DISCUSSION: How Important Are Summaries?

[Nitro Indigo]

That reminds me, on Fimfiction, stories need to have long and short summaries. The former appears on the story's cover page, and the latter appears in lists. I always have trouble writing the short one. (Though from what I've seen, back in 2011, there were no short summaries and you could have as many character tags as you wanted, instead of 5 like it is now.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to write long and short summaries for a recent fanfic idea of mine. Another reason why I have trouble writing summaries on Fimfiction is because the kinds of fanfics I write there involve two viewpoints who don't know much about the other, and it's hard to concisely include both.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Huh! This is interesting. I don't think I've ever cared about summaries at all. I do enjoy reading author's notes (like what kind of story it is, what the general tone/atmosphere is, the themes, ect), but a description of what happens in it? Hard pass. A lot of the stories I enjoy reading tend to not sound very good in-summary (you can take some really, really dumb concepts and make them amazing in-practice, but a summary for a dumb concept isn't going to convey how good the execution is). Now, of course, I do admit I'm biased, as I think the main appeal of my own fic is its themes. I also have a bit of a running joke with making my fic sound as stupid as possible. :P

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Chibi Pika - oh man, I don't really see author's notes any more besides "hi, sorry the for the wait" type stuff. I think they've fallen out of fashion? I kinda miss them, it was like getting to know the author, as if they were presenting their work and just said a few words first. It was a nice use of the medium when it wasn't done in an embarrassing way.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I remember reading a fanfic that had paragrahs of author's notes about why each chapter was delayed (ie: came out a few weeks after the last), and it annoyed me. It's not going to mean anything to people who are reading it after the fact!

 

[Misfit Angel]

It's not going to mean anything to people who are reading it after the fact!

While this is true, I can see it being useful for the author who hates to disappoint their readers, especially if they know they only have a few of them. Keeping your readers appraised as you go on about any problems that are arising during the writing process can be a helpful coping mechanism for some people if the consistently fail to meet their own deadlines.

Myself, a summary of what to expect isn't crucial, but extremely appreciated; an overall idea of what to expect, rather than "X achieves event Y, this is how it happens" is what I like to see. Running into a story blind usually results in me putting it down if the point or overall theme of the story isn't made within the first three chapters. Conversely, having the story heavily spoiled in the summary will also get me to put it back on the shelf.

That being said, fanfic is very much ruled by the readers. While I usually rely on prologues/first chapters to do the hooking, I might end up putting summaries back on if that’s the general convention now.

I'm not sure it's the general convention at this point. People seem to like the idea of summaries, but I also don't see many around here. That said, I do find stories with summaries do feel more... polished? It feels like more care has gone into crafting a full product, rather than just throwing a stack of papers with words on it out into the wind. More effort, more care and attention to detail, I feel.

 

[Chibi Pika]

@Chibi Pika - oh man, I don't really see author's notes any more besides "hi, sorry the for the wait" type stuff. I think they've fallen out of fashion? I kinda miss them, it was like getting to know the author, as if they were presenting their work and just said a few words first. It was a nice use of the medium when it wasn't done in an embarrassing way.

Aaa, they really have fallen out of fashion, haven't they? I love reading author's notes! I want to know what the challenges were, what the thought process was. I want to know which chapters are the author's favorite! I want to know which scenes gave them trouble and what options they already tried so I don't suggest something that they'd already thought of.

Actually, I think in general, knowing an author's thought process and what they're going for in a story is a huge draw for me.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Chibi Pika — actually, yeah, same. I like creator commentary! I might start doing my own, actually. Hmm. If I do, thanks for encouraging it! ;3

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I have plenty of ideas for commentaries about a fanfic I'm writing, but I think long author's notes would be too distracting, so I can use Fimfiction blog posts for those. (You can tag blog posts to stories on that site so they appear in the feed of anyone that's added that story to a bookshelf, but there's no way to see a list of every blog post associated with that story.)

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Nitro Indigo or you could just put your author commentary inside a spoiler tag or in separate posts if they're that long.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

@unrepentantAuthor I don't post my fanfics on this forum. I should have specified that I would be posting this fanfic in question on Fimfiction (and Archive of Our Own).

 

[Snuggle Tier List]

@Nitro Indigo or you could just put your author commentary inside a spoiler tag or in separate posts if they're that long.

Fun fact; a major behind-the-scenes motivator for me to start this thread was the author's notes in my poetry grab bag. There's a great battle in my head over whether to put them in spoiler tags, as words placed in spoilers aren't counted towards threadmarked word count. I eventually concluded the author's notes, in my particular case, were part of the work itself; my poetry was my first work posted to this forum, and letting people "get inside my head" was in part the point of publishing my poetry. Disclosing biases and all that, so people know where I'm coming from when I post whatever.

...but there's a part of me that still believes "let people read how they want to read, and if they want to skip the author's notes, accommodate them". I've put my poetry down for now so I can work on my Pokémon: XD analysis, which in a way is also me disclosing personal biases. That, and building cred as a researcher. And in that analysis, my summary is like a mission statement/prequel chapter; the prologue chapter begins as a continuation of the summary. Anyone who skips it will likely be horribly confused.

Ironically, the only work I have published that's actual prose (KAIJUMON) puts the summary in a spoiler. There's an epitaph in the intro post to establish tone, but most everything else is sorted into spoilers. That fic was published to show, yes, Snuggles can write prose. Because of that, I felt more comfortable letting readers skip the summary.

I do have an in-progress longfic that absolutely cannot have a summary in spoiler, but it's...weird. The summary is again part of the fic, and it less summarizes the fic and more introduces a character via first-person narration. Kinda like a prologue chapter promoted to summary, because people skip to the prologue anyways. I'm itching to publish it, but I want to gain more experience before committing to a longfic.

Speaking of which; anyone notice a large amount of fics have prologues? I suppose prologues aren't uncommon in chaptered fiction, but if the first chapters are commonly used to gauge fic quality, perhaps prologues are silently supplanting summaries...

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I think Different Eyes has a prelude (prologue) that's something of a summary, but I've grown to dislike it. Prose-as-summary runs the risk of being unrepresentative of the work, and of being a giant exposition dump.

 

[Snuggle Tier List]

Prose-as-summary runs the risk of being unrepresentative of the work, and of being a giant exposition dump.

True, but just because something is a risk doesn't mean it's guaranteed. A skilled author in theory can write prose-as-summary without being unrepresentative or an exposition dump. The trick (as I see it).is to know your works tone and match that tone without diving into specifics. Though that requires self-awareness of your own fic, which might not be a reasonable expectation in an amateur writing community.

 

[Welkamo]

I definitely read summaries. Heck, I read the Wikipedia synopses of books that I'm reading before I read them (not the same thing, but whatever). I definitely think tags are just as, if not more important, because then I can gauge if there are characters/things I want to see/don't want to see.

Also, I published fanfic on FFN way back in 2006-ish, and the summary length drove me absolutely nuts back then. And it still does. That website has barely evolved in over a decade.

I've never published fanfic, but I have read fanfic on both AO3 and Fanfiction.net, and Fanfiction.net feels really outdated. I still go to it when I'm desperate for content of a certain character/ship (there are some good fanfics on it), but I much prefer AO3.