meta: on posting fanfiction on the internet - part 1: the blurb
I read a lot of fanfiction, although I write a lot less than I used to. I can't tell you how to write, but I certainly have a lot of suggestions on how you should be presenting your fanfiction, whether on your own journal, in a community, or on an archive.
Once I'm comfortable in a fandom, I tend to get picky about what I read. I find my favourite authors, and I stick with them. This, obviously, requires a fair amount of trial and error.
While I don't usually judge a writer based on their name or display picture, if you have a username with blatant misspellings and obviously fangirling over someone in the fandom, I may just pass you off as being childish and immature and thus a poor writer. This can, however, be forgiven by the blurb.
The blurb on your fanfiction is IMPORTANT. It should provide me, the reader, with enough information to draw me in, but not so much as to spoil it. I know, you should never judge a book by its cover. The cover has been designed by someone entirely separate to the person who wrote the story inside. How then, do you decide whether or not this book is something you want to read? The blurb, dear writer, the blurb.
On published books, the blurb is a paragraph or extract on the back cover that sums up what you will find inside. When publishing fanfiction on the internet, the blurb is a whole lot MORE. It encompasses not just the summary, but also the title, rating, warnings and author notes. I wonder sometimes, how many fanfiction readers pick up actual books, without knowing, in great detail, what they're in for.
There are several important factors for a fanfiction blurb, and a few optional ones.
Like, I said, the blurb is important. The formatting of the blurb is also important. There's several ways to do it. The first has each section on it's own line, and the headings should be italicised or bold so that they stand out and nothing blurs together. Another, which I've been employing on my journal recently, is to merely separate each section out with a divider, for example |, and then italicise the summary. I would not recommend posting this way to a community.
Take note that it's hard to read a blurb that has been entirely bolded, italicised, written in capital letters, or has no formatting at all.
Oh yeah, and if your blurb has spelling or grammatical errors or a complete disregard towards proper capitalisation, I might keep scrolling. I know we all go through that stage where scorning capital letters is "cool", but unless you're a published poet, or have written many other works that enlist proper capitalisation, it really just makes you look uneducated.
I suggest you take all that into account. First impressions count. You may have written an amazing story, but it might be neglected because of a poorly written and formatted blurb. Of course, posting on archives is completely different to posting on a journal. Many of the same points count, though of course the web server takes care of all the formatting.
Archives give you an option to list characters and key words. This is another chance for you to draw readers in. Again, try not to overdo it. The same rules with characters apply.
This is really just the basics, I'm sure there is a whole slew of other things I've not covered. (Like listing kinks etc., genres..)
Once I'm comfortable in a fandom, I tend to get picky about what I read. I find my favourite authors, and I stick with them. This, obviously, requires a fair amount of trial and error.
While I don't usually judge a writer based on their name or display picture, if you have a username with blatant misspellings and obviously fangirling over someone in the fandom, I may just pass you off as being childish and immature and thus a poor writer. This can, however, be forgiven by the blurb.
The blurb on your fanfiction is IMPORTANT. It should provide me, the reader, with enough information to draw me in, but not so much as to spoil it. I know, you should never judge a book by its cover. The cover has been designed by someone entirely separate to the person who wrote the story inside. How then, do you decide whether or not this book is something you want to read? The blurb, dear writer, the blurb.
On published books, the blurb is a paragraph or extract on the back cover that sums up what you will find inside. When publishing fanfiction on the internet, the blurb is a whole lot MORE. It encompasses not just the summary, but also the title, rating, warnings and author notes. I wonder sometimes, how many fanfiction readers pick up actual books, without knowing, in great detail, what they're in for.
There are several important factors for a fanfiction blurb, and a few optional ones.
- Title; There's a few fanfictions that I've read where hearing a word from the title makes me remember the whole title, and then the fanfiction and how it made me feel. A good title may be the difference between your fanfiction being remembered or tossed aside by the masses, so don't skimp out on it. (There are of course many other factors towards this, but titles are IMPORTANT.) Lines from songs are fine, but they should mean something to the fanfiction. Try not to make it a two or three word description of the work though, please?
- Author; If you're posting to your own journal, you can just leave this one out.
- Fandom; Again, optional. If you're posting in a specific community it may be implied, but for a more general community or your own journal if you write in multiple fandoms, or have done a cross-over, it may be required.
- Rating; Ratings are somewhat of a sliding scale. Most communities online use the MPAA ratings system (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) but definitions differ on what is considered acceptable in each rating. As a general rule of thumb; G is something you'd read to your 5 year old nephew, PG you might read to your sister in elementary school, but not your 5 year old nephew, PG-13 may contain some swearing or themes meant for a high school audience. PG and PG-13 get smushed together sometimes, so it's really your call. R and NC-17 tend to go the same way, and definitely are above a high school audience. Think of them as being soft-core and hard-core and use your discretion.
- Word Count; Accurate word counts aren't necessary, but I don't want to be hooked in by a summary, and then find that the work has a shorter word length than the entire blurb.
- Pairing/Characters; Optional if the community you're posting in is geared towards a specific pairing. If there is no pairing, list the MAIN characters that form the backbone of the fanfiction and interact with each other the most. I don't really care about the extras and supporting cast when I'm reading, unless they play a major part in the plot (and are thus a MAIN character). If the person only says 2 lines, or doesn't even say anything, you probably don't need to mention them in the blurb.
- Summary; THIS IS IMPORTANT. When I first started reading, and writing too, I would so often see writers say they're no good at summaries. I fell into this trap as well at first. I'm still pretty bullshit at summaries, but they are necessary. They are, as I said before, what draws a person to reading your work. If you can't think of one, ask your beta-reader, or editor; or pick out a line or two that really stand out. The summary is the hook that's going to catch your readers so you need something that pops.
- Warnings; Honestly, unless your work has a very heavy subject, and/or may be triggering to your audience, then you don't need to warn for anything. Admittedly, I read a lot of porn, I don't read much below an R rating, but if I see someone warn for sex or swearing and it has been implied in their rating, I scroll on by because to me that marks an immature writer who probably isn't even legal to have sex.
- Disclaimer; If you don't include one of these on all of your works, then you should at least have a blanket disclaimer on your personal journal, preferably on your profile. They state that you have merely borrowed the characters from their original creator and have no intent to infringe on their copyright. They are even necessary on Real Person Fiction, as you're liable for defamation of character.
- Author's Notes; These are rarely necessary. They can be used to thank people, particularly beta-readers/editors. It's doubtful that I actually need or want to know that you originally wrote this work for another fandom, and then decided to change it halfway through because it didn't quite fit or that you were having a bad day. I don't need your life story. I mean, unless it's on your personal journal. Write whatever the hell you want on your personal journal, but when you link to your fanfiction on a community, it isn't necessary. Oh, these can also be used to say whether the work was written for a particular challenge (that can also go in the summary) or person.
Like, I said, the blurb is important. The formatting of the blurb is also important. There's several ways to do it. The first has each section on it's own line, and the headings should be italicised or bold so that they stand out and nothing blurs together. Another, which I've been employing on my journal recently, is to merely separate each section out with a divider, for example |, and then italicise the summary. I would not recommend posting this way to a community.
Take note that it's hard to read a blurb that has been entirely bolded, italicised, written in capital letters, or has no formatting at all.
Oh yeah, and if your blurb has spelling or grammatical errors or a complete disregard towards proper capitalisation, I might keep scrolling. I know we all go through that stage where scorning capital letters is "cool", but unless you're a published poet, or have written many other works that enlist proper capitalisation, it really just makes you look uneducated.
I suggest you take all that into account. First impressions count. You may have written an amazing story, but it might be neglected because of a poorly written and formatted blurb. Of course, posting on archives is completely different to posting on a journal. Many of the same points count, though of course the web server takes care of all the formatting.
Archives give you an option to list characters and key words. This is another chance for you to draw readers in. Again, try not to overdo it. The same rules with characters apply.
This is really just the basics, I'm sure there is a whole slew of other things I've not covered. (Like listing kinks etc., genres..)