Thus, it is one of the most vital parts of publishing any story, or fanfiction. Without it, you are lost. So here, as someone who has written over 30 of the little things, I'm going to help craft an amazing summary with little tips. I hope you'll all enjoy the first of this August seminar on writing!
While movies and video games have the wonderful ability to have trailers sell themselves as a product, a fanfiction (or book, if you will) does not have such a luxury. On fanfiction.net alone, you have ~384 characters in which to sell your story to your readers. That's not a lot. Hell, that's barely a couple sentences, when you look at it.
Yet what if I told you that was enough? What if I told you that small amount was enough to bring in every single one of your readers?
You might not believe me, but that's what we endeavor to discuss, and to that point, I'll split this post into two sections: how to write a summary, and how not to write a summary. Note that I will use real summaries that I've seen, but with the name of the author and stories omitted. They may be small to read, but I hope you can still read them, or click on them to do so.
How to NOT Write a Summary
There are a lot of mistakes that beginning writers make when writing a summary. Things that ultimately turn all but the most novice of readers away from a story (or those that are curious).
If you look at this summary, the very first line is interesting enough for readers of that genre. It can draw your attention, and perhaps some who click on that first sentence will read the story. But there's something offputting about the second part. What is it? That's right! "This one's my first story."
No. Just, no.
One should never tell a reader in the summary that this is their first story. An author's note at the beginning asking for criticism? Okay, that's good. But by putting it in the summary what you are essentially doing is giving an excuse that says: "My story probably sucks, but it's my first one, so you'll give it a pass, right?"
Wrong. A reader shouldn't give it a pass for that. In fact, the second I see something like that, I'm 9/10 times going to ignore your story and never look at it again.
Bottom line: Don't tell people this is your first story.
Following off talking about your first story is the larger issue: there needs to be an absence of the author completely.
In the summary above, you'll see that other than the first line delivering literally nothing about the plot one may read, all this "summary" does, is talk about themselves. That they created it. What their update schedule is. What they feel about. It doesn't talk once about the story. Remember that a summary is supposed to hint and tease at the story, not the author's intentions. No one cares about those, because they'll see it in the content itself.
Further, this summary says they're trying to do something different. Why? Why should I believe you? Heck, the first line "This is a Ash betrayed story" already tells me it's the same old plot line that takes up about 50% of fics I can see on the Pokemon anime's front page! That's not new and different! How is it different?! Why should I read your fic? If the summary spends time talking about what the author thinks about their own story, it gives no room for the reader to think, and they'll just move on.
Bottom line: Don't involve the author's thoughts or intentions in the summary at all, just the story.
We have now two issues with the summary above, and I think both are rather blatantly obvious as to what they are. The first of these issues is the simplest: spelling. Never spell your summary wrong. Don't have an out of place phrase or misspelled word. I guarantee that if a reader sees a word spelled wrong in the summary, they're going to assume words will be spelled wrong in the story itself and drop it like it's hot. So, simply, don't run into that error.
However, the second issue is a more subtle one, and one which I'll tackle in the final point below as well. Don't tell the readers to "Read and find out". Obviously, that's what you want them to do. That's what a summary is supposed to make them want to do. Telling them to do so is a bit of a turn off. Asking a question and telling them to read and find out is like saying water is wet. It makes the reader feel dumb, it makes the author look dumb, and then no matter how good a story is, no one's going to want to read it.
Which leads into this point: don't tell your readers your summary sucks. Don't tell them to get a full summary inside the story.
The purpose of the summary is to entice people to read. If you tell them your enticement sucks, naturally, they'll think your story will. If you tell them the full summary is inside, the reader will likely go "Okay, why couldn't you tell me here?" It's an art for that last one, and a little difficult, fitting a whole summary in to those 384 characters, but it is doable. More importantly, though, you don't want to make your readers jump through extra hoops just to be interested by your story. That's like saying "You want to know how this salad tastes at the deli? Buy it here and now and I'll give you just a sample." What? No. It doesn't work like that.
Bottom Line: Make sure your summary is fully contained in that summary, and don't say it sucks or make your readers feel dumb with it.
To conclude the base for how to not write a summary:
-Don't tell people this is your first story
-Don't include yourself as the author at all in the summary. This isn't the place for that.
-Don't misspell words
-Don't make your readers feel dumb by telling them to "read and find out". It's implied.
-Don't say your summary sucks
-Don't make the readers go through more hoops for a summary by clicking on your story
That said, let's go more into how to write a good summary.
How to Write a GOOD Summary
A good summary is definitely more of an art to craft than just avoiding writing a bad one. Having only so much space to hook your readers is difficult. However, there are many ways to go about it, some which may work, and some which may not work. However, before I even give those kinds of examples, the most important thing to remember as a writer is conveying the tone.
Tone is so vastly important for drawing your readers in, and you want that in your summary. You don't want a dramatic sounding summary for something that's fluff and comedy. Likewise, you don't want something flippant for an otherwise heart-wrenching story. At the same time, though, unless your reader really loves angst, you don't want to get them depressed from the summary alone.
Like with writing a story, writing a summary is, itself, a balancing act. Below, I'll provide examples of some good summaries (yes, some of them are my own), and what makes them work in the ways that they do.
To start off with this is a very unambiguous summary. It doesn't make you wonder what the premise is about, which is good for a lot of readers who don't want to have to wonder what they're getting into. Here, you know what you're getting: a tournament with some romance. It's simple, it's straight forward, but it leaves just enough for you to wonder what will happen. "Change their lives for good or ill"? What will befall the heroes at a tournament? What will be different by the end?
There's enough mystery in the summary, but it is presented in such a straightforward fashion that you know what you'll be getting as you enter into it. That's what makes it a good and enticing summary.
Of course, you may want something ambiguous.
This summary straddles the middle line between the above summary and something very ambiguous. It introduces us with Serena's character, sets her up with this short sentences that sear themselves into your brain. And then the final line drops and you sit there going "what did he ask of her?" "what truth?" Your mind is enraptured, titillated. It gives you enough to have an idea this will be a Serena-centric story, but then wondering just what will happen in it.
It's ambiguous in that sense, which leaves a lot to the reader's imagination and makes them want to open the story and read, knowing that something exciting will happen somewhere.
Then there's the full-on ambiguous.
No names. A simple situation presented, but you don't know why or how, or what can be resolved. It's a very terse summary here. More than that, the tone oozes out of its very pores. You know this will be angst-driven, emotional, potentially cathartic. The author does not hide that in this summary, and you know exactly what you're getting with it tonally, but the plot is still a mystery to you, as well as whatever else they may be going for because of that sharp ambiguity. It's a sharp contrast to the first good summary above that tells you, more or less, what you can expect from the plot and a bit of the tone; this is more about the tone than the plot.
And either one works!
You see, a good summary has both. Perhaps not in completely equal measure, but both. A balance. A more straightforward summary will have more on the plot, less on the tone, while an ambiguous summary will have more on the tone and less on the plot. Both are valid, but they are both something you want to convey. If you have a large chunk on the plot, make sure that it still gives it the tone, as the first one tells you "fun, action-packed romance". If you convey more tone, give a little of the plot, like the last one says "he's unconscious and not waking up". It's not much, but it's enough to intrigue and pull on the reader.
"Is there a way to do both at once?" you may be asking. "Surely this kind of thing isn't as easy as you make it sound." To this, I have an answer: maybe. It's not surefire, but sometimes the best way to do both is to do something like I did below:
I used a quote.
A quote is a beautiful thing because usually the tone is inherent in it, while it does potentially give the plot away with it. The quote above tells the reader that something happened with a character, some kind of battle that made him change, while also giving the tone that this will be reflective as a story. I did some other ones for my "Musical" series, that set up a plot about romance not being easy, because while love is, relationships aren't. It set a tone for it too.
However, while quotes are a wonderfully easy way to do this, they are also incredibly tricky. For one, if you use something not from your fic, you better make damn sure the quote fits your fic. If it is from your fic it can become more or less tricky. For a oneshot, it's easy, because it's written and you have the quote there, and you just have to make sure it's appropriate. If it's from a multi-chapter fic, it's trickier. At this point, you now have to make sure your quote fits into the story itself and makes sense for the story as a whole. This helps if you have a good planning process, but we'll cover that in a future installment.
Needless to say, quotes are a great way to summarize and then just give a little something afterward that tells us a bit more, if you must. Just make sure you're using the right one.
So, in order to make this quick in your minds, the key to writing a good summary is conveying both tone and plot. You can have any sort of balance, as long as you have both. To that end, you really only need those 384 characters to make it happen because you don't need a sprawling epic to do either. Just a hook. Just two sentences. If you're stumped, use a quote to make it happen.
Also, if you noticed above, each and every one of those summaries had a label on them: shipping. It's not a requirement, but a nice thing to have to tell readers what kind of story they're getting even when it comes to the pairing. Just don't fit every single one in.
After all, the goal of a summary is to tell the reader what they're getting, but make them intrigued enough to read more.
Conclusion
With all this said, writing a good summary still takes time and practice. You can't put in that it's your first story, or talk about yourself, treat your readers as dumb or even expect them to go through more work for a better summary. Readers won't appreciate that. What they will appreciate is being drawn in by the plot or tone...or better yet, both! All while not being surprised by the content of something like shipping. It's important, and with enough practice, anyone can get it! And if you need help, ask an experienced author or beta reader!
So, with that, I conclude this first writing tidbit. In the next month I'll cover a variety of topics from planning your story, to writing good characters, how to analyze criticism, and how to set tone. I hope you'll enjoy this series!
Dare to Be Silly,
Epicocity
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