A Title So Good I Couldn't Use It

Years ago, I came across a great story idea. A half-idea. Okay, a title for a half-idea. For our purposes, let's say the awesome title was "I Gotta Use This." The real inspiration was way better than that, trust me. A title as spectacular as "I Gotta Use This" must surely propel an equally glorious story. I played with plots and characters worthy enough, but nothing cleared that mark. Finally, in 2022, a glimmer came--and also the notion that I'm not getting any younger. I did it. I put words to page under "I Gotta Use This." What follows isn't a tale about its glorious quest fulfilled. This is about how I had to let it go.

Rewind to me reading an article on game-playing and gamesmanship. Bam! There it was, a concept wrapped in a killer turn of phrase. That's how the spark happens, some phrase or concept grabs my attention. If the idea gels enough, I'll give it a try. 

I don't usually get attached to titles. "Needs A Title" has topped several early-draft manuscripts that went on to publication. My story in the MWA anthology Ice Cold started as "The Hungarian Thing." I have early manuscripts titled "Drinkin' Story" and "New Project." The final title emerges as the manuscript rounds into collective shape. More than half of my published stories had a major title change along the way. But that also leaves a chunk where the working title survived, and if words could glow on a page, "I Gotta Use This" glowed.

Cut forward to me and the title. A title about gameplaying, so the story innards needed to be about games somehow. Progress! Me and a title and a kind-of form already. And while I'd always envisioned "I Gotta Use This" headlining a Serious Achievement, my premise glimmer was hardly Serious. I was setting a goofball in motion. For the comic innards, I considered and dismissed all kinds of games that could hold a goofball slant. Cards? Too easy. Sports? Too structured. Video games? Another of my long-held ideas has dibs on gamers. Eventually, I decided on a bet. 

Other decisions sprung from there, landing on two small-time crooks making a small-time bet over who is the better small-time crook. The protagonist's specialty is shoplifting frozen foods. The antagonist buys shoes online with stolen credit card numbers. All of that is important to their story, but the important part to this story, the one about "I Gotta Use This" crashing and burning, is that I was making all those plot and character decisions. Like any idea worth the chase, their story was finding a life of its own. The author's job is to recognize it and roll with it.

Which I thought I'd done. My edit rounds sharpened things to a proper balance of goofball. I focused on depth and relatability, on local backdrop and fuller context. I didn't switch the title. Never considered it. It was, after all, perfect.

"I don't get the title," my critique group said. "It's not working for me," they said, and this was even after I explained its perfection. 

We'll skip past the stages of denial and the switching of gears. I had to confront that I'd written a solid piece with real acceptance potential. It just had the wrong title. 

Stories are singularities, and a great title springs from the oneness, frames it. Mine didn't. Titles reveal the story's core. My didn't. "I Gotta Use This" was merely catchy, something I'd read once.

So I changed it. Was I bitter about a perfect title going splat? No. Much. I was more palm-to-forehead like in those old V-8 commercials. I should've spotted the problem. Me, the guy who starts pieces with placeholders like "Vernon Story #4." But you do have to roll with it in this work, and the group did me a huge favor. If they didn't get understand the title, no editor would, either. So long, acceptance potential. 

The piece ended up titled "Bet You're Wrong." Not great, but it speaks to what the story is about, a bet, and its deeper level, that both goofballs are sure to lose. The only winner is whoever walks away. Off "Bet You're Wrong" went on blind submission. It's in the new Sisters in Crime East Tennessee anthology, Smoking Guns. 

As for "I Gotta Use This," it helped get another story born, so there's that. There's also the reason I haven't shared the actual title idea: Because that thing is still awesome, and as it happens, it's still available.