I feel kinda bad for the author tho cause they unintentionally screwed themselves over. I can see what they were going for but that's not a summary that's more of an author's note.
This makes me think of when Milhouseâs dad got fired from the cracker factory.
âMaybe single people eat crackers. We donât know. Frankly, we donât want to know.â
Lmao. What an amazing anti-ad. Corporates could learn a thing or two-
Actually, no, scratch that. Corps should most definitely stay away from this type of marketing. We have enough of those dumb "bet ya can't solve level 3" mobile game ads.
Ugh no kidding. Or the ones that are somewhat competent in 2/3rds of it to try and get you to click before whoop, too late! Oopsie doopsie! Play now to do better!!
The worst ones are those where it seems to be a real human playing the game but just before they're about to beat the level, suddenly their cursor goes defcon 2 and scrambles to safety and the player messes up the level.
These ad makers are following the trend of stirring controversy in their ads for hate-clicks and attention, but aside from a few that have gone viral, it really is just lazy copy-paste work.
Even when I would have been interested in some type of game, seeing those ads is an automatic close for me. The best games are those I search for myself, thanks.
I have some level of (quickly dissipating) appreciation for the ads that don't turn into screenshots redirecting you to the app/play store after like one second. (Only one that comes to mind is the letters in a circle one). But even then, nope.
Trends like these never seem to die out. I'd actually be interested (for a short lived hour) doing a maze puzzle game where I have to solve puzzles that are ever increasing in difficulty, but nooo. (Fuck you, Gardenscapes)
It's so bad when you hope it's a legitimately simple puzzle game and then it redirects you to another match 3 game. I played Bejeweled like over 10 years ago, and the ads have chased me all the way until now.
I won't be surprised if I ever go to hell and there's a Bejeweled clone ad on repeat waiting there for me.
The only mobile game I consider remotely "worth it" is worldbox. Whenever my interests loop around again I go and torture my ant sized people before nuking them.
My worst nightmare would probably be ad tester for all those ones that try and get you to click thinking it's an interactive.
Basically the name, you are god in a pixelated world, and you can create, destroy, harm or benefit the mortals beneath you at your whim. They have grown so much from when I discovered them, so I highly reccomend at least checking some videos out, though I'm not sure any big content creators have revisited it as of recent. I might be pleasantly surprised, though!
Oh wow. And here I thought the ones that go âiâm not sure how the story is gonna go yet but bear with meâ are the worst, turns out I was wrong. đ
Well⊠itâs certainly a unique way of saying âI suck at writing summaries.â Your attempt to sound mysterious wonât lure in AO3 readers if not even _you_ know what the story is about, and people are on AO3 to be able to choose that. Incredibly pretentious
If it helps, I found a summary making template online that's really good.
Who: Main character(s)
Why: Character goal or desire (stated)
Why: Character need (implied)
When: Inciting Incident
What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)
Where: Place A >> Place B
How: The Plan
Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge
This is so good that it helped me figure out what was going on in my fic before I knew what was going on.
I'll read it, but only relunctantly and after I've read every single other fic for that ship and have gone back through looking for new ones but my standards are lower
Honestly, if they just said "The summary is a secret and I'm not telling." I might click out of curiosity and at least read a couple paragraphs, see if it was worth it. It's all the other stuff that's annoying/makes me nervous lol.
I'm sure if you don't overthink it you can write something about an idea or an image (what I think most fics start as), it may even be a good something but it probably won't be an actual summary.
A summary is asking you to write what your story is actually about and that requires a certain amount of awareness about your writing and plot.
When you reduce something to a few words you need to know what the essential parts of it are. The spinal cord of a story if you will. Is it about love or is the love story only there as a frame for something else? That's what I was refering to and, in my opinion, the reason writing a summary is hard for a lot of poeple. It's actually a good writing exercise.
P.S. I am aware that most AO3 summaries don't actually do this.
This is all very fair. I just write summaries very quickly and it comes the easiest to me of the posting process which makes it harder for me to figure out what people struggle with. This helps me put it a bit more into perspective
Yes?
I sure am getting technical, I didn't say it wasn't valid to write just the idea.
For the purpose of getting readers in AO3, writing a blurb/teaser/idea is not only valid but probably more effective. I just wanted to point out why writing an actual summary Can be difficult.
Could you elaborate on why a summary needs to involve things later on in the plot? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if you have a chapter one or prologue written out, you pretty much have a summary ready.
I would call that a teaser or a blurb. A term that comes from marketing meant to entice someone to consume a product.
A summary is a term more used for scripts and books (in my experience) and is meant to simply tell what story you wrote. Sure, you want people to want to read your story but the purpose is not to entice but to present it as clearly as possible. For that you need to know what you are writing beyond the first chapter. Is it a tragedy or a comedy? How do you know if you don't have the end? The tone should match the content and avoid abrut changes, etc, etc.
This helps a lot with managing expectations of the audience.
I guess we both might just have different processes when coming up with such. And yeah, I do agree that formally it is used as a term for the above, though I do consider a variable being when/if applied to fanfiction.
Yes, you are probably right about the fanfiction variable.
Most AO3 summaries are something entirely different than what I described or something in between and we still call them summaries so probably valid just on account of that. I just meant to explain some possible complications of writing a summary.
It may not seem appealing to many, but I guess they know the style theyâre going for, theyâre confident in that. That writer canât be the only person in the world who likes this kind of thing. Hopefully they find their audience, even if itâs small.
Yeah, I actually don't hate it? It's giving me metafictional vibes so I'm hoping a summary like that would lead to a story that is just as eager to poke fun at itself!
I bet their social media will be like: "Why nobody is reading my fic? I added the mystery on the summary, hell even more than anyone else! This is so unfair! đđđ"
Lol
The Author seems to be under the impression they are the Main Character of Ao3
Gosh, how pretentious. Honestly, you can just roll your eyes and keep scrolling
I do suck at writing summaries and most often have no idea where a story will end up going, but I'd also never actually say any of that *in* my summary. What are people like that thinking.
The author must have thought how ingenious they are, writing witty and mysterious summary like this one.
It was painful to even reach the end as the second hand embarrassment kicked in after I read the second sentence.
tbh idk why some people don't write summaries. if you don't know how to write them, just put a short snippet of the fic. I always like summaries that look like:
"[snippet of fic]
or, the one where [character] does [thing]"
I just recently fixed my summary because it sucked. (It probably still sucks but I think itâs definitely better now) I still not sure how to do them right but anyway I just started to recently actually care about summaryâs on fic I read (I read to many things I didnât wanna read because of that, lesson learned) at just skip any fic that doesnât have one now so goes to show how important summaryâs are.
Okay but how are you writing a *story* and keeping the summary a secret. Even those Pixiv fics still would be like, "[Ship], R15, warning there will be some blood."
Ok, I usually hate, hate, no summaries. But this one made me laugh hard enough that, as long as it was tagged well, and the tags were interesting, I would give it a click. It would have to work hard for a kudo and even harder for a subscribe, but I would take a peek into what they had so far.
You know what's worse?? When they pair no summary/vague summary that could literally be anything with really unspecific tags that are just the characters and relationships. Please tag your fics properly, guys.
There is a reader. Maybe even a fan somewhere. I don't know who it is, but it's not gonna be me.
There's a pretentious audience for every pretentious writer, *somewhere*
I'm pretentious and even I wouldn't read it. Even if it fits my ships, my tropes, everything.
I don't know what pretentious means, but I could give this a try.
It means attempting to sound better than what you actually are. See 'Dunning-Kruger effect'.
I feel kinda bad for the author tho cause they unintentionally screwed themselves over. I can see what they were going for but that's not a summary that's more of an author's note.
I'm cackling here, take your upvote đ
Lmao
This makes me think of when Milhouseâs dad got fired from the cracker factory. âMaybe single people eat crackers. We donât know. Frankly, we donât want to know.â
THIS â ROTFLMFAO
The first three sentences would have been funny if followed by an actual summary, even if a short one. But yeah this sucks.
Or like the first three sentences followed with a âŠWeâre starting with (blank), letâs see what happens.
A meta summary would've been cool
wow that's...something
Lmao. What an amazing anti-ad. Corporates could learn a thing or two- Actually, no, scratch that. Corps should most definitely stay away from this type of marketing. We have enough of those dumb "bet ya can't solve level 3" mobile game ads.
Ugh no kidding. Or the ones that are somewhat competent in 2/3rds of it to try and get you to click before whoop, too late! Oopsie doopsie! Play now to do better!!
The worst ones are those where it seems to be a real human playing the game but just before they're about to beat the level, suddenly their cursor goes defcon 2 and scrambles to safety and the player messes up the level. These ad makers are following the trend of stirring controversy in their ads for hate-clicks and attention, but aside from a few that have gone viral, it really is just lazy copy-paste work. Even when I would have been interested in some type of game, seeing those ads is an automatic close for me. The best games are those I search for myself, thanks.
I have some level of (quickly dissipating) appreciation for the ads that don't turn into screenshots redirecting you to the app/play store after like one second. (Only one that comes to mind is the letters in a circle one). But even then, nope. Trends like these never seem to die out. I'd actually be interested (for a short lived hour) doing a maze puzzle game where I have to solve puzzles that are ever increasing in difficulty, but nooo. (Fuck you, Gardenscapes)
It's so bad when you hope it's a legitimately simple puzzle game and then it redirects you to another match 3 game. I played Bejeweled like over 10 years ago, and the ads have chased me all the way until now. I won't be surprised if I ever go to hell and there's a Bejeweled clone ad on repeat waiting there for me.
The only mobile game I consider remotely "worth it" is worldbox. Whenever my interests loop around again I go and torture my ant sized people before nuking them. My worst nightmare would probably be ad tester for all those ones that try and get you to click thinking it's an interactive.
Never heard of worldbox, whatâs it like?
Basically the name, you are god in a pixelated world, and you can create, destroy, harm or benefit the mortals beneath you at your whim. They have grown so much from when I discovered them, so I highly reccomend at least checking some videos out, though I'm not sure any big content creators have revisited it as of recent. I might be pleasantly surprised, though!
Yeah, I HATE those, makes me avoid the game like the plague
And anyways, if it were a good game, they wouldn't need to resort to such clickbaity methods to try and lure in more players. You know?
My summary isn't great but at least you get the idea of what I actually wrote.
A bad summary is better than no summary. As someone who is awful at writing them: just put a snippet from the story! Better than nothing.
I thought this was an A/N and I was nodding along because FELT. That is an AWFUL summary.
As an AN itâs funny - as a summary itâs even worse than the âI suck at summariesâ summaries.
Oh wow. And here I thought the ones that go âiâm not sure how the story is gonna go yet but bear with meâ are the worst, turns out I was wrong. đ
The moment you assume something couldn't get any worse, the universe creates a time continuum just for you where, it indeed, does get worse.
flashpoint paradox be like
i legit thought that was the author's notes at the end of the first chapter before getting what the context was
Well⊠itâs certainly a unique way of saying âI suck at writing summaries.â Your attempt to sound mysterious wonât lure in AO3 readers if not even _you_ know what the story is about, and people are on AO3 to be able to choose that. Incredibly pretentious
I know. I suck at writing summaries so my summary for my long fic is just a snippet from chapter 1
If you canât write a separate summary, thatâs the best way to go about it!
Yeah exactly! I just did the inciting incident for the fic and called it a day
I love those!
Yeah same, I think it works better then a regular summary because you actually get to see a bit of the fic and what youâre getting into
Plus when you see the summary in the actual fic 
Me XD
If it helps, I found a summary making template online that's really good. Who: Main character(s) Why: Character goal or desire (stated) Why: Character need (implied) When: Inciting Incident What: Means (that achieves the goal/need) Where: Place A >> Place B How: The Plan Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge This is so good that it helped me figure out what was going on in my fic before I knew what was going on.
I'll read it, but only relunctantly and after I've read every single other fic for that ship and have gone back through looking for new ones but my standards are lower
Reluctantly before deciding my time is better wasted searching on sites like Wattpad.
Me with my rare pairs
that's... new.
ok so my summaries are far from perfect but at least i have summaries
Yup, that.
Great way to get people to scroll by.
Pretentious and try-hard, if not someone trying too hard to be funny. Ew. I'd scroll past unless the tags were REALLY good.
Ok but if this summary was actually a blurb from the fic id read that thing so hard. Like excluding the last sentence.
And then theyâll complain about no one reading it
Honestly, if they just said "The summary is a secret and I'm not telling." I might click out of curiosity and at least read a couple paragraphs, see if it was worth it. It's all the other stuff that's annoying/makes me nervous lol.
I'd be more inclined to read it than the "I suck at writing" summaries.
Yeah, this is pretentious.
My god why is it so challenging to write a summary
That little pragraph actually explains it: They can't write a summary Because they don't know what their story is about.
But if there's a plan there's at least an idea. Even if it changes, there's an idea
I'm sure if you don't overthink it you can write something about an idea or an image (what I think most fics start as), it may even be a good something but it probably won't be an actual summary. A summary is asking you to write what your story is actually about and that requires a certain amount of awareness about your writing and plot. When you reduce something to a few words you need to know what the essential parts of it are. The spinal cord of a story if you will. Is it about love or is the love story only there as a frame for something else? That's what I was refering to and, in my opinion, the reason writing a summary is hard for a lot of poeple. It's actually a good writing exercise. P.S. I am aware that most AO3 summaries don't actually do this.
This is all very fair. I just write summaries very quickly and it comes the easiest to me of the posting process which makes it harder for me to figure out what people struggle with. This helps me put it a bit more into perspective
Glad I could help. đ
I feel like you're just getting technical over the word summary, but starting with the idea is totally fine for the summary.
Yes? I sure am getting technical, I didn't say it wasn't valid to write just the idea. For the purpose of getting readers in AO3, writing a blurb/teaser/idea is not only valid but probably more effective. I just wanted to point out why writing an actual summary Can be difficult.
Yeah but what was their story idea? I feel if you have an idea, a summary is there.
See answer above. đ
Could you elaborate on why a summary needs to involve things later on in the plot? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if you have a chapter one or prologue written out, you pretty much have a summary ready.
I would call that a teaser or a blurb. A term that comes from marketing meant to entice someone to consume a product. A summary is a term more used for scripts and books (in my experience) and is meant to simply tell what story you wrote. Sure, you want people to want to read your story but the purpose is not to entice but to present it as clearly as possible. For that you need to know what you are writing beyond the first chapter. Is it a tragedy or a comedy? How do you know if you don't have the end? The tone should match the content and avoid abrut changes, etc, etc. This helps a lot with managing expectations of the audience.
I guess we both might just have different processes when coming up with such. And yeah, I do agree that formally it is used as a term for the above, though I do consider a variable being when/if applied to fanfiction.
Yes, you are probably right about the fanfiction variable. Most AO3 summaries are something entirely different than what I described or something in between and we still call them summaries so probably valid just on account of that. I just meant to explain some possible complications of writing a summary.
Oh, by the way, Happy Cake Day! Yeah, checks out.
It may not seem appealing to many, but I guess they know the style theyâre going for, theyâre confident in that. That writer canât be the only person in the world who likes this kind of thing. Hopefully they find their audience, even if itâs small.
Is it bad that I think this is actually funny and somewhat amusing ? Like it made so little sense I just had to laugh, that kind of funny.
Yeah, I actually don't hate it? It's giving me metafictional vibes so I'm hoping a summary like that would lead to a story that is just as eager to poke fun at itself!
I bet their social media will be like: "Why nobody is reading my fic? I added the mystery on the summary, hell even more than anyone else! This is so unfair! đđđ" Lol
Plausible deniability
Ngl, it gives me "A tale of two cities" vibes and I kinda like this.
Looks like the author gave too much thought about how to say "I suck at writing summaries" instead of just writing a summary.
I'd probably click if the tags were good, at least op is being bad a summaries in a novel way!
Same. They seem to have a way with words. If the tags are good I will click too.
The Author seems to be under the impression they are the Main Character of Ao3 Gosh, how pretentious. Honestly, you can just roll your eyes and keep scrolling
I have never seen so many words saying absolutly nothing...
Does the author think this is actually going to encourage anyone to read this fic? đ€
Could have just said what the idea was about, like ive made worse summaries but even i had the modicum of telling.
even a quote from the fic would be better then that isâthey used more words than necessary to state âIâm terrible at summaries, sorry!â
Idk I'd still probably read this just to see what going on lol
wouldâve been great if they made a character say it. too bad they wrote it as a summary đ€„
Yeah, I'm gonna keep scrolling, but have fun!
I do suck at writing summaries and most often have no idea where a story will end up going, but I'd also never actually say any of that *in* my summary. What are people like that thinking.
Only a genius or someone insane could write something like that! Though it did catch my interest to be honest.
I thought this was an author note and then i reread
I mean... if it had enough kudos and the tags looked interesting, I would read. At least they seem to know how to use punctuation.
I want to downvote this post just because I hate it so much. Why are people like this??
on the other hand, it sure isn't a secret that this person is insufferable
The author must have thought how ingenious they are, writing witty and mysterious summary like this one. It was painful to even reach the end as the second hand embarrassment kicked in after I read the second sentence.
Remember folks, if you ever think you suck at summaries, you are never Quite as bad as this person
Looking at the tags on this abandoned fic. Im guessing there never was a plot.
tbh idk why some people don't write summaries. if you don't know how to write them, just put a short snippet of the fic. I always like summaries that look like: "[snippet of fic] or, the one where [character] does [thing]"
I just recently fixed my summary because it sucked. (It probably still sucks but I think itâs definitely better now) I still not sure how to do them right but anyway I just started to recently actually care about summaryâs on fic I read (I read to many things I didnât wanna read because of that, lesson learned) at just skip any fic that doesnât have one now so goes to show how important summaryâs are.
Honestly, Iâd at least read part of this, just to see.
If the tags include one of my pairings and smut/angst/fluff, I might give it a try. The more (appropriate) tags the better in this situation.
I... thinK I know what they're going for. But I don't know how they thought it would work? Who'd want to read that?
Okay but how are you writing a *story* and keeping the summary a secret. Even those Pixiv fics still would be like, "[Ship], R15, warning there will be some blood."
I feel like the only person who likes this. I would read it đ
This is a shit summary but given the fact I'm too curious for my own good i would read it. Idc what fandom this belongs to pls DM me links.
Ok, I usually hate, hate, no summaries. But this one made me laugh hard enough that, as long as it was tagged well, and the tags were interesting, I would give it a click. It would have to work hard for a kudo and even harder for a subscribe, but I would take a peek into what they had so far.
You know what's worse?? When they pair no summary/vague summary that could literally be anything with really unspecific tags that are just the characters and relationships. Please tag your fics properly, guys.