fic talk: on summaries

[sword_logic]

i was going through my comments on S11 au a few weeks ago as a pep talk/ego boost and i came across some feedback i had completely forgotten about: "At first the fic summary was vague enough to make me almost skip over it, I'm so glad I didn't."

man, i am so familiar with standing on that particular edge — seeing something that's got a handful of tags and a vague, one-line summary, and hesitating to click on it because there are too many variables. but i don't know, i'm torn on whether or not i want to change the current summary. not to be that guy, but i am pretty terrible at summaries; i never know how much of my hand to show, whether to use a quote, or if i should go with dry humor.

i feel ok about my current summary, though this is where i confess that i... am not entirely sure how to explain my understanding of the p vs np/p equals np problem, or why i chose that particular "the solution and the solving" bit to start off the summary. it's like sword logic. i get it at such a weird level that i have no idea how to explain it. (side note: i have come to dread people asking me to explain sword logic. it's just. [todd voice] it just works.) anyways: point being, i like my artsy "the solution and the solving" interpretation. the quote, i think, does a decent job too.

but! i do also like the summary i made for the tumblr crosspost: "In which Maine is alive, Wash gets dragged out of a firefight unconscious, and something is rotten in the state of Chorus." it's succinct, a little dry, and it lays out a decent picture of what to expect. maine, wash, chorus, ???, profit. and it's the classique in which summary. (though if i do end up changing the summary to this, i think i'd go with "the meta is alive," because... well, that's how the fic starts off, innit? that shift doesn't happen for a while.)

i'm so deeply on the fence about this. man, i wish i were better at summaries.

Comments

[anneapocalypse]

Summaries are difficult for longfics. It's often so subjective what's going to catch someone's eye, and I definitely don't think yours is misleading. (There was once a fic I passed over for a long time because it had [juggernaut ship] and [other ship I actually care about] both tagged and only [juggernaut ship] mentioned in the summary so I assumed that [other ship] was only a background ship. It turned out to be exactly the reverse and a great fic but BOY HOWDY was that a misleading summary!)

The "In which" summary also works very well. I think the big difference is the "In which" serves a taste of the plot, the quote serves tone, and the "solution and solving" bit serves theme. None of which is more right or wrong for a summary, and it's really a subjective thing which readers are going to be grabbed by which one.

So: do what you like the best!

[sword_logic]

glad to hear it's not misleading! :') and yeah, man, i definitely have been strongly dissuaded by a vague summary (esp. alongside minimal tagging) only to eventually take the plunge and end up really enjoying a fic. i super don't want to be That Fic, though. :B thanks for the insights! i've definitely been trying to think of informative tags to add, too, so i'm gonna continue to sleep on both.