Tips to write a Good Summary for your Fic

This is an amazingly common problem you'll see in Fanfiction, and one that's also a very common Red Flag for readers.

Poor summaries.

The words "Bad Summary" tend to mean the death for a fic before it's even born.

However, we all have different ideas on what constitutes a good summary, and we're all far from perfect.

So, in order to maybe lend a hand to all the aspiring fanfic writers out there, I decided to open this thread so we could discuss ideas on what could possibly make an otherwise crappy summary be a lot better.

In my case, the summary is generally the last thing I do for a fic. Yeah, sounds dumb, doesn't it?

I complete the rough draft of what the fic is going to be first, then I complete the first chapter, and then, and only then, do I write the summary.

What I do to write it as well as possible is writing a detailed summary of the premise. From there, I use a metaphorical scalpel to cut off everything that would necessitate a spoiler. Once I'm done with that, I then condense it down as much as possible, and then I try to flavor it so that it's basically written the same way as the fic itself is, which leads me to the summary.

It's important to note that while the last step might look like it's just an afterthought, it's actually fairly important. Avoiding a generic summary is something you always want.

I also, and this is personal, avoid the use of tags unless I specifically need to give a warning about something. I simply dislike the use of tags unless they are absolutely necessary.

I say, it's a good idea for a thread. But it's also hard to quantify what makes for a good summary, like you said. The "green flags" thread is a good place to start.

My process for writing a summary is pretty simple. Usually, I write down whatever the crazy idea was that inspired me to write the fic in the first place. Whether that's time travel, a crossover idea, or a crack pairing between a man and his tank, I put down the idea, and I try to phrase it in a way that will make someone curious about the idea.

Using tags depends on the site, I suppose. fanfic.net doesn't use tags, but fimfiction requires them, and actually has fairly specific guidelines on what qualifies a story to fit each tag. Unless there's some site/fandom convention for it, I don't think it's always a good idea to put tags or shippings in the summary though, primarily because it then uses up space you could be talking up other points of your story.

Here's a tip: no matter how bad you think your summary is, don't say "I suck at writing summaries." Most of the time I read that phrase or something similar, I think the summary was absolutely fine but the whole "haha I'm bad at summaries lol" turns me off reading the fic anyway. You can't draw new readers by telling them you suck at writing - even if you're just saying you suck at summaries, the message comes across that you have a low opinion of your own skill as a writer. And that's just bad advertising.

I think it's a good habit to practice explaining your stories out loud. Even saying it out loud to yourself can help you find the one or two sentence idea that explains what your story is all about.

Good summaries can vary HUGELY. My summary for Hunting the Unicorn:

The first part is a quote from The Last Unicorn, and I picked it that evokes the mood of a Deconstruction Fic as well as the style I'm writing it in very well. And apparently, there are more TLU fans who jumped on my story due to that quote than I thought, considering this is a Glee fic.

The second part is very basic, but it does emphasize the story's tone in that this is not a crack/humor/waff fic.

A good summary for me is a mini-hook that gets your readers to click on it before the bigger hooks of the actual story. I've seen a lot of good summaries that had me click eagerly, and then I realize that the story is mediocre/bad—but it's better than not getting clicks at all.

One thing that sometimes works for me is, I ask myself, "if I wanted to pitch this fic to myself in just a few sentences, how would I do it?"

Other times, though, like said, a quote can seemingly work miracles.

Summary for the most-reviewed fic I've written thus far:

A few more tips:

• Give the summary the same mood as the fic. If you're writing something funny, don't be too serious. If you're writing something sad, don't joke around in the summary.
• Typos in the summary are a no-go. Check at least once.
• Read through it and think "Would this make me read this fic?"
• And I can't stress this enough, you never ever ever ever write "I suck at summaries". This is the one red flag 99% of fan fiction readers share.
• Oh yeah and restrain from saying "This is yaoi xD Don't like don't read", especially if you've already mentioned the pairing. If we've seen the pairing, we KNOW if it's yaoi or not, and you can count on us to not read it if we don't like that.

On the subject of tags... I find they're useful in letting me know how the fic deviates from canon without giving too much away. As much as they do spoil things like pairings, I'd much rather go into a fic being mentally prepared for the change instead of it coming out of nowhere. This goes doubly for pairings especially if you're changing around their canon gender orientations.

Regarding pairings, do you think it's important to tag them if they're not a big part of the story? Or if, say, they're not only a small part, but they're gradually developed over the course of a fic series?

Mostly puzzling over this because my fic series hasn't actually made any ships official, but the next fic will essentially do so... but it'll be a very small part of the overall plot. Just the natural resolution for the characters' development over several very long fics.

Iffy. I've spoiled events that don't take place for ten chapters in the summary, purely because the spoiler is interesting.

My sole intent when writing summaries is to get people to click on it. Unless the spoiler is a twist or something else shocking that the reader shouldn't know beforehand, I treat everything as fair game.

My advice:

Absolutely NO cop-outs on the summary. If you "suck at summaries" I am going to assume that you suck at anything longer than a summary.

No passive-aggressivesm. None of that "Don't Like, Don't Read" crap. If you have a pairing you aren't sure that people like, just list the pairing or the common term for it. That's all you have to do. People in Pokemon fandom know what Rocketshipping is. People who like Kid Icarus know what Pitcest is, even if not all of us like it. Most people who don't like your pair will avoid it and if anyone is reading your fic just to flame you for "destroying their childhood" you can ignore them because they clearly didn't heed your listing. The worst instance I've seen of this is some old fic in the Legend of Zelda fandom where the author actually *threatened* people in the summary, as in "If you criticize me, I will curse you, want to kill you, you piece of shit!" - I actually did wind up reading part of the fic, but gave up when it wasn't glowing-perfection and I realized that I probably couldn't give them any improvement tips without them going crazy, harassing my account and potentially giving me a fandom-wide Internet flame-war like those I'd survived and gotten sick of in my youth. They received no reviews from me because I didn't want to touch psycho. NEVER THREATEN YOUR POTENTIAL READERS.

Another tip would take the most interesting aspects of your story and condense them into a little ball of awesome that will entice readers. Do so without spoiling, but you can hint that what will happen. Different people are attracted to different kinds of stories. I like dark fics and the Tonight, Someone Dies is a good enticement to me. Other people avoid such fics. I tend to avoid romance stuff most of the time - but some people love gooey, sappy romance. Some want fast-paced action....

Here's the summary from the latest thing I've been working on, a Super Smash Brothers / Nintendo characters fic, "Road Trip"

I attempted to take all of the crazy-awesome-over-the-top things that were in the first chapter and put them in the summary. It seems to have worked as I do have several followers / readers for it.

My last bit of advice is to just not worry about people flaming or criticizing your story. It seems that so many problems with reviews stem from people being afraid of getting crit, hence the "I suck at summaries" and "Don't like, don't read" BS. Just go with it, it's FAN FIC, something done for fun, not a debut novel.

edited 22nd Sep '14 9:47:53 PM by Shadsie

Never downplay your own skills and/or the story's quality. This includes I Suck at Summaries, which many people have mentioned already, but also "this is my first fanfic" or "wrote this in thirty minutes while drunk #yolo". If you're satisfied enough with your work to put it up on the Internet for everyone to see, you'd better damn well stand for it.

Don't use "trigger warnings". 98% of the time, these are hypocritical bullshit: the author is trying to look like a noble person who cares about all the poor traumatised souls out there, but it's obvious to everyone he really just wants to advertise how Dark and Edgy his fic is. "Trigger warning: rape, incest, futanari, necrophilia and here's the kicker, forced impregnation! Are you drooling yet, my dear teenage male readership?"

(Then again, if you're going to write that kind of story in the first place I probably don't have a lot to say to you.)

Ahem. More generally, keep any "out-of-universe" messages – anything that's not part of the pitch itself – to a minimum. This includes the above categories as well as "crossover with Asterix", "my entry for the Third Annual Hungarian Banana Eating Contest", "[Raridash]", "comments welcome", "OMG 200 faves thank you guys so much", etc., etc.. The summary is meant to draw people in and set the mood, so the fewer distractions the better. If it's not in the pitch proper, save it for the author's notes unless you have a good reason why it absolutely must be in the summary.

(An important exception are thank-you notes to prereaders. These people put effort into making your story presentable; they deserve recognition.)

On another note, don't put question marks in the summary. They don't look mysterious, they just look stupid. Even as a joke they're overdone. I'd advise against ellipses (three dots) as well.

If you're writing a crossover with Work X, don't put "Familiarity with Work X isn't required to enjoy this fic" in the summary. Well, you can, but it won't do any good: almost all readers who haven't watched/read Work X will still dismiss your story out of hand. If the crossover really is so subtle that you can say "Familiarity with X isn't required" in good faith (these cases are rare) then go the sneaky way, and don't mention it's a crossover at all! You'll be writing for a much bigger audience, and no one will enjoy the story any less because... well, you just said they didn't need to be familiar with X, didn't you? If you can't say that, just be honest about it and accept the inevitable narrowing of the audience.

Unless your whole story is an artsy Mind Screw, don't make your summary too abstract or vague. Take Sharysa's summary from post #4:

Summaries in this style not only look pretentious, but also fail to hook readers who might otherwise be very interested in a story with this premise – simply because you're not providing enough information about said premise. (From the example above, how are the readers supposed to figure out who the main characters are, how the plot starts, or what genre of story this is?)

It does. I always start with the summary, because it clearly and concisely describes what the story is about and why anyone should care. If you can't make the summary interesting, chances are you won't be able to make the story interesting either; best to realise that before you pour hours and hours of writing into it. It's also very convenient to have a pitch prepared when people ask you what your latest project is about.

And last but not least, it's been said before, but... grammar, spelling and punctuation need to be pitch perfect. If I notice a typo in the story itself, I'll see a fellow writer who makes a small mistake. If I notice a typo in the summary, I'll usually assume that you're bad at written English, lazy, stupid, or a troll – none of which are going to encourage me to read your story. And I'm far from the only one who has this kind of reaction.

edited 23rd Sep '14 2:56:37 PM by MidnightRambler

Oh boy, YMMV ahoy!

I prefer at least some warnings for potential triggers because fanfiction or not, writing is still writing and good writers will strive to make you feel stuff. There's a lot of fanfiction that's equal or better in quality than most published novels.

A quick mention somewhere of "warnings for x" is perfectly fine with me, because I dealt with a crapton of shit and while I've worked through most of it, I'd like to brace myself for whatever volatile situations are in the story because it's still draining for me in a way that it might not be for other people.

The problem, as stated above, is when people get "noble" about it and go on about how they're sorry in advance for making people FEEEEEEEL too bad. I don't want pages of hand-holding and RSVP apologies, and neither do most people who actually went through shit. A warning is fine.

As for crossovers, how do you deal with Fusion Fic and whatever Hunting the Unicorn might be? I use excerpts from The Last Unicorn as framing-device/mood-setting/theme for what happens in my otherwise Glee / Criminal Minds / Firefly crossover, but it's neither an actual crossover nor is it a total Fusion Fic with TLU.

EDIT: Will reply to the other part of the post later.

edited 24th Sep '14 1:30:51 PM by Sharysa

So, summing it up, we all agree that what you never do is "I suck at summaries", and no being mean to potential readers. Everything else is sort of...different from person to person. I have to agree with the unicorn rather than the fox here, but as I said, it's a subjective thing.

Yeah, pretty much. Don't be a dick, don't say you suck at summaries, and if you're not confident in your writing skills, at least don't TELL people.

My main problem with the Wolfs Rain manga is that it was a decent manga, but the artist kept semi-joking about how she couldn't draw. It's funny a couple times, but not about every single thing.

Edit: Okay, new post.

edited 24th Sep '14 7:00:59 PM by Sharysa

I disagree about the triggers for this reason:

Someone in one of my fandoms has been writing stories that deal with depression and death. They had a family member do suicide somewhat recently among other things. The stories deal with this kind of subject matter that comes from a very real place. I can attest, as someone with a disorder with a depressive-side to it, that they are spot on about depression. A trigger-warning is part of the summary because the content of cathartic stories actually *is* triggery.

You may think people put trigger warnings to be faux edgy or because they're paranoid about critical reviews, but trust me, some people can and do write "trigger" and care enough about other people to give a little warning.

RE Midnight Rambler: I've seen plenty of examples of my type of summary—where they set the mood and use quotes without actually saying what happens in the fic—and the fic was great. They pulled me in really well.

If you think my summary is pretentious, you really shouldn't look at all the other fanfics where the summaries have 1) quotes or song lyrics/one-liners, 2) out-of-context quotes from the fic, or 3) both. Hell, just look at all the fanfic-recs on this site and see how many of them are literal "this is what happens" summaries.

Also, time and plot developments are a huge factor in summaries. Back when I wrote the fic three years ago, I was only planning for it to be a short character-study. I never imagined that it'd last thirty chapters and bring in two fandoms, so I'm actually REALLY glad I didn't go more literal with my summary. I'd have to change it from "a study of Kurt filtered through The Last Unicorn" to "Kurt and Blaine's tragicomic fairy-tale as filtered through TLU" to "Kurt and Blaine filtered through The Last Unicorn, with Criminal Minds and Firefly as guest stars." You can't always control what a story will end up being, especially if you don't do outlines.

Similarly, I've seen plenty of examples of "informative/literal" summaries that stated the fic's plot/objective very well, and the fic was great. Again, they pulled me in because they were well-written.

However, there are examples of both summary-types where the summary is fantastic, but the fic sucks balls.

It's not a quality thing whether you go for literalness or mood/theme/effect—it's a stylistic preference.

edited 25th Sep '14 4:08:02 AM by Sharysa

I thought the summary was fine, even intriguing. The problem with me is, despite my ardent love for "The Last Unicorn" (I've actually met Peter S. Beagle), I've never been a fan of Glee and wouldn't know what's going on. Also, if it's a romance, that's something I'm not usually interested in (I have to be a in particular, weird mood for romance stories). The summary is definitely fine. If I had any interest in the fandom, I'd probably read it.

About the triggers, I think you all have a point. Throw in triggers if they're needed, and throw them in for exactly that reason - triggers aren't advertising! Also, if one trigger includes another (major character death and suicide for example) one of them should be enough. Do not make long lists of triggers, and don't list Strong Language, this is the internet for fuck's sake. And, if your fic still ends up requiring a lot of triggers, ask yourself what kind of thing you've just written and if you really wanna upload that.

Personally, I feel that the distinction between "throwing in" triggers and "telling a story that happens to involve" triggers is a big, big importance, especially with fanfiction.

When people "throw in" triggers, regardless of whether they literally make shit up in five minutes or if the triggering subjects were planned from the start, they're doing precisely what Midnight Rambler said—using sensitive topics like soup ingredients. Not because they want to tell a story, but so they can pat themselves on the back for being "edgy," "adult," or "dark" and warn people in the summary that OMG MY STORY MIGHT TRIGGER PEOPLE.

When people "tell a story that happens to involve" triggers, it's far more organic. It doesn't have to be GOOD, because lord knows there's a lot of well-meant authors who just can't pull off abuse or rape, but I would take a genuine but sub-par fanfic over a well-written but patronizing/gratuitous one.

On the main topic, has anyone else noticed a correlation between "ALLCAPS LOL OTP PAIRING AND WHATEVER ELSE IS IN THE FIC" summaries and the generally low quality of the fic? Because that's definitely something to avoid, especially if you're doing a comedy. Somehow people think writing a summary in allcaps is an exception to the "use allcaps sparingly" rule.

edited 25th Sep '14 1:18:11 PM by Sharysa

I wonder if I should make a topic about tips for writing Dark Fic . There are a lot of people who try it who do the "soup ingredient edgy stuff" way or think that just writing a lot of gore alone makes their fic "dark."

In the words of another fanfic author I've seen in one of my fandoms who had it up on her profile for a while "Darkfic isn't just pointless gore, it's the stuff written by people who have stared into the abyss." - Something like that.

I know, personally, that some of the best writers of the genre know how to make it emotional and/or are doing it from a place of dealing with their own dark emotions and are able to bring some imagination to it.

But I am getting off-topic here. This was about summaries, not body-text.

I'm not sure if this is a right use for this thread, but does this sound like a good summary for my OC fanfic?

I'm personally worried if it sounds too corny, and that the bit about this story's relation with the canon story might be unnecessary.

The mention of canon story and canon character involvement is indeed unnecessary, and makes it sound like the story is no different at all from the canon.

Ah, I see.

The general assumption with fanfics is that they follow cannon until the For Wantofa Nail point. It's only assumed not to follow canon if it has it in the description. Which is usually pretty obvious.

edited 3rd Oct '14 11:38:18 AM by ObsidianFire

Right, got it.