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There's a sweet spot for summaries to be vague enough to entice, but also clear enough that the reader can get a gist of the story. The only ones I tend to skip are those that don't bother at all.
With my own summaries, I've recently started adding excerpts from the story, then an overall quick view. My format tends to go:
Summary blurb
"Excerpt"
Overview
I really have a soft spot for the style:
"Excerpt
Or: Summary"
My favourite ones are:
I have no issues if its direct quotes from the story itself or just a traditional "sell" summery. Summaries that make me laugh despite the work warning that its going to be a downer does not deter me. My sense of humour is very picky and thus if someone can make me laugh I usually can safely assume that I will enjoy their style of writing even if it's main goal is here to make me cry.
However, despite me saying this I'm one of those that can forgive meh or nothing summaries as long as there is proper tagging. I will accept no summery with well written tags. However I judge HARD on "I'm bad at summaries" ones. 99% of us are amateur writers too what does stating this add? (That said, if the tagging states all of the flavours of a meal I want to eat I will check it out anyways.)
For myself I usually write traditional-styled summaries but in the briefest manner hhhhh. Suggest the question this story is here to solve and that's it. I'm not great at suggesting what the theme/genre is so I tend to lean hard on tagging for that.
I totally agree on the "I'm bad at summaries" line (I say after posting yesterday saying pretty much that about myself 😁).
Something about that line in a summary sounds very much like the author didn't want to put the effort into making the summary better but also wants me to overlook that & that combination just annoys me.
I try not to let summaries put me off reading a fic. I'll try the first few paragraphs regardless (unless the summary mentions something I explicitly don't like). Lack of a summary or an inarticulate summary are really the only things that would make me skip a fic.
With regards to writing summaries for my own fics, I dunno. I think I'm not so good at them but it's hard to tell (& I'm hiding stats at the moment because they bum me out, so who knows if my fics get many hits). I'm trying to improve & have rewritten a few of my summaries as I've thought of better ones, but I don't think I do the "sales pitch" aspect of summaries very well.
Agreed. Though I know a lot of that also has to do with tags. If a vague summary has an interesting tag or something I'm looking for, I'll check it out. However, if I'm desperate for a certain trope or something and there are obvious spelling/grammatical mistakes in the summary which don't come off as some intentional bit of creative writing? Can't make myself do it.
Solidarity. Are my summaries good at selling my stories? It's so hard to tell. I've never been good at self-promotion. I don't hide my stats, but I write in different fandoms and most of my ships are rarepairs. So it's hard to say whether my summaries are good, people will read anything in a less active fandom, people are just happy to have romantic fics (I haven't done much comparison between those and my gen stories), or what.
Yeah, I'm not too worried about whether or not I'm "selling" my fics as ultimately I'm writing what I want to read & at least a couple of other people are getting something out of me posting them on AO3.
I have had a little fun with tagging - I basically wrote my only one-shot so far so that I could use the tags Virgin, Horny & Demon all for the same character. 😂 It's stupid but it really tickled me in a way that summary writing doesn't.
I tend to keep summaries very short. The fic with a 5 word summary has by far more Kudos than any of my other fics.
Sometimes efficiency pays off!
I like and like to use excerpts from the story itself. It gives me a sense of the writing style, and usually alludes to some point of action, creating a nice hook.
I have found that some summaries are so sparse and tell me so little about the story, that I scroll past them numerous times before eventually clicking on them when I have nothing else on the docket, only to find I actually DO like the story. I suppose I prefer that to a ton of spoilers, but it also likely means there are plenty of stories out there that I would love, but haven't clicked on yet.
I like doing that with shorter works. A line or two of it is often a better representation of the story than anything else.
As there are many stories (fanfic or original) I've only had an interest in after hearing about a spoiler, I actually prefer more to less. Then again, I'm of a mind if spoilers ruin the experience of a story the story isn't as strong as it could be.
i'm fine with just about any summary that outlines the premise of the fic. i rarely, if ever, encounter a summary that makes me scroll past the fic because of its poor quality. though, of course, having something funny / dramatic in a well-executed way / otherwise interesting certainly helps.
Agreed. Even if I find the summary doesn't interest me, I at least appreciate knowing it's because of the overall premise. I appreciate a good summary, even if the story itself isn't my cup of tea.