Do you generally look down on people who use song names/lyrics as titles? Do you, like, even give those people a chance?

I ask because I do this a lot. Sometimes I even name things after poem titles/lines or something, but this seems like a less cliche thing to do, though it often feels a bit like cheating as well.

I also ask because I'm writing a fic. that's over 70K words and will probably end up being well over 100K and not only is it named after a VAST song, but I insert the lyrics that inspired the mood for the chapter before the chapter and at each break within the chapter. That can add like 100 words per chapter, but it is not why I do it; I do it because this particular fic. is really all about mood.

I guess it has the effect of seeming like a really long songfic.



I generally do not like songfic. because it's usually spectacularly bad, so I can understand why someone would have an aversion to over 100 pages of that.

We all draw inspiration from somewhere when we write. There are things we are aware of being inspired by and then there are things we aren't aware of. But sometimes I feel like by putting in these song lyrics and by naming the fic. after the song that inspired it I am being way too obvious and upfront about it. Shouldn't I be more obscure about it?

Personally, the way this certain fic. came about was because of listening to this song by VAST. I had it on repeat for several hours and writing just happened. I thought the fic. was going to be a little drabble and then the plot bunnies grabbed me...60,000-something words later...yeah. But, anyway, the song lyrics at the start of each chapter have become really important for me because I build chapters around snippets of memory-scenes I see when listening to that specific song. For me I feel that the lyrics set the tone of the chapter.

But I can see why someone would be entirely turned off by the whole thing altogether.

I have a lot of anxiety about this fic. Primarily because it can be seen as one giant songfic., but also because a lot of the dialogue and action sticks almost faithfully to canon, meaning I spend a lot of time and a lot of words copying dialogue word for word and writing actions as they happen; the twist comes only in my interpretation of what the main character is thinking (but I also spend a lot of time filling in the many blanks the story has). So naturally I spend a lot of time and a lot of energy trying to redeem the fic. for people, because it already has things working against it:

1) big ol' songfic.
2) "Wow, I'm kind of bored reading word-for-word dialogue from the game script..." Though this particular fandom does have the advantage of having several different scripts, which I do draw from.
3) I spend a lot of time in one character's head. Almost the entire fic. is a very close 3rd person perspective, with two instances of 1st person for specific reasons, and one or two shifts away from the main character's mind to the mind of another important character who will later on be shifted to until the story ends because the main character dies. (And that's not a surprise because we know this character dies anyway, despite being the hero of Crisis Core) This is a disadvantage because I constantly feel that I am making the thoughts of this character OOC and fear that the people potentially reading the fic. would feel the same.

Anyway, yeah, an insecure author's thoughts.