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Fanfic Summaries (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I was pondering this earlier in the week. People have summaries they like and ones they will scroll past without considering the story at all.

I'm rather open with summaries. I think the only ones I dislike are either when there isn't one or when the words aren't actually a summary, but author's notes. I prefer those for after I've clicked on the story.

I've read in the past people want them to be snappy, but I was considering longer works. Complicated stories. In those cases, I prefer a few paragraphs to introduce the basics of characters and plots. On the other hand, if the story is short, a longer summary doesn't make sense.

What types of summaries do you like? Which ones do you like to write? Does anyone else think writing a summary is easier than coming up with the title of the fanfic, or is it just me?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I try not to let summaries put me off reading a fic. I'll try the first few paragraphs regardless (unless the summary mentions something I explicitly don't like). Lack of a summary or an inarticulate summary are really the only things that would make me skip a fic.

With regards to writing summaries for my own fics, I dunno. I think I'm not so good at them but it's hard to tell (& I'm hiding stats at the moment because they bum me out, so who knows if my fics get many hits). I'm trying to improve & have rewritten a few of my summaries as I've thought of better ones, but I don't think I do the "sales pitch" aspect of summaries very well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed. Though I know a lot of that also has to do with tags. If a vague summary has an interesting tag or something I'm looking for, I'll check it out. However, if I'm desperate for a certain trope or something and there are obvious spelling/grammatical mistakes in the summary which don't come off as some intentional bit of creative writing? Can't make myself do it.

Solidarity. Are my summaries good at selling my stories? It's so hard to tell. I've never been good at self-promotion. I don't hide my stats, but I write in different fandoms and most of my ships are rarepairs. So it's hard to say whether my summaries are good, people will read anything in a less active fandom, people are just happy to have romantic fics (I haven't done much comparison between those and my gen stories), or what.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I'm not too worried about whether or not I'm "selling" my fics as ultimately I'm writing what I want to read & at least a couple of other people are getting something out of me posting them on AO3.

I have had a little fun with tagging - I basically wrote my only one-shot so far so that I could use the tags Virgin, Horny & Demon all for the same character. 😂 It's stupid but it really tickled me in a way that summary writing doesn't.