What makes for a good story summary?

[bauble]

What makes for a story summary (let's say on Ao3) compelling to you? What information do you want to see in it? How long should it be? What entices you to read? Is there anything that repels you?

I tend to view summaries as a preview of both a writer's skill and the tone of the piece. I'm pretty open to reading a story regardless of plot, so specifics about what to expect in that sense are nice to have but not required.

Comments

[fucktheg0ds]

For me, 1-3 concise sentences describing who and what the fic is about, without any spelling or grammar mistakes, is the best kind of summary. I don't like questions like "what happens when...?" or "will X and Y...?".

[thewriterinpink]

Yeah, I hate when pro works have vague questions like that too. It's usually always very cheesy and puts you off from reading or watching something. I'm probably less bothered by it in fanfic though.

[sylvaine]

I agree with this, yes! Spelling mistakes and that kind of construction with a question that we all know is rhetorical inevitably make me pull a face and go "oh dear". I might still read it anyway, but in those cases it's definitely a "despite" rather than "because" of a summary.

[commoncomitatus]

I'm pretty easy on what makes a summary work, TBH -- so long as it's about the fic itself I'm good (a summary of the plot, a summary of the characters' situation, or just a line quoted verbatim, anything like that works for me -- like you said, it gives an overall feel for the writer's style and tone).

It also depends a little on the tags -- if a fic is well-tagged in terms of content, I'm not so dependent on the summary to tell me what the fic is actually about -- it can just be a quote or a 'flavour text' style summary, and I'll still come out of it feeling well-prepared and informed.

It's only really when the entire summary is all about the author that I nope out ("I suck at summaries" / "just read it" / "I made myself cry writing this", that sort of thing, with no mention of the actual fic or even the characters involved).

[silverr]

I second everything you said, but especially the final statement.

[author_by_night]

mmary work, TBH -- so long as it's about the fic itself I'm good (a summary of the plot, a summary of the characters' situation, or just a line quoted verbatim, anything like that works for me -- like you said, it gives an overall feel for the writer's style and tone).

It also depends a little on the tags -- if a fic is well-tagged in terms of content, I'm not so dependent on the summary to tell me what the fic is actually about -- it can just be a quote or a 'flavour text' style summary, and I'll still come out of it feeling well-prepared and informed.


I couldn't agree more!


It's only really when the entire summary is all about the author that I nope out ("I suck at summaries" / "just read it" / "I made myself cry writing this", that sort of thing, with no mention of the actual fic or even the characters involved).

Yeah, though I always assume they're pretty young. Still makes it less appealing though. I probably won't read it.

[china_shop]

Mostly I think I look for an indication of tone -- whether it's angst or humour, whether it's trying to sound canon-y or being very AU. That kind of thing.

[primeideal]

Don't tell me how the story will make me feel (surprised, sad, amazed). The story should be strong enough to do that on its own!

[sabotabby]

A good summary tells me what the story is about in 1-3 sentences.

A great summary does that + gives me a sense of the tone and the author's writing style.

Things that put me off: any admission that the author is unskilled, the fic is an afterthought, reverting to clichés, begging for reviews, or misspelling the characters' names.

[thewriterinpink]

I guess as someone who writes more than reads, I have a different view on summaries than if I were the type to read more. I've learned what tends to work when I do look at fics to read, but I think the reality that fanfics have tags as well tends to support a bad summary and alleviate it, unlike pro fic that has nothing like that at all. I see that a lot of people think several sentences work as a summary, but as a writer, I think if your story is more complex it might need several paragraphs to get across the tone and nuance of the plot. I've seen stories with a paragraph or two explaining itself and I've never been too bothered by them.

Not mentioned here yet, but I also don't mind summaries that are lines taken out of the story as long as there's a short sentence or two of an actual summary underneath. Sometimes I think certain fics are hard to summarize and what it's about is easier to convey through an insert from the fic instead to further get the idea of what's there. As long as a summary is saying something useful about the fics contents and what you'd expect, it's a decent enough summary to me.

The ultimate of bad summaries are when you don't say anything worthy about the fic. I have a story that is just a collection of one-shots made from different prompts and all I can say on the cover summary is, well, that their prompts and that the summaries and ratings are inside. Sometimes you have no choice but to fail at a summary and accept that you're not going to get much viewership for it. I wasn't interested in posting all the one-shots separately so that's the best I got. It's a good representation of a bad summary though lol.

[yourlibrarian]

I tend to view summaries as a preview of both a writer's skill and the tone of the piece. I'm pretty open to reading a story regardless of plot, so specifics about what to expect in that sense are nice to have but not required.

This is fairly true for me as well. Especially when one has read for a long time in the same fandom, the author's approach to the content is far more important than the content itself. I can certainly be intrigued by what seems like a different variation on a common trope, but I generally scan the first page or so of the story because what matters to me is how the author writes. And a humorous approach, even to not particularly funny content, always adds +10 to my decision to download and read.

[pauraque]

Since the tags (ideally) give a lot of information about the content of the story, I think I mostly look to the summary for a sense of tone and style. The same tags could describe a fic that's lighthearted, dramatic, sweet, hot, dark... I like the summary to clue me in about that.

[lea_hazel]

To me, a summary is the writer showing readers that they know what the fic is about and what should make people want to read it. To give the simplest example, "lol I suck at summaries" and "first fic, be nice" pretty much say outright who the intended audience is -- someone who's interested in encouraging inexperienced writers.

When I put a line from the fic as the summary, what I'm trying to convey is "my prose speaks for itself" or "what you see is what you get". A line of poetry or a pop culture reference is probably meant to draw in readers who want stories anchored in a broader cultural context. A summary that's just the main ship and the shippy trope they'll be enacting tells you that this fic is for people who don't need to be sold on either of those concepts. If the summary/tags focus on the main pairing being a rarepair, the writer is saying "I'm doing this just to prove that I can sell you on this seemingly random ship" (which I've done occasionally in the past).

Of course, I'm making some pretty broad statements here, based on very little evidence. Probably best to take my inference with a grain of salt.

[bauble]

To me, a summary is the writer showing readers that they know what the fic is about and what should make people want to read it. To give the simplest example, "lol I suck at summaries" and "first fic, be nice" pretty much say outright who the intended audience is -- someone who's interested in encouraging inexperienced writers.

I think this is such a fascinating insight. A summary, by its very format and structure, can communicate who the reader should be: if there are typos, the reader should be someone forgiving of an enthusiastic early writers; if it's a beautiful line from the story, it should be someone interested in the prose; if it's a list of tropes, the reader should be someone who loves those tropes.

In a way, this may mean there isn't truly a "best" way to format a summary--only the best way to reach the audience that would most enjoy a particular story.

[lea_hazel]

It's the same writing advice I always give -- don't write the story for your audience, find the audience for your story. Also why I love AO3's tagging system so much.

[firecat]

I have yet to allow a summary to sway me on whether I start to read the fic or not.

As a writer, I've used summaries to begin the story, to tease/intrigue the reader, to set the tone and style, to describe the theme of the story, to set out background, and to give an overall shape to the action of the story.

[doranwen]

I look for no (or at least very few) SPAG errors. The number of spelling errors/typos is often a good indicator of how bad the mechanics will be in the actual fic (and much of the time poor mechanics is linked with poor writing), and there's a limit to what I'll wade through. I also avoid the obvious "I'm a newbie writer!" indicators - declaring it's their first fic, hoping their fic isn't terrible, etc. And I'll skip anything where they beg for reviews, ask questions, or denigrate their ability to write a summary (because usually it means their fic's not that good either). I also tend to avoid summaries that describe plots which are over-the-top in some way, particularly anything that involves OCs unless it's a writer I already know is good. (The sad reality is that the vast majority of fics with OCs are not worth reading - though I do find the occasional gem.)

Beyond that, I'll actually check out nearly everything - I don't so much look at summaries for "do I want to click on this" as "do I want to avoid this", really. And I also avoid per tags, of course - so anything in the fandoms I like that doesn't have either tags I want to avoid, or the indicators I listed above, I'll click on it and give it a try. Most of my fandoms are too tiny to care otherwise.

Sometimes I come up with really good summaries for my fics, but I've been known to write a lot of one-liner "Character does x when y happens" type summaries when I honestly can't think of a thing. At least it tells the reader what to expect of the plot, even if it doesn't accurately represent the style. (Such summaries are often in present tense - but I rarely actually write in present tense, so I always hope people will click just to see anyway.)

[deerna]

I like putting an extract from the story itself, so that the reader can get a taste before deciding to plunge in. If the plot/context isn't clear from the quote, I also put a very short plot-summary/hint that explains that ("character does x when y happens" summaries like the comment above!). Good tags are helpful like that, too, not only to warn about the content in case someone stumbles on something not of their taste but also to hint at where the plot is going, especially if it's not... plot.

Here's an example from my fic Just a little bit of heaven

Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Mutual Pining, Smoking, Slow Dancing, Coping Mechanisms, Light Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Denial, Pre-Slash, Historically Inaccurate Vintage Party
Summary: Aziraphale impulsively goes to a 1920s-inspired party hoping to dance again, is disappointed, sulks about the old times, and gets swept off his feet by Crowley.

“Parties wear me out so quickly, it’s so crowded in there I swear it feels like being back in Hell,” Crowley complained, shaking the ash off his cigarette in the street below. He glanced at Aziraphale. “I don't think I've ever seen you wear black before. New suit?”

Aziraphale chuckled. “I wouldn't call it new, it was made in 1924. A gift, from a friend.” He reached for the ashtray on the nearest table. “I’m not the most knowledgeable in regards of fashion, but I think your dress would be too short for the period.”

It "spoils" the fic, in a sense, but i think it's helpful and eyecatching, when there's so much fic to choose from!

[elf]

I'm content with a short excerpt, but that's not my favorite. That may be because of the weird deja vu sense of running into a passage I've already read.

I can enjoy a wide range between "sounds like a back-of-the-book blurb" to a chatty author's-notes style summary. But if I notice SPAG problems in the summary, I don't bother reading the work - if the "everybody sees this" part is unpleasant for me, I don't expect to enjoy the rest, and there's a LOT of other fics to read.

Short summaries are better than long ones, which is to say, I may click on a story with a very short summary (something like "They adopt a cat. It does not go well.") where I'm likely to skip one with a long, complex summary. I don't want a plot synopsis; I want a short "what makes this worth reading?" note. I want the summary to let me know whether the story focuses on plot ("Vacation plans have gone awry; our heroes are stuck in an abandoned mine waiting for rescue"), characterization ("Pining. So much pining. A is sure B will never look twice at him."), wacky hijinks ("Seven times the FDA filed a lawsuit against Our Heroes."), or some other aspect of the story.

I don't see "Additional Tags" in order to avoid spoilers, so the summary's what I use to decide what to read. I want it to tell me genre and tone more than plot.

[sylvaine]

I agree with most of the other commenters here, although personally I'm really not a fan of "quote from the story"-style "summaries". That's partly to do with the kind of fic I read, though, I think? I tend to read mostly either ridiculously long gen-ish adventure fic or porn, and neither of those really benefit much from an excerpt, imo. (Well, the porn maybe, if characterization or humour are important to the fic.) Certainly in the back of my head I'm noticing the style of the summary, and that does influence my decision to read or not read, but part of that for me is things that make me feel like the author didn't put much effort into the summary - such as using a pull quote. It's a little bit that feeling of "well if you didn't bother than why should I", I guess? Which is really very unkind when put into words, but *helpless shrug* there's only so many hours in the day for reading.

I suppose what I'm looking for in the summary is, well, an idea of what the fic is about? And certainly style plays a role in that, and tone - both of those are important! - but so does knowing who the main characters are, what the main plot or purpose of the story is, maybe even a hint of the central conflict. Author motivation ("I was really dissatisfied with [thing] in canon so I wrote this", for example) is okay, but for me that belongs in the notes section.

Certainly AO3's tagging system is brilliant, and takes a huge load off of perhaps poor summaries - many a time I've opened a fic despite an uninspiring summary because the additional tags sparked my interest. Nevertheless, there's a balance to be struck here, for me - if there's too many tags attached to a work, my eyes skip right over it. Same with multiple long paragraphs of summary. Ideally, the additional tags give me the major themes of the story, and the summary gives me that plus things that the tags can't convey, such as writing style or the kind of detail that just doesn't quite... work in tags - it's really hard to describe, as it turns out! But I do think that some things can simply be conveyed better in prose than in bullet points.

[fred_mouse]

I struggle with what makes a good summary, but I absolutely hate reading the summary and then discovering that it is word for word lifted from somewhere in the first few paragraphs.

[alexseanchai]

where other readers have yelled at me for assuming they were going to read the summary first and it would therefore be desirable if I did not duplicate the important information in the summary within the first bit of the fic. 🙁

[fred_mouse]

I'm tired enough that I can't tell whether you are agreeing with me, or disagreeing. :(

[alexseanchai]

neither. observing.

ETA now I'm somewhat more awake: I have tried the thing of putting the first scenelet of the story in the summary and not in the body of the story. This assumes (reasonably, I thought) that people will read the summary before reading the rest of the work. Apparently this is a wrong assumption. But if I want to have the first scenelet in the summary, then also including it in the body of the story is doing the exact duplicating thing you're talking about. It doesn't irritate me as badly as it does you, I think, but it's still irritating. (And any time this dilemmma arises for me, I've probably already considered and discarded trying to do a summary that's a later excerpt or not an excerpt at all!)

[fred_mouse]

Ah!

Yeah, any excerpt at all frustrates me. Unless it is quoted, because then I can tell it is an excerpt and that I'll then be reading it. Reading the same thing in short order throws me out of the story quite badly.