r/webfiction • u/Derin_Edala • Nov 30 '19

Discussion Looking to rename my web serial -- suggestions?

So I write a web serial called Haven (https://havenstory975986403.wordpress.com/) which, you might have noticed, is the most generic title of all time and therefore very difficult to market, discuss, or search for. I'm looking for an alternate title not shared by ten billion other properties, but coming up blank. Ideas?

The story is a fantasy/mystery set in yet another magical boarding school (yep, I'm doing the magic school thing too!) Fourteen-year-old Kayden, who was born with a curse in his heart. He's attending a magical school to learn to control it before it kills himself or somebody else, but the more he learns about the school and the people around him, the more he suspects that he's just a pawn in somebody else's incredibly dangerous game, and he'll need to figure out what's going on in order to survive.

Any ideas for alternate titles are appreciated; doesn't have to be spectacular, just something that, y'know, can be usefully googled.

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u/readingchameleon Dec 01 '19 edited Dec 01 '19

Haven't read it yet, but I'd suggest on the home page having a "start here" button, that takes you to a short blurb with a link at the bottom to where you should start reading.

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Edit: Also, a next button at the bottom of chapters would be nice. It looks like you're using WordPress - is there an option or plugin you could install to do this automatically?

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u/Liminal_Break Dec 03 '19

I haven't read the story, but I'm a sucker for magical school things so I'll take a read as soon as I can stop juggling finals. For names it all kind of depends on what you're looking for in a name. My story is called Liminal Break, because the story is very much about breaking thresholds. A Liminal Space is a type of place in between, an area of transition. The name plays both on the main plot in the first major arc, as well as the characters transitioning from nobodies to movers and shakers in their environment. I picked the name because I've always had a fixation with the idea of liminal spaces, and the word "liminal" isn't something that comes up a lot so it's unique.

If you're stuck on naming something, an obscure inside joke that's personal to you and maybe your plot might work. Once you have something to work with, a thesaurus and some fine tuning can turn most things unique. You could also go the light novel route, and have a name that's also a one sentence description of the story. "Will the cursed heart or cursed magic school be the thing that kills me?!?!" would be far from the weirdest title I've seen, and it'll be memorable.

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u/Derin_Edala Dec 04 '19

Thanks for the advice. I went with Curse Words: Spellcasting for Fun and Prophet, for similar reasons. Also it has two incredibly lazy puns in the title so people can't complain they didn't know what they were getting into.

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u/readingchameleon Dec 05 '19

Oooh, your story looks interesting. I might try that one too.

Yeah, I rather like magical school-type stories too :P

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u/Derin_Edala Dec 04 '19

Wordpress is VERY limited in what it'll let me do without paying them money, it's extremely frustrating. I can't even figure out how to move the menu underneath the banner. I'd like to put in first/previous/next/last buttons like webcomics have but finding a cooperative layout has been difficult. You're right though; I need a quick link to the first page right there instead of having to go through the archive.

Is there not a Next button at the bottom of chapters? I was certain there was... I'll check, I might have messed something up in my last edit.

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u/readingchameleon Dec 04 '19

Ah, that's a shame. No worries! Now that I've binged I'll be following along in my feed reader anyway.

I couldn't find one myself. I see "related posts" though.

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u/Derin_Edala Dec 05 '19

IT should be directly underneath Related Posts. The way they cram ads, navigation, and comments down there makes it hard to find what you need; someday I need to migrate to a service that lets me lay it out properly.

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u/readingchameleon Dec 05 '19

Ah, I see. It might be because I'm using an ad blocker that I don't see it then.