The Summary Cross

[wickedwords]

I always get stumped on what to put in that 'summary' section on most templates. It's one of the most critical pieces of the standard header, and often a deciding factor in getting someone who doesn't know you and/or isn't in the throes of new fandom lust to open your story and read it. My problem is that I frequently treat it as an actual summary--and trust me, I write deadly dull summaries, suitable for a moldering card catalog in the forgotten stacks of a library's waterlogged basement--rather than knowing how to twist and turn my oh so straight-forward plots and descriptions into something that a stranger would find interesting. Or if I don't actually summarize, then I just pull from the opening lines, which also doesn't sell particularly well. And sometimes I end up with wildly inappropriate summaries, ones that make the story sound funny when they're really...not.

So with three winter festival stories, well, I'm having ::bangs head on desk:: so. much. fun.

::sigh:: It's a to-do.

Comments

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

It's a running joke in stargate_ren that melyanna, angelqueen04 and I can generate 60 pages of intricate, plot-laden story involving a dozen characters and then cannot generate either a title or a summary that doesn't suck. Every time we get close to finishing something, someone goes, "Um, okay, so should we start flailing about a title now?" This is why we end up with so many one-word titles.

It's not just you.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I am so glad I am done with those. They really make my brain hurt.