Summaries and blurbs
Jul. 24th, 2006 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was reading something someone said about summaries on fic, and how frequently they are either trying to be clever and not telling you much, or too generic and short and not telling you much.
Which... yeah. I really don't like writing them for mine. The story already has the fewest words that tell that story... well, as close to it as I can stand to cut it down to. How to retell it really short? It ends up all flat and wonky. So mine come out kind of lame.
In my comment I said I'd never read a "How to write a summary"
so then I went to look for such a thing.
They seem to be mostly for students, and not always about fiction.
But they made me think about how we fic writers are using the word.
This one reckons that a summary should include
who the main characters are
where and when the events of the story take place
and
the main events of the story in the order in which they occurred.
so a summary like that shrinks the whole story down and tells what is in it.
prove you've read the book sort of summary.
This one is talking about summary lines for web pages. Useful. Has examples of good and bad lines at the end.
Says The lead sentence in a newspaper story is a good example
The lead sums up the story. It tells you what is covered in the story, giving you the basic information and letting you know what you can expect to find if you read further.
and some reasons for the bad versions are
it's a tease
Not concise enough, and the conclusion is not spelled out
Not the main point
But for fanfic, we are trying to tease, in order to avoid spoiling. Not newspaper leads, instead mostly blurbs. The bits that go on the back of the book to try and get you to open the cover. Cannot say all the events, for then that would give away the ending.
This one says
Refer to the central and main ideas of the original piece.
Read with who, what, when, where, why and how questions in mind.
For a start, figuring out what the main ideas were isn't always so easy. But also, if the main idea emerges as we go along, if the point of it is how things end rather than how they begin, or if the pov character doesn't really know what is going on until well into the story, how much belongs in the summary?
RFJ 1 Magician/Bateleur is, among other things, about shifting loyalties, or the perception of shifting loyalties. How Giles perceives Andrew at the start of the story, which side they both think the other is on, is a plot point, and goes all twisty along the middle. There is also an OFC, who I would rather not mention in the summary or / lists, because of several plot reasons and one reader one.
Plot - Giles doesn't know about her for quite a lot of pages, how he perceives her relationship with Andrew is actually mistaken for a whole lot more pages (possibly right up until the end), her being the girlfriend isn't the point of the story, and her being the Slayer is the point under debate.
Reader - because she isn't just a female character, once she's in the / header she is The Dreaded Original Character. I mean, nobody is going to look through archives to find an Andrew/Una story. If I listed the relationship like that, while sort of vaguely accurate, I feel it gives a misleading impression.
If the story is labeled "Giles, Andrew/Xander"
then a reasonable guess at the plot would involve Giles reacting to the Andrew/Xander relationship
which I guess is one way to summarise RFJ1: Giles reacting to the Andrew/Una relationship.
But the actual point of the story, and why it took all those words and the running around and fighting demons and stuff, does not boil down to how that / decodes - this is not a story about the Andrew/Una romance.
There may actually be no Andrew/Una romance. Relationship, yes, but maybe not romance.
So maybe the summary can fix the pairing labels - if I put Andrew/Una in the header, but didn't mention Una in the summary, would that make clear the focus wasn't on them? Or would it just look like a bad summary?
The interaction between pairing labels, attracting an audience, and subgenres, all quite complicated even before we get to the summary.
Is a summary for archiving for a different purpose than a summary for first post to LJ? I mean, if you want new readers, you want to make it intriguing without giving the end away. If you want to make it easy for repeat readers to find, you need to give them memorable keywords that are unique to that fic. Either way, saying what kind of boxes the story goes in pulls in the casual reader, the ones in the mood for hurt/comfort with some plot and moral issues, for example.
I have no conclusions.
Except maybe I need to try a different search, because 'summary' and 'blurb' may require different skills.
Which... yeah. I really don't like writing them for mine. The story already has the fewest words that tell that story... well, as close to it as I can stand to cut it down to. How to retell it really short? It ends up all flat and wonky. So mine come out kind of lame.
In my comment I said I'd never read a "How to write a summary"
so then I went to look for such a thing.
They seem to be mostly for students, and not always about fiction.
But they made me think about how we fic writers are using the word.
This one reckons that a summary should include
who the main characters are
where and when the events of the story take place
and
the main events of the story in the order in which they occurred.
so a summary like that shrinks the whole story down and tells what is in it.
prove you've read the book sort of summary.
This one is talking about summary lines for web pages. Useful. Has examples of good and bad lines at the end.
Says The lead sentence in a newspaper story is a good example
The lead sums up the story. It tells you what is covered in the story, giving you the basic information and letting you know what you can expect to find if you read further.
and some reasons for the bad versions are
it's a tease
Not concise enough, and the conclusion is not spelled out
Not the main point
But for fanfic, we are trying to tease, in order to avoid spoiling. Not newspaper leads, instead mostly blurbs. The bits that go on the back of the book to try and get you to open the cover. Cannot say all the events, for then that would give away the ending.
This one says
Refer to the central and main ideas of the original piece.
Read with who, what, when, where, why and how questions in mind.
For a start, figuring out what the main ideas were isn't always so easy. But also, if the main idea emerges as we go along, if the point of it is how things end rather than how they begin, or if the pov character doesn't really know what is going on until well into the story, how much belongs in the summary?
RFJ 1 Magician/Bateleur is, among other things, about shifting loyalties, or the perception of shifting loyalties. How Giles perceives Andrew at the start of the story, which side they both think the other is on, is a plot point, and goes all twisty along the middle. There is also an OFC, who I would rather not mention in the summary or / lists, because of several plot reasons and one reader one.
Plot - Giles doesn't know about her for quite a lot of pages, how he perceives her relationship with Andrew is actually mistaken for a whole lot more pages (possibly right up until the end), her being the girlfriend isn't the point of the story, and her being the Slayer is the point under debate.
Reader - because she isn't just a female character, once she's in the / header she is The Dreaded Original Character. I mean, nobody is going to look through archives to find an Andrew/Una story. If I listed the relationship like that, while sort of vaguely accurate, I feel it gives a misleading impression.
If the story is labeled "Giles, Andrew/Xander"
then a reasonable guess at the plot would involve Giles reacting to the Andrew/Xander relationship
which I guess is one way to summarise RFJ1: Giles reacting to the Andrew/Una relationship.
But the actual point of the story, and why it took all those words and the running around and fighting demons and stuff, does not boil down to how that / decodes - this is not a story about the Andrew/Una romance.
There may actually be no Andrew/Una romance. Relationship, yes, but maybe not romance.
So maybe the summary can fix the pairing labels - if I put Andrew/Una in the header, but didn't mention Una in the summary, would that make clear the focus wasn't on them? Or would it just look like a bad summary?
The interaction between pairing labels, attracting an audience, and subgenres, all quite complicated even before we get to the summary.
Is a summary for archiving for a different purpose than a summary for first post to LJ? I mean, if you want new readers, you want to make it intriguing without giving the end away. If you want to make it easy for repeat readers to find, you need to give them memorable keywords that are unique to that fic. Either way, saying what kind of boxes the story goes in pulls in the casual reader, the ones in the mood for hurt/comfort with some plot and moral issues, for example.
I have no conclusions.
Except maybe I need to try a different search, because 'summary' and 'blurb' may require different skills.