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been thinking about fic summaries of all things recently. it's largely due to actually having to sit down and write some for the big bangs i was participating in, when usually i can just default to an excerpt from the fic itself. i do think that writing (interesting) summaries is something that does take real skill, as evidenced by the scores of ppl disclaiming that they're bad at writing them, but my own preferences as a reader and as a writer are for excerpts over summary, so i wanted to sit with that a bit.
as a reader, it comes down to fic reading habits: i don't tend to read as much fic as i used to, and when i do read fic it ends up mostly being 1) the same handful of fic i reread all the time or 2) new fic by a small handful of authors whose writing i know i enjoy. i very rarely browse for fic anymore, but when i do i'm looking at both tags and what's been put in the summary, so a lot of the time an actual summary feels superfluous to me if the fic's got enough tags. which is why i'd rather see an excerpt there: i want to know what the writing is going to be like more than i need to see a summary.
there's also the unfortunate fact that a lot of the time i will skip over a fic completely if the summary's bad (bad is of course subjective: ppl leaning too hard into the bad-at-summaries disclaimer--even if their summaries are fine--will turn me off a fic just as much as a summary that's just poorly written).
this gets carried over to when i'm posting fic too: i don't like writing summaries, but i also just kind of think it's more useful to have an excerpt (i mean it's effectively just a quick little writing sample). every time there are posts i see going around about this it always seems to tend towards the opposite direction, with a majority of people preferring summaries, or outright saying they don't read fic with excerpts in place of summaries. which has ALWAYS struck me as bizarre, especially bc the reasoning is "how do i even know what your fic is about?" like idk look at the tags??? you can get a pretty damn good idea from those i think, like unless people are tagging characters/relationships and that's it, there's usually a lot of information there.
i mean i'm also kind of perpetually being shown that people just don't fucking read tags tho, so maybe i'm expecting too much there lmao.
but even without tags, most excerpts are chosen to pique the interest of the reader, like this one, from my all time favorite fic:
gonna get to the tags in a sec, but even if you don't read them, i'd think that this is still enough to get people interested: it's dramatic af. what are they talking about? who knows! but i'm certainly intrigued!
and if you DO add the tags in (and there aren't even that many of them!!) you get a clearer picture of WHY this is so dramatic: Parallel Universes & Time Travel are two of a bare handful (there's also "Crying on the Moon," which has got to be somewhere in the top three best fic tags i've ever seen). i feel that this is really enough to give a clear picture about what to expect from the fic, especially if you're also taking pairing and character tags into consideration. like you may not have a detailed roadmap of where the fic is going, but personally after i have eyed the Time Travel tag and read that excerpt i am already Locked In. (my time travel/time loop bias! it's showing!!!)
anyway, all of this is really just to say that i prefer excerpts over summaries and personally think they're more effective, at least when it comes to getting me to read a fic. :p it's def going to come down to personal preference regardless, and i am now sort of curious what the ratio of summary to excerpt is in the fics in my bookmarks, but that's an exploration for another day i think lol. gotta get back to work!
(unfortunately now i just want to reread the fic i linked instead of continuing to work on things orz)
as a reader, it comes down to fic reading habits: i don't tend to read as much fic as i used to, and when i do read fic it ends up mostly being 1) the same handful of fic i reread all the time or 2) new fic by a small handful of authors whose writing i know i enjoy. i very rarely browse for fic anymore, but when i do i'm looking at both tags and what's been put in the summary, so a lot of the time an actual summary feels superfluous to me if the fic's got enough tags. which is why i'd rather see an excerpt there: i want to know what the writing is going to be like more than i need to see a summary.
there's also the unfortunate fact that a lot of the time i will skip over a fic completely if the summary's bad (bad is of course subjective: ppl leaning too hard into the bad-at-summaries disclaimer--even if their summaries are fine--will turn me off a fic just as much as a summary that's just poorly written).
this gets carried over to when i'm posting fic too: i don't like writing summaries, but i also just kind of think it's more useful to have an excerpt (i mean it's effectively just a quick little writing sample). every time there are posts i see going around about this it always seems to tend towards the opposite direction, with a majority of people preferring summaries, or outright saying they don't read fic with excerpts in place of summaries. which has ALWAYS struck me as bizarre, especially bc the reasoning is "how do i even know what your fic is about?" like idk look at the tags??? you can get a pretty damn good idea from those i think, like unless people are tagging characters/relationships and that's it, there's usually a lot of information there.
i mean i'm also kind of perpetually being shown that people just don't fucking read tags tho, so maybe i'm expecting too much there lmao.
but even without tags, most excerpts are chosen to pique the interest of the reader, like this one, from my all time favorite fic:
"This is like some kinda bad dream," Ironhide said aloud.
"No," Cyclonus said, low and harsh. "But it will be."
gonna get to the tags in a sec, but even if you don't read them, i'd think that this is still enough to get people interested: it's dramatic af. what are they talking about? who knows! but i'm certainly intrigued!
and if you DO add the tags in (and there aren't even that many of them!!) you get a clearer picture of WHY this is so dramatic: Parallel Universes & Time Travel are two of a bare handful (there's also "Crying on the Moon," which has got to be somewhere in the top three best fic tags i've ever seen). i feel that this is really enough to give a clear picture about what to expect from the fic, especially if you're also taking pairing and character tags into consideration. like you may not have a detailed roadmap of where the fic is going, but personally after i have eyed the Time Travel tag and read that excerpt i am already Locked In. (my time travel/time loop bias! it's showing!!!)
anyway, all of this is really just to say that i prefer excerpts over summaries and personally think they're more effective, at least when it comes to getting me to read a fic. :p it's def going to come down to personal preference regardless, and i am now sort of curious what the ratio of summary to excerpt is in the fics in my bookmarks, but that's an exploration for another day i think lol. gotta get back to work!
(unfortunately now i just want to reread the fic i linked instead of continuing to work on things orz)
