summaries

[sixbeforelunch]

So here's a question I've often wondered about. What makes for a good fic summary? Is there anything that can get you to click when you might otherwise not have been inclined to?

Conversely, what types of summaries do you like least? Are there summaries that will make you skip a work even if it's tagged with all of your favorite ships and tropes?

Comments

[cimorene]

Beyond the content of the summary, people often take their cue from the way others in their fandom write summaries. Particularly unfortunate summary-style trends usually replicate some genre's overly-cliched back-of-a-book styles.

Most recently there's been a huge proliferation of the cringe-inducing:

- summaries ending in things like "... Will they make it work? Or will [the conflict] defeat them?"

- summaries styled like the narration of a bad movie trailer and beginning with "In a world where [X]..."