Belladoragirl's Guide to Writing Better Fic Summaries

[belladoragirl]

Imagine you're in your favorite bookstore. You find a book that has an interesting cover or is by your favorite author. You pick it up to read the summary and it goes something like this: "fluffy one-shot for v-day i know its short. set during marauders era Bella/Barty Jr. pairing read and review I suck at summaries

Comments

[englaroma]

*claps*

While I don't particularly like the summary of PoA, your rules are right on spot.

What about replacing most of the summary by an excerpt though? I've seen that around, and it gives a nice qick impression of the author's style.

Hugs!

[belladoragirl]

The sample as a summary can work as well, so long as the sample is intriguing. If the excerpt was something like "Remus watched as Tonks brushed her teeth and sighed at the thoughts running through his mind.", it doesn't really do the story and author justice. :)

[honilee]

(Here via metafandom.)

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this out. As a reader, I always skip over stories that have poor grammar in their summaries or that say things like, "I suck at summaries." If the authors can't write decent summaries, how can they write a good story?

[belladoragirl]

Exactly. If they can't take the few moments to write a good summary, it shows they don't actually really care about their stories.

Re: (via metafandom)

[belladoragirl]

Exrepts are the answer to the shorter fics with little to no plot. My style is more or less character studies, or emotion studies between characters, and are generally around 1,000 to 1,500 words.

Another easy tip for those kinds and drabbles are one sentence general sketch of the work.

[elvishly]

ily unknown person.

*is going to fruitfully link to this* :D

[belladoragirl]

Thanks! :)

here via metafandom

[iamtheliquorr]

Oh man, thanks for this! Words cannot do justice to my loathing of summaries that are like, "I suck at summaries, just read it!" A summary like that will pretty much guarantee that I won't read it.

Re: here via metafandom

[belladoragirl]

You're welcome! I agree. It takes little effort to write two more sentences that summarizes it!