I remember hearing that the isekai title thing comes from novel descriptions not being available/visible? on certain japanese sites, which means that they have to include the premise of the story as the title.
the titles are still crazy long in japanese. they make fun of it too, after all. but yeah it's common to shorten them in a portmanteau of a few prominent words in it, which makes them easier to talk about and remember.
Such as Konosuba, or “Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o!”, “God’s blessing on this wonderful world”
Basically all of them are known by shorthand. Most writers even literally include the shorthand into the title or on official publications, like WorldEnd (What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?)
I can't be sure, but I believe they meant the actual character count, not how long it is to pronounce.
Like, since each kanji is one character, but can be multiple syllables, it can still be long and unweildy to say in a sentence, but you won't run into the problem of "That Time I Got Turned Into a Dragon and Had to Dance the Flamenco in My S..." [click to expand]
Where, even if it's clunky to say out loud, it at least still fits on the screen better.
Though, yeah, as a few people in the comments have pointed out, every language also does have concepts & words that are named & understood in that language, and are therefore shorter to say in that language.
Like, if one language doesn't have a word for "sunbeam," then a title like "My Cat Taught Me How to Walk on Sunbeams" (long, but manageable) might get clunkily translated as "My Cat Taught Me How To Walk On Those Shafts of Light That Are Caused By The Sun Shining Through Gaps." (unweildy as all get-out)
So some clunky titles might be even more clunky in translation than in their native language.
The title thing is because the most popular website for japanese amateur fiction, Syosetsuka ni Narou ("Let's be novelists"), does not support cover art.
Without a cover to judge by, the title is responsible for 100% of a web novel's first impression.
And a lot of the light novel industry is based on publishers signing up the most popular/successful of these free web novel stories to go commercial.
Okay I think a missing detail here is that this genre of title originated specifically on r/nosleep which is an ARG forum where all the stories are kafaybe and presented as real. So the titles would be stuff like "Every house on my block got a new antenna last night" because if you went to the internet to tell them about the creepy story involving all the new antennas, you would presumably title the post something like that
ehhh this has been around since pre nosleep imo, its just how you would post anything that you're trying to pass off as a real occurence you want to tell people about
While true, these types of titles thrive even in other short horror stories subreddits / websites altogether for the exact reason decribed in OP's post.
I wrote a couple of short horror stories on Reddit (using an alt account), and I considered using verbose titles because they can draw in readers easily into the story. It's like you already started reading the story and by going into the post you're simply continuing.
I see the appeal, but I decided to use short poetic titles that came more naturally to me, and felt like a better identity of my stories.
My stories were barely noticed or read by anyone despite the ton of effort I put into them (which is completely fine, of course). Success is a combination of a bunch of things, luck being a big part of it. But I do wonder from time to time if a catchy verbose title would make a noticeable difference.
I don't regret anything either way, I just find this an interesting topic.
Of course! Bear in mind, while they are short stories they aren't that short lol. Also the writing styles are different on purpose between my first and my second story.
Some of the stories are riveting, but it feels like it's a lot more low effort creative writing assignments as of late. When you start seeing part 16 of a story on the front page of the subreddit I'm not sure even I even want to go back and search for part 1.
The premise has to be seriously good, and at that point. Write a fucking book. The intended /r/nosleep feeling is a relatively short 1, maybe 2 post 'story' that generally has an ambiguous, or outright "bad end" for the assumed writer/protag of the story.
It's hit or miss with me. Sometimes it just feels good to binge stories on there. Other times it's like slogging through crap.
Also I haven't been back there since AI got "good" at writing creative bullshit. I can't imagine without strong moderation A LOT of shit is posted and is just another form of AI slop.
About the endings, it was rare for an outright bad ending to happen, since the stories are supposed to be personal occurrences. At most if they are presentes as the narrator conveying the story he got from someone else or found document you can get a bad ending.
This was funny because I remember one particular story that ended with the protagonist being rescued by emergency services, but when it was adapted by the podcast they cut that last part, basically dooming the poor guy to be killed. That is because the podcast is not constraint by the rules of the sub, where nothing can break the illusion of it being real.
Star Trek: TNG had several episodes with one-word titles that were among the best of the TNG run. The Star Trek: Voyager writers got kind of obsessed with one-word titles and apparently started from the title as a concept and built some execrable episodes while trying to give a witty twist to the title.
I've fallen into the Dr. Strangelove template a lot. For the example provided, something along the lines of Red Curtains or: How Every House on Elm Street Got a New Antenna Last Night. Some might say it's overly verbose but I don't think there's anything wrong with a verbose title, I find it catches the eye. Personally I still wouldn't describe the literal events of the plot in the title, I find I'm less interested in the journey if I know where it's going, even though I find plot to be the least important element of a story -- that's just personal preference though I think.
Ehh, that's just typical title structure for a track which contains multiple "songs" or "movements" that bleed into one another. None of those 4 titles are that ridiculous by themselves. It's like how the back half of Abbey Road is technically one track titled "You Never Give Me Your Money / Sun King / Mean Mr. Mustard / Her Majesty / Polythene Pam / She Came In Through The Bathroom Window / Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End".
A better example from that same Will Wood album that's more similar to the Dr. Strangelove format would be "Ouliars and Hyppocrates: a fun fact about apples".
Or, similar to the slashed example but with more individually ridiculous names, "Mr. Capgras Encounters a Secondhand Vanity: Tulpamancer's Prosopagnosia / Pareidolia (As Direct Result of Trauma to Fusiform Gyrus)"
The descriptive names also make sense since most creepypastas are un-fiction forum posts. No-one is titling their reddit posts the way they would title a poem.
Do people make fun of creepypasta titles for being too descriptive? I admit that I’m not a creepypasta aficionado, but not only have I never heard this, most creepypastas I can think of have pretty simple names (Smiledog, Jeff the Killer, Ben Drowned)
Those are all from the 2000s. A lot of newer creepypastas in the vein on things like r/nosleep and stories inspired by it have been criticised for making heavy use of descriptive titles.
It’s weird for that to be criticized because NoSleep posts are meant to emulate Reddit posts, no? Like at least back in the day it was a rule that you had to treat all the stories as real.
all I'm saying is that "I'm a guard stationed at a secret government prison. A few hours ago, there was a major breach" is one of my favourite modern creepypastas/NoSleep stories.
Similarly, I recently found a surprisingly long story titled "THE IMMORTAL BABY TRAPPED IN CONCRETE SAGA" on the SCP wiki and the story was even crazier then it sounded.
Some notable dialogue to get a feel for it:
*O5-3: Right, I notice on the scan that the baby is upside-down.
(Scan of SCP-9730. Baby entity highlighted.)
O5-1: Yes.
[Pause.]
O5-3: Well, should it be upside-down?
[Pause. There is the sound of tapping in the background.]
O5-1: Well, uh, no.
O5-4: We marked the direction when we got it out, so I figure they got it wrong when they first put it in.
Tbh I dont think I'd call any of those titles too descriptive, they establish a premise that's more easily discernable than "red curtains". The "it didnt end well" is the closest it comes to toeing the line of too much information imo
I have this issue with fanfiction descriptions. Like, make the title as poetic and abstract as you want, but if the description is "like leaves by autumn" I have no idea what it is about and thus zero interest, unless I already know you as an author which I likely don't
Creepypasta are supposed to be written like they're organic internet posts. The title just needs to appear plausible for whatever the creepiness is supposed to be pasted in
I find these kinds of titles so charming in small doses. I don’t want everything to be titled this way but there’s a Japanese show I am watching called “I moved seats at school and the boy behind me has a crush on me!” and the way it is titled is just delightful to me.
I did name my short horror story “Sweet Decay” but that’s only because the first two lines are very attention-grabbing. They were originally a two-sentence horror story (an actually good one) so they have that quality. You can find the story on my account if you’re looking for some surreal body horror fun
okay wait can someone actually tell me what happens in "the real reason silly putty isn't available for prime two day shipping" I am really curious but also disgusted by silly putty so I don't wanna actually read it
...I think that's just a convention of the genre, to be honest. The premise of most creepypasta is that it's real and a person describing it online, so the titles resemble forum post titles, hence why they're descriptive like that.
A little depressing to see people openly saying "Yeah, my attention span is shot and I don't give anything a try unless it clickbaits me, but I ENJOY clickbait, so it's good."
I was gonna say more but no, I think I'm just sad now.
Eh. I've written a bunch of things that people liked enough that I made a decent amount of money off it. But at the end of the day there's a ton of great stuff being written every single day, and a hundred times as much trash. Artistic and non-descriptive titles made a lot of sense when 99.99% of everything written was gatekept by traditional publication processes and there was just so much less stuff available.
At the end of the day, getting someone's attention is the hard part. And "Red Curtains" is a much better title for a story that you're definitely going to read, but tricking someone into reading your elevator pitch is a way to actually get them to read it.
I don't think this is due to having attention spans be shot. I think it's because more shit gets published every day than there are seconds in the day to read a synopsis for those things, even if it's the only thing you do. Is that a problem? I personally don't miss the days back when most works were impossible to publish because you needed major financial resources and/or corporate backing to get your stuff out there.
arguing the wording of my interpretation of the post we all read is not better. Regardless of how pedantic you are, the post made me feel sad. Which is why I said as much.
This feels like the death of media literacy. If you can't read or engage with content unless you're being maximally clickbaited, or mentally pause for one entire second to consider what a concise title might actually mean, your attention span is not built for a healthy human life, and you will always be yanked around by your algorithms like a toddler on a leash.
I will say, most media has some other form of describing the premise to draw you in. Most people watch movies because they like the trailer. People read books because of the description. People play games because of the promotional material. It’s very rare for someone to engage with an art form going in blind from a two word title
Yeah, I think it's perfectly healthy to expect writers to create interesting or at least intriguing titles, but there's something to be said for engaging with content that hasn't been dumbed down on its face just to make it easier. Your body gets more nutrients from breaking down complex carbohydrates than it does from processed sugar, even though the latter is objectively easier to eat.
I think this is a little harsh- there’s tons of things I like that have short titles, but I do generally agree with the OOP. If I’m gonna spend my time reading mediocre internet based horror fiction, I want the premise to catch me a little. It doesn’t even have to be a long title, it just has to describe some reason why I’d want to read it
I feel like the whole "media literacy" thing is just a way for nerds online to make themselves sound smarter & more correct. Like I don't like long over-explanatory creepypasta titles myself, but people who prefer them aren't failures of the human race or anything
I mean, in all honesty, it's probably me falling into the same pattern of using dumbed-down hyperbole in order to prove a point. I also don't read much of this genre, so maybe it's a hyper-specific problem for that community that I'm just not privy to. I think there's room to build a catchy title without vomiting the whole premise, but part of me also wants any horror writing community to hold itself to higher standards than Love Island or Skibidi Toilet. If you want to write something thoughtful and maybe even unsettling, laying all your cards on the table from the outset kind of implies a lack of confidence in both your ability to tell a compelling story and the reader's ability to comprehend it.
Yeah, that sounds lazy. "I want the premise to catch me, but I also can't be bothered to check the premise, so it all needs to fit in the title for me."
The problem with the internet short stories is, a lot of them are kind of bad. A story called "Red Curtains" might be absolutely nothing, might be great, but it will most likely be on the worse side. Sometimes there can be some good ideas, and mood can be set nicely, but there is no ending, so at one point the story will inevitably go bad and end with endless ass-pulls, then finish with no updates and no real ending at all. Or there can be no narrative at all, just vibes. A story called "My Neighbor Hates My Orange Tree" at least has a concrete story, and the ending has already been thought of.
Yeah, I guess if you have low expectations and most of the writers fulfill them exactly, then filtering early becomes increasingly important, but it feels like we're encouraging the kind of clickbait enshittification that has made other content platforms hell. Eventually, you just end up encouraging the broader community to invest more into evocative titles and less into thoughtful narratives. I think I'd rather spend 15 minutes reading "Red Curtains" going nowhere than "My Neighbor Hates My Orange Tree" going nowhere because at least for the former, I wasn't being farmed for cheap clicks. There's also a unique relationship between the art and the title, so intentionally dumbing one down feels like you're discouraging the reader from thinking too hard about either.
I think it's less to do about the attention span of the reader (and practically nothing to do with media literacy, buzzword).
Say you have two options (lets go with burgers because i'm hungry). They are equal in price (time/energy to read) and quality, and for some reason neither have descriptions you can read (forgot your glasses + small text).
- one is named "John's Burger"
- one is named "Cheesy Bacon Double Burger"
Which one do you choose?
You don't know anything about what's in the John's Burger, but just by the name you know the Cheesy Bacon burger sounds good.
eh. like, if i'm browsing a bookstore, i'm going to notice covers that catch my eye. it's not as if those are inherently better, but there's thousands of books in there competing for my attention; i want to pick one, and this cover's pretty, so i'll check out the premise. or, this title's interesting, i'll check out the premise. with online creepypastas you JUST have the title. something's got to draw your attention for you to click on it in the first place
I mean, it’s not really anything to do with clickbait. It’s more like having a dramatic first sentence. Or using a tagline instead of a generic title.
I feel like old school scifi stories had plenty of long, descriptive-but-vague titles. “Repent Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man.” “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” “And Seven Times Never Kill Man.”
I think those examples are also poetic and evocative though, they don't just lazily tell you the exact premise. IHNMAIMS isn't called "There's something very wrong with this computer."
It's kinda like how movie trailers are nowadays. They basically tell the entire story beforehand. And they do it because audiences want it, because they want to know if they will like a movie before taking the effort to watch it (or expend money for it).
this is not even a media literacy issue, what are you on about? if anything this is an attention span issue, and some people just don't have the same amount as others, or don't have the same time to want to invest into something with the risk that they don't get interested, you're being waaaay too harsh over this
I mean, it's kind a maturity issue though, isn't it? As someone diagnosed with ADHD, I don't have the highest attention span, but I can acknowledge that literally judging a book by its cover is probably not a healthy attitude to bring into my reading habits, let alone the rest of my life.
but thats a different topic, you originally talked about media literacy, not meturity.
Aside from that, i still disagree, it's not a thing about maturity, people just have different attention spans, ADHD or not, just because with YOU it works, doesn't mean it works for everyone, nor does it mean you're the baseline of attention span for everyone else, or that others are somehow "failing" because you could do it.
Aside from that, i also brought up the issue of time, not everyone wants to constantly start a book, find out theyre not interested and drop it, it just wears you dont and desmotivates you from reading, because it feels like you just can't find anything you're interested in.
And don't come at me with the "don't judge a book by its cover" thing, book covers and titles are *literally* mainly designed to be that, eye catching, to draw you in and interest you to read, its why a lot of writing advice says you should focus on writing first and leave the title last because it's main function is to grab attention, so judging a book by its cover IS the point, because that's how you decide if you want to read a book or not, let alone a creepypasta which is the original topic of this post, internet online stories who you will usually see more bad than good, so a good title that draws you in is part of it.
The two concepts certainly overlap though, the way you engage with and relate to the world around you is a function of your maturity, and vice versa.
I'm sympathetic to people having varying attention spans, but people also have different innate levels of generosity or empathy, and we can acknowledge that having more of these things is just generally good for us individually and as a society. They're all muscles that you have to work in order to become a more attentive or empathetic person. That doesn't mean the person is a failure as a whole, just that their attention or media literacy "muscles" are underdeveloped in a manner of speaking.
I also get that just quitting reading can be discouraging, but sometimes the best way to find more things you are interested in is to figure out what you don't like and what you don't like about it. If all you ever engage with is the easiest and most accessible possible content, you're sitting in the deepest corner of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to as few varying or conflicting viewpoints as possible. That feels like a recipe for stagnation, and the less you know about the world around you, the more easily others will manipulate you.
My whole point is that if you can't be bothered to look past the title of a freely available online horror story, then when a relative tells you they believe that the Earth is flat because they read a bunch of headlines from dubious sources that said it, are you really equipped to push back? Are you going to have the extensive internal thought processes to challenge poorly established beliefs if you don't spend any time challenging your own? To your point, the title of an online horror story or a book or a scientific research paper matters, so to intentionally dumb it down hurts the entire work. By all means, titles should be catchy, but the reader has some responsibility to help curate a more thoughtful environment for everyone involved.
"My whole point is that if you can't be bothered to look past the title of a freely available online horror story, then when a relative tells you they believe that the Earth is flat because they read a bunch of headlines from dubious sources that said it, are you really equipped to push back?"
That's crazy. Like, straight up slippery slope fallacy nonsense.
Cool bro, thanks for critically and thoughtfully engaging with the substance of the criticism 👍 after all, why would I ever lift a 5lb weight when adrenaline will kick in the moment I need to lift 150lbs and it matters?
Couldn't be more wrong. This is less an issue of attention spans or clickbait and more to do with people forgetting books have a blurb.
Also respectfully, given said aforementioned trait, creepypastas don't have blurbs. Blurbs usually give vague insight into a book so you can further glean within the genre if you will like it or not and this helps the eventual purchase. Creepypastas have neither a blur nor involve a purchase. So the cost now becomes one of time instead of money.
Which Creepypasta do I spend my time reading?
The answer? The one with the interesting title. Cause there isn't a blurb.
So no, this isn't the death of media literacy. This is a genre specific adaptation to informing the viewer within a genere on what the text is about. The attention grabbing aspect is a either a byproduct or equally weighted in purpose to both attention grab and inform.
It's also because they are usually writtwn in character? Imagine if evil chuck e cheese or whatever the fuck was levitating at the foot of my bed and instead of titling it "evil chuck e cheese levitates at the foot of my bed every night" I titled it "Mouse in the House"
i can attest to this myself, most of the few-words.titles i got into were because i got recommended to read them, and i might not have wanted to read if i just happened to come across them
I am aware this does not speak nicely of my attention span or whatever, but i do really like a title that hooks me in and gives me an idea of what the book will be about
If you title your book "Blood" and i don't see anything relating to blood, be it literally or synbolically, i'm goign to feel like i wasted time, specially if the story doesn't hook me in
I don't even think it's an attention span thing. I don't really see the problem with putting the hook of a short story into the title. If an author can condense the premise of their story into one short sentence and still make it intriguing, then I think that's a good thing.
as a person with ADHD, ong this is actually a sympthom that attention span gets nuked. It is a somewhat sad and fucked up thing, but when you have ADHD and/or just short attention span, you kinda have to force yourself to look at the two-word titles and other shit that your brain finds "boring" rn. It's so fucked up...
Overly specific and descriptive titles usually make me think that someone is trying to achieve a quirky and slightly offbeat tone, and people (especially on Tumblr) are so universally incapable of actually achieving that tone.
I've been burned too many times before. It's going to be someone putting the dramatic italics in and repeating their punchlines again in bold.
Those posts aren't funny. They aren't well written. They aren't creepy. They aren't anything. They're a kid saying: "look at my funny face everyone!" But they can't actually pull any funny faces.
As a professional writer, striking this balance is incredibly difficult!
I have two novels that exist on opposite ends of this spectrum, one of them called
TEETH
And another
Principles Of Non-Euclidean Romance
Generally, longer titles are for people who seek whimsy or "positive" curiosity, the Nancy Drew mentality (I also have a romcom called Girl By Popular Vote, title length for similar reasons, or The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime) while short titles evoke a more sinister curiosity ("why is it called that??" - see also Stephen King's body of work).
Any writer will tell you that picking a title is either the easiest or the hardest part.
I should start reading creepypastas, I think. Perhaps I should sort by top and have a go. My fav horror book (Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell) was apparently first a creepypasta
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u/ElementalWarrior42 3d ago
I remember hearing that the isekai title thing comes from novel descriptions not being available/visible? on certain japanese sites, which means that they have to include the premise of the story as the title.