(no subject)
Headers. When it comes to headers and me, I think there are issues of . . . self-sabotage. Don't get me wrong. I love to talk about me. I love to talk about how great I am. Me me me all the time all day! But when I do talk about how great I think I am, it's usually with a kind of sarcastic self-condemnation of my own arrogance; witness the previous line.
So when it comes to saying, "here, I did this thing; it's good; you should try it," I . . . don't do that. I'll say that I'm very happy with a story or really proud, but I probably won't say I think a story I wrote is good or that you should read it. I probably won't do it even if I know you really well. It's not that I don't think I write good stories (c.f. above, re: me me me!); I just feel like a dick if I talk about it.
What does this have to do with headers? Well, headers are about selling your fic, imo. They're about saying, "You should read me. Here's why!" And I just . . . can't do that very well unless I'm being tongue and cheek about it.
It's gotten much worse. I used to be able to name fics things like, "Bodiless Among The Bodies." Now it's Lady Gaga and text speak all the time. If I can make a dumb pun out of a title I probably will.
It's even worse with summaries, though. For The Boy Who Only Lived Twice, it took so much self-control not to make the summary, "SECRET AGENTS". Yep. That was my whole summary. And then I switched it to, "Potter. Harry Potter. Is an Unspeakable, and Draco Malfoy is the wizard who shagged him. Adventure! Intrigue! Secret identities! Celebrities! Spies! Supermodels! It's all right here, folks. Except for Bond girls. Unless you count Draco Malfoy as a Bond girl. And a flying Bond car. It doesn't have that, either. But if I had thought of a flying Bond car before writing this summary, I would have put in a flying Bond car. That's just the kind of fic this is." That . . . seriously was the summary. I thought it was hilarious.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
my_daroga didn't think it was hilarious. So I cut it down.
For Hope Has Wings (But Faith Has A Broadsword) my summary was, "Faith has wings." ...Yup. I had to force myself to write more, but could I force myself to write, "This is a fic about sin and redemption, in which wings are explored as a mechanism of metaphysical questioning."? No. Sounds pretentious. What was I suppose to do, anyway?
I think, too, that people want different things from their summaries than I want from mine. The thing that makes me look at a fic, without knowing the author or having seen any recs, is whether the fic is doing a trope I like. If your summary is, "De-aging. Re-aging. Porn." I will read your fic no matter what. I don't want the frills. If a fic doesn't have easily identifiable tropes, then I want the absolute simplest explanation possible. I want this:
VI, bykita0610
Wesley muses. Angel has sex with everyone in the universe. Sort of. Rated Hard R for violence and disturbing imagery.
I read that summary and I go: I like musing. I like Angel being a slut. Sometimes disturbing imagery is okay; also, this person is obviously hilarious, makes no pretenses, and isn't trying to sell me anything. SOLD!
I had a conversation withmy_daroga about this, and she clued me into the fact that lots of people probably don't want the same kind of summaries that I do. Like, they want to actually know what the fic is about, or something? I don't know. I will totally read sad, dark things and love them, but when I run across a really sad, dark summary, that's poetic and heart-rending, what I generally think is, "This person wants me to think this is poetic and heart-rending. Next!" or "Doesn't know how to write a pithy summary and is therefore no good. Next!" These judgments are obviously horrendous and not true. I don't know what my problem is!
But anyway, here we go:
Do you have trouble writing summaries of your fic/fanwork? Why?
What's the best summary you've written?
What's the worst?
Have you written a summary that people disagreed with? What was it? Why did they disagree?
What do you look for in a fic/fanwork summary?
What's a fic/fanwork summary that's likely to turn you away? (You don't have to quote one, just state the elements)
Do you have any favorite fic summaries?
For answering with ease!
So when it comes to saying, "here, I did this thing; it's good; you should try it," I . . . don't do that. I'll say that I'm very happy with a story or really proud, but I probably won't say I think a story I wrote is good or that you should read it. I probably won't do it even if I know you really well. It's not that I don't think I write good stories (c.f. above, re: me me me!); I just feel like a dick if I talk about it.
What does this have to do with headers? Well, headers are about selling your fic, imo. They're about saying, "You should read me. Here's why!" And I just . . . can't do that very well unless I'm being tongue and cheek about it.
It's gotten much worse. I used to be able to name fics things like, "Bodiless Among The Bodies." Now it's Lady Gaga and text speak all the time. If I can make a dumb pun out of a title I probably will.
It's even worse with summaries, though. For The Boy Who Only Lived Twice, it took so much self-control not to make the summary, "SECRET AGENTS". Yep. That was my whole summary. And then I switched it to, "Potter. Harry Potter. Is an Unspeakable, and Draco Malfoy is the wizard who shagged him. Adventure! Intrigue! Secret identities! Celebrities! Spies! Supermodels! It's all right here, folks. Except for Bond girls. Unless you count Draco Malfoy as a Bond girl. And a flying Bond car. It doesn't have that, either. But if I had thought of a flying Bond car before writing this summary, I would have put in a flying Bond car. That's just the kind of fic this is." That . . . seriously was the summary. I thought it was hilarious.
my_daroga didn't think it was hilarious. So I cut it down.For Hope Has Wings (But Faith Has A Broadsword) my summary was, "Faith has wings." ...Yup. I had to force myself to write more, but could I force myself to write, "This is a fic about sin and redemption, in which wings are explored as a mechanism of metaphysical questioning."? No. Sounds pretentious. What was I suppose to do, anyway?
I think, too, that people want different things from their summaries than I want from mine. The thing that makes me look at a fic, without knowing the author or having seen any recs, is whether the fic is doing a trope I like. If your summary is, "De-aging. Re-aging. Porn." I will read your fic no matter what. I don't want the frills. If a fic doesn't have easily identifiable tropes, then I want the absolute simplest explanation possible. I want this:
VI, by
kita0610Wesley muses. Angel has sex with everyone in the universe. Sort of. Rated Hard R for violence and disturbing imagery.
I read that summary and I go: I like musing. I like Angel being a slut. Sometimes disturbing imagery is okay; also, this person is obviously hilarious, makes no pretenses, and isn't trying to sell me anything. SOLD!
I had a conversation with
my_daroga about this, and she clued me into the fact that lots of people probably don't want the same kind of summaries that I do. Like, they want to actually know what the fic is about, or something? I don't know. I will totally read sad, dark things and love them, but when I run across a really sad, dark summary, that's poetic and heart-rending, what I generally think is, "This person wants me to think this is poetic and heart-rending. Next!" or "Doesn't know how to write a pithy summary and is therefore no good. Next!" These judgments are obviously horrendous and not true. I don't know what my problem is!But anyway, here we go:
Do you have trouble writing summaries of your fic/fanwork? Why?
What's the best summary you've written?
What's the worst?
Have you written a summary that people disagreed with? What was it? Why did they disagree?
What do you look for in a fic/fanwork summary?
What's a fic/fanwork summary that's likely to turn you away? (You don't have to quote one, just state the elements)
Do you have any favorite fic summaries?
For answering with ease!
no subject
DO I EVER. The reason: I like summaries that succinctly describe what one can expect in a story -- in other words, a total spoiler. And putting spoilers in your summaries is not something that goes over well with your readers. So then I'm left frantically trying to figure out how much is too much information, without accidentally erring on the side of too little. As a result I often end up just quoting an early line from the fic and using that as a summary...
What's the best summary you've written?
It's also possibly the shortest summary I've ever written: "One person he'll tell he loves, and five he won't." I like it because, well, I did manage to get away with succinctly describing what one can expect in the story, but in a way that it doesn't end up coming across as spoilery. And I like it, too, because it's something of a reversal of the "Five things" trope, where the five take the important last place instead of the one.
What's the worst?
"The one where they're folk musicians," because it's actually somewhat misleading; by about halfway into the story, it turns into something more of a college AU than a folk-musician AU. *sigh* It kind of frustrates me.
Have you written a summary that people disagreed with? What was it? Why did they disagree?
No, that's never happened to me! But then, since my summaries are usually quotes pulled from the fic itself, it would be kind of hard to disagree with them...
What do you look for in a fic/fanwork summary?
I look for something that successfully tells me what to expect in the story -- whether that's the trope it's engaging itself with, or the general outline of the set-up, or even just the tone of the piece or whatever.
What's a fic/fanwork summary that's likely to turn you away?
Something that makes zero sense on its own and won't make sense until after you've read the story. No! The summary's supposed to be there to draw me in, not to confuse me! Or, even worse, fics that DON'T HAVE summaries. That makes me sad. I like to know what I'm getting into!
Do you have any favorite fic summaries?
There's no particular summaries that stand out in my memory, but going through my bookmarks, here's an example of what I consider an excellent kind of summary: "Stephen is briefly indisposed (viz., a penguin), but things change remarkably little." It gives clear indication of trope (penguinfic!), tone (dry understated humour with no angst!), plot (Stephen gets turned into a penguin but gets better!), and relationship (great affection between Stephen and Jack!), all within just a few words, and so the reader knows instantly whether or not this is the sort of fic that will appeal to them.
I actually find titles even more challenging than summaries, though, and I invariably end up where you do, with the song quotes and things. My problem is that succinct does not come naturally to me, and titles must be the soul of brevity....
I don't think I have the same problem with headers that you do, with the self-sabotage. I've come to a place of acceptance of what headers need to be, after finding how often I get turned off by other people's headers, even though the fic beyond might be quite good. So I just...work on becoming my own marketing department, I guess. I'm just not very good at being a good marketing department, even without the self-sabotage.