you never can begin to live until you dare to die...

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Spilled! Frodulante! I don't know!

Italy. Modern Day.

“Will you be my protégé, Miss Spell? It’s for the art." Reavely twisted up the corner of his mouth. "And I know you love art as much as I…”
Worried letters from home. Priceless paintings. Formal balls. With the training of her reformed --but secretive-- employer, Reavely, young Larken Spell becomes an adept ‘Frodulante,’ skilled in the arts of thievery and fraud so that she can save invaluable masterpieces. As she discovers an underground world of cutthroat elitist art collectors and their shifty agents and thugs, she begins to wonder how legal her new job really is.


I NEED HELP, MY FRIENDS!


I need a temporary title for my novel. Just something catchy by which I may refer to it. I've included a thorough synopsis (below) to aid your powers of creative title coming-up-with-powers.

Just read it and see if you can think of anything. ANYTHING!

Synopsis: Modern day.
Sixteen year old Larken Spell, the recipient of a copious art scholarship, finds herself enrolled in a prestigious art academy in Italy, only to feel numbly disconcerted by how little she knows of the theory behind her vocation of choice. What qualifies an object as Art? Far from her secure home in New England, Larken partakes in adventure and enlightenment in her quest for the meaning of art.
In return for her education, Larken discovers she must spend several hours a week with her patron and a fellow scholarship recipient, an Italian boy with a flair for Graphic Design, as well as attend her benefactor’s school of choice for her eleventh year of High School. Despite her discomfiture by the supercilious girls’ boarding school she is forced to attend and her constant, wistful thoughts of her family back home, Larken soon becomes heartened by her quality art lessons, new friends and, surprisingly…
…a mysterious job offer from a handsome stranger.
Larken’s new boss claims he is a reformed art thief and fraud artist who needs her to right his past wrongs. Noting that she is adept at ‘slinking about,’ he tells her that she has enormous potential and that he has selected her as his new protégé in the skills of art-snitching —--though this time she will be working for worthier causes than were his formerly. With his training in thievery and fraud, Larken discovers a world of cutthroat elitist art collectors and their shifty agents and thugs. Amidst a whirlwind of enigmatic letters from home, devious acts of crime, formal balls, priceless paintings, and grating deportment lessons, Larken begins to wonder how legal her new job really is, simultaneously asking herself the question that has posed a dilemma to many artists through the centuries: What is art?


Well, there you have it. On the top of my list so far are:

Frodulante

Spilled

Reasons: Spilled is like spilled ink/paint and like spilling the truth... deceit is a theme in this lil project.

Frodulante is Italian for "Fraud."

Tell what you think of those. Even better, offer a few of your own suggestions!!!

16 comments:

Jare said...

I like Spilled a lot.

Tessa Voccola said...

Undoing His Wrongs? or Accidentally Pickpocket or Swindler or Hoodwinked or Art Con. Just a few! LOL

Bridget said...

^^^ I like Accidentally Pickpocket and both your titles, especially Frodulante. And I LOVE the synopsis! sounds like an amazing book. Can't wait to read it. <3 <3 <3

Rachel Pettersen said...

Wow, sounds amazing, Gray. :) I like both of your titles; as far as new titles go I don't know... maybe "Legally Art"? So sorry i can't be of more help.

Marian said...

The plot sounds really exciting--I would read that! =) I like "Spilled". "Frodulante" is cool too, but it reminds me of Frodo. ;)

Another thing you could do is use the title of one of the paintings/pieces of art that will be in the book.

Lèrowen said...

I think the title 'Spilled' sound really good. I'd go with that one.

AMZi said...

personally like Frodulante the best, but Spilled is also awesome. One-word titles are always good, better so if they are in another language that makes someone read to find out the significance.

j said...

I like the idea of a title in Italian...but when I saw "frodulante," my first thought was that it was "fraudulent" misspelled. You may want to keep that in mind. ;) The Protégé, perhaps. Spilled is good, or Spilled and Stained.

emily said...

I like Frodulante:]

Kailyn Nickel said...

I like both titles! Here are a few that came to my mind...

[i]Artistic Deceit
Art Thief
Priceless
Underground Art
Illegal Masterpiece[/i]

Just some ideas. ;P Good luck with your writing!!

Kailyn

Kailyn Nickel said...

^^ Haha, those were supposed to be italicized, to seem more... title-ish. Didn't work, I guess. Don't know why, but oh, well. Just ignore the tags. xD

Argentia Krystofel said...

I like Frodulante; it really captures the nature of the book. Can't wait to see the finished product of this, it sounds cool.

Liz Patterson said...

I like Lady Greenleaf's suggestion, The Protégé
If I saw a book with that title, I would definitely pick it off the shelf to take a look!
And I cannot wait to read your novel. It is a very intriguing and imaginative premise!

Qwip said...

I like Frodulante the best. The others seem too ordinary.

Anonymous said...

Frodulante does make me think of fraudulent... :/
Here's a few -

Art Anarchic
(anarchic = lawless, chaotic)

Legal Larceny
(larceny = thievery)

- EM

Jedi Gerbil said...

Hey, Gray, this is KK, the jedi gerbil...y'know, the short blond kid from AOG, anyways, here's my $0.02:
1. Fraudlante, is great, but it looks like fraud, obviously, which gives away what the the fact that the book is about...fraud.
2. The Protege is a great title, however...
3. I'd vote for Spilled, especially if you can explain the title somehow in the book, because it's unusual and catches my attention. Oh, and have you thought of changing your mc's last name to Spill? I know that's kind of random, but then the title would relate even more and it would tie in the idea of Larken's personal journey, assuming that's what you're going for...
Well, those are my highly unprofessional thoughts,
-KK