Pull up a chair. Have I got a grotesquely long-winded story for you….

Once upon a time, before this blog came into existence, I was experimenting with software that magically ‘helps’ you write your book.

When I first installed Dramatica Pro v4.0 on my computer, I was shocked to see “What is the title of your story?” as the very first question in the ‘linear StoryGuide’: “The step-by-step process to conceptualizing your story”.

There were no tools to help me brainstorm a possible title, no hints to help, and no tips to figuring it out. Just an old-fashioned blank line with a flashing cursor, awaiting me to enter something to proceed to step two.

After racking my brains for a good hour or two while rolling back and forth on my bed like a human steam-roller, I entered ‘Untitled’ and proceeded.

Step two left me confronted with another dastardly question: “Briefly describe what happens in “Untitled”, including the Beginning, Middle, and End.”.

Another flashing cursor. This time in a great big empty page-sized box. I think my brain was also blank with nothing but a flashing cursor at that point. Although maybe the word ‘error’ made an appearance or two.

One thing’s for sure: Dramatica Pro doesn’t pull its punches. I ran away with my tail between my legs that day. I simply wasn’t ready for it.

But let’s try it again:
“What’s the title of your story?”

This is still a tricky question. It’s possible to lose your audience based on a title alone. Scary stuff!
So it’s something writers really need to put a lot of thought into.
Good thing I tend to overthink everything~

Oh, and remember how I always say, “Nothing is set in stone”?
No matter how much you like your title, don’t get too attached to it. Your agents and editors reserve the right to change your title to a crappy, damning one and don’t need your permission to do so –
Yet another good reason to carefully choose your agent, I guess.

During composting, my story had grown from a tiny bookling into a full-blown trilogy-saurus.
Unfortunately for me, that means writing all three books is necessary prior to querying.

You see, non-fiction writers have it easy. In order to query an agent, all they have to do is write the first chapter, create a list of proposed chapters, and write a page that pitches their idea.

This is because roughly 80% of what publishing houses accept is non-fiction. And editing non-fiction is easy and safe, since a writer’s voice doesn’t necessarily have to ‘come through’. It just needs to be ‘technically correct’. Technically correct writing is pretty cut and dry, but I guess that’s exactly what stuffy old fact-seekers want.

Since fiction is much more of a gamble for a publisher, fiction writers have to write their entire book—and write it well—before they can query (read: Before you can find out if you’ve wasted years of your life on a non-sellable idea).

It’s not hopeless for us, though.

Patrick Rothfuss also wrote a trilogy. He heavily edited his first manuscript until it was publishable, but his second and third books were not yet edited when he began to query. Just complete first drafts.

That jives with what I’ve read elsewhere. That’s the ‘correct’ way to do it, and what I intend to do as well. I plan to complete only the first drafts of my second and third books before querying.

‘Five Rings Trilogy’:
Book 1: Five Rings:
Creative, huh? :P
Since the entire trilogy has a lot to do with my five rings system, it seemed suiting to use it as the title for book one.

Now excuse me while my subconscious thoughts take the stage:

Q. “Would I buy a fantasy book called Five Rings?”

A1. I would probably think, “Rings? Is this poser trying to rip off Fellowship? Are there five rings of power to rule them all or something? Psh.” Then I’d read the back of the book and be pleasantly surprised there were no items of power of any kind mentioned, which then might entice me to read the first page and the chapter titles, and then a paragraph or two from a random page in the middle (a quirk of mine).

A2. Maybe I would think, “Five rings? What, like the frickin’ Olympics?” But then I would see the accompanying awesome fantasy cover art and be like, “Oh, guess not.” And maybe read a bit, because the title caught my attention, even though it was for a stupid reason.

After dreaming up several other equally asinine scenarios, this seemed like the ‘right’ title to me.

The next thing to do was check online to see if other books or movies happened to be named the same thing, or if it was street slang for ‘hooch’ … or whatever.
(“I be gettin’ all up in yo’ five rangs, sho-tay.”)

Well, the strongest and most discerning contender was a very old series of books called The Book of Five Rings, or Go Rin No Sho.

Go is ‘five’, rin is ‘ring’, no is ‘of’, and sho is ‘book’ in Japanese, written by the legendary duelist of the 17th century, Miyamoto Musashi. You might have heard of him: winning many duels throughout his lifetime. His five books (they are usually sold as one single book these days) is about dueling strategy mixed with philosophy. Part of that philosophy equates elements with the rings.

Book 1: The Ground Book
Book 2: The Water Book
Book 3: The Fire Book
Book 4: The Wind Book
Book 5: The Void Book

Ruh-roh!
On the plus side, it certainly helps support some of my outlandish theories for the five rings system. ;)
His order is much different than mine. And, luckily, his application is much different as well.

For instance, The Fire Book is a book about ‘attacking’. The Water Book is about ‘strategy’, and the spirituality deals with Buddhist ideas, such as talking about how your ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ should be in balance so you can remain calm during duels.

My main character has a fighting style very similar to Musashi’s. His right hand uses a long sword, his off-hand uses an inverted dagger. This makes matters worse.

Almost everybody in 17th century Japan placed both hands on a single katana during duels. Musashi-den was one of the first people in the world to propose that wielding two katanas or a katana and wakizashi could be more effective than the much more popular spatha/shield combination.

Believe it or not, this is all purely coincidence, as it’s exactly the way I learned how to sword-fight. I had a unique opportunity presented to me in which I could choose and learn how to use many different practice weapons, and found I preferred the long sword and dagger combination from trial and error. And my MC uses it too, because … well … “Write what you know”.

To add to my potential guilt, I’ve been to Japan! And I’ve played the Playstation video game ‘Brave Fencer Musashi’!

It would be hard to convince a jury of my innocence in light of this recent evidence. (That felt so Phoenix Wright to say..) Hey! Maybe I’m a reincarnation of Musashi-den! Yeah right…. I could always claim my MC’s fighting style is a ‘nod’ to Musashi. Which it kinda is, even if it was inadvertent.

So there was a lot of eerie coincidence and conspiring happenstance working against me.

It was compelling enough for me to try to rethink my title.
So I thought, “Five Circles”? No … sounds too ‘basic geometry’. “Five Layers”? Not quite as bad … but it sounded like I wrote a book about my heater breaking during the winter months, so I had to put on five layers of coats to stay warm.
It just didn’t clique in quite the same way Five Rings did.

This called for a new approach. A new ‘angle’.

I did some research and found out book titles cannot be copyrighted.
“But no case can be found . . . in which, under the law of copyright, courts have protected the title alone.”

Woo-hoo!

And it’s not like the titles are exactly the same. They’re just similar. Having several books on the market with the same title is nothing new, anyway. I mean, how many published romance novels are entitled Surrender?

I could probably get away with calling my book ‘Lord of the Five Rings’. Hah!

So, I decided to keep the title since, no matter which way you slice it, no book has technically ever donned the exact monicker Five Rings. If my potential agent or publisher has a problem with my title choice, I’ll leave it up to them (I did learn from Holly Lisle that, just in case they don’t wholly embrace your favorite title, it’s good practice to have a few backup titles ready).

Another intellectual property of lesser concern is called “Legend of the Five Rings” (L5R for short), which is neither a book nor movie, but a card game featuring artwork and themes of the eastern world, including sword fighting.
I cannot wash my hands of this entirely, either, since I’ve played quite a few CCGs (Collectible Card Games) in my time. I do own quite a few old Magic: the Gathering, Pokémon, and YuGiOh cards. But I’ve never played L5R. There is also a full-fledged pen and paper RPG iteration. Obviously I’ve played AD&D, but not L5R.

There is also a “Five Rings of Power” 2nd Edition campaign somebody made for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I’m not to worried about this, because his site looks pre-Geocities and has only had 133 hits including two uniques from me today. :)

There’s a high-level EverQuest guild called Five Rings. They have a pretty hot looking logo. As you all know, my hands aren’t just dirtied on EverQuest, oh no, they’re freakin’ bloodied. But the only hard-core high-level EQ guild I’ve ever belonged to is Drow. I didn’t even play on the Luclin server! I swear!

There’s a Five Rings Portal, which is an organization that teaches the fine art of swordplay and fencing.

There’s the 5 Rings Winery and Art Gallery in Rocky River, OH.

There’s a Five Rings Marketing Agency.

There’s a Five Rings Financial, LLC AND a Five Rings Financial Co.

There’s the Five Rings Arts and Education Centre in Front Royal, VA.

There’s several other blogs out there with the title Five Rings. LOL. Including a pretty great art blog.

This silly guy dubbed a list of why his website, Gadgetopia.com, is easy to use as “The Five Rings of Usability” because he loves “making up important sounding names for stuff”.

There’s a Five Rings Coaching Program. *shudder* It’s a good example of business language diatribe at work. I’m sure they help companies reinforce their ‘missions’ and ‘values’ while facing ‘paradigm shifts’ with targetted ‘training synergies’. Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit. Their website is pretty pathetic.

There’s even a Five Rings theory in existence, a military theory called Warden’s Five Rings, which actually has five concentric rings just like my theory does, but thankfully has absolutely nothing to do with elements. I salute you, Colonel John Warden!

And … what list of links would be complete without an anthropomorphic web comic?

But! There’s no ‘Five Rings system’. And no ‘Five Rings’ book. And no ‘Five Rings’ soft drink, either. (Well, now there is. *smirk* Errr… Minus the soft drink part.)
Five-Rings.com is taken, but ‘FiveRings.com’ is still up for grabs! It’s about time I procured it, don’t you think?

Hm. I bet lots of people are wondering who the heck is linking them ^_~;

Book 2: Web of Hearts:
Since book two is going to deal mostly with the heart-linking aspect of the five rings, this seemed like the perfect title. It’s hard to believe there’s not a book out there called ‘Web of Hearts’. It’s a darned cool title, if I do say so myself.
There’s a diamond ring, an unpublished short story, a few fanfics (for Inu Yasha and Smallville), and a few pieces of unpublished artwork that share similar titles. Really, that’s not much. It’s about time there was a book called it, eh?

Book 3: Peripetia:
Ok, who knows what ‘peripetia’ means?
I’m sure a lot of you do, since it’s a literary term.
Aristotle coined the term for Greek tragedies. It is when a plot is, quite literally, turned on its head. It is the moment when the hero discovers everything he thought was true to be false, and vice-versa.
Lots of scary and memorable film moments are moments of peripetia (Empire Strikes Back, anyone? Shame on you if I have to tell you why).

Odd there’s no book with this compelling, sexy title….

BTW, there’s a machine many skeptics are … being skeptics about, called a ‘peripetia generator’. Here’s a video where a guy tries to explain how this generator can violate both Lenz’s Law and the Law of Conservation of Energy at the same time using something called ‘back EMF’. (edit-> okay, so maybe the guy that uploaded this can spell after all. Thanks steph no.1)

Obviously, with a title like ‘Peripetia’, there’s some kind of revelation in book 3, but I’m going to stay tight-lipped about it unless I’m literally on my death bed. So don’t ask. ;)

And the titles lived happily, ever after.

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