"I have a great idea for a novel, but all the good titles are taken."

Cafe Society
1

–so spake Snoopy, in his “World-Famous Author” persona. I know how he feels.

It’s not often that I attempt to express myself creatively, for the simple reason that I am not a very creative person, alas. Every great once in a while, though, I get the urge to play around with a short story or some such nonsense. Why? Hell if I know. Personally I blame the educational philosophy of the 1970s, which seemed to encourage such individual expression, instead of teaching me a decent trade that would keep me off the streets. But whatever the reason, the damage is done, and it’s only a matter of time before I fully submit to the temptation of writing an eye-bitingly horrible work of gamer fiction.

One of the many, many stumbling blocks I encounter is in coming up with names for things (hard as that may be to credit, coming from someone with such a snappy, instantly memorable SDMB username). I am apocalyptically bad at naming things; I encourage other people to name my pets for me. Story titles, character names, fictitious places-- each one is a fresh, bloody ordeal.

I have this possibly insane notion that each character needs to have a perfectly matched name that evokes their personality in some respect, and I’m doing the character an injury by not searching ceaselessly until that ideal name is found. As one might imagine, this criterion tends to obstruct the creative flow, since it’s kind of difficult to write about stuff that you don’t know what they’re called yet. It’s like that one Monty Python skit where the family gets into a huge argument over whether certain words have a “woody” or “tinny” quality.

Today for one brief shining moment I thought I’d tasted success. I’d been looking for an exotic, original place name, and I came up with a neologism that I thought exactly captured the essence I was trying to convey. It was perfect! Authentic-sounding! Memorable! Best of all it was completely original! Except it turns out that somebody else got there first, and used it as the title for an art show. There’s even a web page with that name; to add insult to injury, there’s nothing actually there except for the name itself, presumably to keep losers such as myself from using it.

So now it’s back to square one; and everything is tinny, tinny, tinny. Rats.

2

Names aren’t copyrightable. As long as it’s not trademarked, you are perfectly free to use it.

For instance, my story “Playmates” came out several years before the Robert B. Parker novel of the same name and there was nothing I could do about it.

All the website does is keep you from using that name as a website. So use the name; you’re in the clear.

3

I have a working title for my book (not even in an outline form yet, but I have a good idea of what I want to do). It’s not an uncommon term in some fantasy circles, but when I did an experimental search on Amazon and Google, I was surprised to see that there’s exactly one book out there that has that term as part of its title. I usually encounter the same thing; any good idea I have has already been done somehow, so this was a surprise.

Now I just need to get that book written and claim the empty space for my own. :smiley:

4

Thanks muchly for the information, RealityChuck; it’s useful to know that names and titles may be reused in such a fashion. I really ought to know more about copyright and trademark searches and such. As I mentioned previously, it’s only once in a blue moon that the creative bug bites me, so the problem rarely comes up.

Actually I wasn’t so much concerned about legalities as I was annoyed and disillusioned regarding my own capacity for original ideas. Here I’d thought I’d hit on a really unique-sounding and creative name, only to learn that someone else already had that brainstorm. It felt sort of like traveling to Antarctica and finding a beer can, if that makes any sense. It’s doubly irksome given my overall lack of talent at naming stuff, because I doubt I’d be able to come up with a genuinely original name that sounds anywhere near as snappy.