journey: 

https://thinkwritten.com/the-heros-journey/

https://prowritingaid.com/joseph-campbell-hero

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Let’s Restore Superman’s Image #MyPalSuperman

DC has allowed Superman to grow stale and #MyPalSuperman can fix that. Hear me out…

A major bucket-list item got checked off when I thanked Dan Jurgens at the 2022 NYC Comic Con for helping me become a reader. For those of you who don’t know, Dan Jurgens is the man who wrote The Death of Superman comic book ark in the early 90s. And as we come up on the 30th anniversary, I’m reminded that the whole event not only had a major impact on the comic book world but on my life as well. 

To be honest, I wasn’t much of a reader until well into high school. The first full book I ever willingly read cover-to-cover was the Rodger Stern’s novelization of Superman’s death and return. 

And then I just kept reading. You may have noticed. 

I’m now an AP English Language teacher who has written a dozen books and a dozen more short stories. I have a good career and a happy life and I feel that I owe a lot of that to the Strange Visitor from another planet that got me reading in the first place.

So now it’s my turn to do some good for #MyPalSuperman.

While I was talking to Dan Jurgens, I asked him if the panel had any plans on restoring Superman’s image. Over the last decade, people have been more interested in twisted versions like Homelander, Omni-man, and Brightburn. DC capitalized on this fad in the short term with the Injustice storyline, but that doesn’t fix the problem I recognized in my teens during the 90s. Superman had been allowed to become corny in a way that made him unwelcome. Edgier heroes like Wolverine and Spawn started gripping readers. Antiheroes became cool and true heroes became silly. Now, even the people who Superman rescues roll their eyes at him on the Harley Quinn show. 

So Dan Jurgens, the man to whom I owe much of my voluntary literacy, stood there nodding as I rambled this at him and, to my surprise, this famous author shook his head and agreed with me, saying, “I don’t know why DC would degenerate their own IP.” 

That got me thinking. About a week later, I figured out how to rehabilitate Superman to a modern audience. 

The best part is that #MyPalSuperman is not a new haircut or an updated suit or grumpier personality. It’s not a recast or a cheap gimmick or fad that will be cringy in ten years. The work I’m doing is a shift in how Superman is SEEN by the people who owe him their lives. 

As of right now, the #MyPalSuperman folder has a half-dozen ideas for scenes that show an ESTABLISHED Superman that can be added to the upcoming Man of Steel 2 or Black Adam vs Superman movies without interfering with the long-term plans that are being worked out as you read this. 

Dwayne Johnson already said that Black Adam should be the one who throws the first punch against Superman. Don’t you want that moment to matter? #MyPalSuperman has that moment mastered along with a finish to this matchup that develops both characters further without either one losing face.

And I’m willing to tell James Gunn and Dwayne Johnson these ideas for nothing. Nothing. If they’re not interested, then I’ll happily thank them for their work and genuinely wish them well. If they like what I have to say, then we can keep talking because my ideas don’t stop here. That’s all I really want. For real, I have a great teaching job in Perth Amboy with top-tier students and a pension and health benefits. Yeah, I have a mortgage and car payments because I’m a regular guy, but I’m not struggling or looking for a change in my lifestyle at all. 

I just want to do right by Superman. 

So what’s it going to be? Three minutes on a video call with me will change how this world sees Superman for a generation. 

I’m asking all of you, everyone reading this, to please share this post or video below until I get three minutes to pitch #MyPalSuperman to Dwayne Johnson and James Gunn. You won’t regret it. They won’t regret it. Promise. 

Please share this video: https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremiahkleckner/video/7161158980570582314?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en 

Let’s restore superman’s image!

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Not In The Mood To Write? You’re Not Alone…

A simple truth about teaching is that my whole year starts in September. Once Labor Day comes and goes, EVERYTHING changes. Days get colder, blankets are unpacked, and demands on my time become ridiculous. As a result, many of my writing projects get shelved in the basement alongside those gross window air conditioners. 

But I’m not alone. Even famous and notoriously-prolific authors have admitted how hard it is keeping their productivity up during a semester. Something Stephen King wrote still sticks with me years after I first read it: “Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.” I’m pretty sure that quote was in his book On Writing, but I’m not 100% on that. Either way, it’s still true.

The trick to staying productive is to figure out what it takes to motivate you to do the little things that make big things happen. That’s really all that productivity is… the little things. Scratch an outline on notebook paper. Read for inspiration. Allow yourself to daydream. Type a couple of words. Repeat. Forever.

What Gets Me Writing 

My favorite motivator is an ambitious submission deadline with a hard end date and no room for forgiveness. The funny thing is that this is the antithesis of how I teach children. But I’m no child and I sometimes need a bit of a stiffer push to get things done.

The current project I’ve been obsessing over is a call for submissions for Horror Novellas that was first published in Interstellar Flight Magazine back in May.

The word count of a novella is under 40k, so it is totally doable compared to the idea of writing a full novel in just a couple of months. In Netflix language, think of a novella as an episode of Black Mirror as opposed to a novel which would be the full season of Midnight Mass. Episodes of Love, Death & Robots are all short stories at heart, but we’ll get into all of that another time.

To get started, I’ve been reading fiction in the horror genre from acclaimed authors like Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (Check out my reviews on TikTok for more details – NBBT and TGB). These books have all been great for helping me develop a feel for the pacing and delivery of horror writing and they give me a chance to think of wild “what ifs” that can be seeds for future stories. 

When considering which story I wanted to dedicate my time and attention to, I had to consider a few things. How complicated is the plot? Novellas can’t be too difficult to follow or have as many people to keep track of as a full-length novel, but they require more depth than short stories.

How I Publish Short Fiction

The website I use to find an audience for my short fiction is Duotrope. It is essentially a submission aggregator that lists agents, publishers, and contests with clear guidelines and focused search filters so you know that you are sending your work to the people who are looking for what you have to offer. 

From Duotrope’s About Page: “Duotrope is a subscription-based service for writers and artists that offers an extensive, searchable database of current fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art publishers and agents, a calendar of upcoming deadlines, a personal submission tracker, and useful statistics compiled from the millions of data points we’ve gathered on the publishers and agents we list.”

An easy way to see what short fiction I have sold through this process is by looking at the Table of Contents for Watching From Behind Glass Eyes. A majority of that anthology is work that was first published through Duotrope submissions.

Put Yourself In Control

The sad fact is that nothing gets done unless you do it yourself. Find your motivator and get working on that draft you’ve been neglecting. Your imaginary friends miss you. 

And while you’re looking for motivation, keep an eye open for my NY Comic Con shenanigans on TikTok and Instagram. It should be a wild time.

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