Forgetting tags for a moment: if you are already searching in your fandoms/pairings/favourite tags, what in a summary will cause you to click it over any other story?
Sadly aside from saying, “It made me laugh” or “oooh that’s a good question to answer” I couldn’t be able to properly describe what instinctively grabs me.
Humorous ones, yes. Though I am a little peeved if a humorous summary doesn’t explain what the story is about and the story isn’t a short one shot. I guess my tastes is “does it tell me what the story is about”. But that’s still a vague descriptor.
I’m willing to forgive a vague summery if the tags are to my favour.
There needs to be a summary, even if the tags provide enough of an idea of what the story’s about, just give me a sentence from the fic.
No “just read it i guess”, “i suck at summaries”, “it’s better than it sounds trust me” or any similar self-deprecation.
Proper spelling/punctuation is a must.
Generally a summary won’t win me over if the tags don’t grab me, but if it’s competently written and sounds interesting I’ll give it a shot.
Hmmm… Interestingly, I genuinely don’t know. I can find things that make me not click, but I can’t pinpoint anything I especially like in a summary.
My biggest nopes are when the summary is not, in fact, a summary (“I’ve written this in two hours and it’s 3am it’s not beta read lol sorry, I hope to have another chapter soon” yeah buddy that’s an author note not a summary, tell me something about your story x’) ) and the “not using a capital letter at the start of a sentence ever” aesthetic (I assume that if the summary is written like that, the full fic will be too, and I just can’t read something that’s written that way) (I’m still confused to that day about how and why this trend exists, if you happen to know I’d enjoy having an explanation!).
So yeah, basically I want a summary to tell me something about the story, and I expect a summary with a very obvious stylistic choice to reflect the writing style of the fic (which might not always be true I suppose, but that’s my reflex).
I suppose I tend to favor summaries that I find “interesting” or “intriguing” but that’s not exactly something measurable so that’s really not helpful x’)
Same here. There’s a lot I know doesn’t work for me. I don’t like summaries that end with a question, because usually the question isn’t interesting. Or there isn’t enough said for me to guess the answer will be subverted, so it puts me off. I hate summaries that end with questions.
Lapslock is all aesthetic. Which means anyone with dyslexia or the like will be unable to read it. I don’t like lapslock either, but I refuse to even try to push through the dislike, because it’s mean to be so exclusionary with your work. I’ll take it if it is an occasional line. If it is written in an image. That is fine. Not the whole prose. It is very frustrating.
I also notice that if it is a shipping story, I want the summary to tell me something they are doing. Not just “A loves B” or something like that. Although I’m also good if the summary is an excerpt of the story for short one shots.
But I have such a hard time pinning down a specific thing I liked, instead of what I didn’t like, I was hoping someone else would have an answer. XD
