Would it be snotty to write a "summary help" page? One that says -- never denigrate your summary--strangers don't tend to dig avowed losers. Keep them short. Triple/quadruple/quintuple spell check. Especially character names (add these to your dictionary!). Search for the big ones--loose, reigh, taunt/taught, and make sure they're only there if you mean them.

And if worst comes to worst, just put your opening paragraph (or one nearby) and a brief sentence of context.

Because I am tired. Oh, I am tired.

(My current favourite summary is "Dean's fifteen, and his knot doesn't pop."--I'm chapters in and it still chills me. This chick, MooseFeel, has got a way not just with ideas, but with words (in her best fics--her less good ones are awkward, meandering, and strangely coincidental(.

In fact, she wrote the best slavery fic (set post slavery) I've been able to read, but the "big" reveal was (intentionally) obvious and she did no work for it. I didn't want to punch her world building in the 'nads, as with most slave fic I peek at, just her interpersonal plotting.

Not snotty, but perhaps counterproductive. Poorly written summaries and abuses of tags are very handy for spotting stories that aren't worth wasting any time reading. I don't want the badfic-writing tween girls to learn how to make their stories appear more palatable at first glance until the stories themselves improve..

Matt, you are mean and correct. I want to shriek at some of these writers "If regret writing it, why the hell should I read it!" And the tag "I don't even" is nearly always guaranteed to make me say "Me neither."

But I think that summary writing is different from fic writing, in terms of skills. There could be decent stories under there, but us snobs will never know.

And the things you think about when learning to write a good summary might make you a better story writer to boot.

Like the difference between taut and taunt?

Or even taught!

I recently read a pretty good story involving horses and kings that did rein/reign, and I wanted to smash things.

But I am glad to learn gapped is a word. For a while there I thought it was another chocked. There's larnin' to be had out there!

Yeah, writing a decent summary can be a bear. I've been lucky insofar as several of my first fics were episode tags, and I felt satisfied with identifying the episode they were attached to, and the ship involved (and/or if it was particularly shippy). Then I had time to look around a bit and notice that more than one of my favorite writers were simply quoting a line or two that seemed important, so I have emulated them if I couldn't think of anything better for a given story.

I cheat with my summaries, most of the time, and use a line from the story. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

At risk of outing myself, the summary for my most-recently posted story just says, "What it says on the tin."

Ah ha! That one was on my short list of "fics well-written enough that they could be Cofax's". Of course, you will have to take my word for it. And I am not quite brave enough to start spitting out the rest of my guesses. I think I'm thinking about it too much.

I hate summaries. Panicked and last minute, I succumbed to "In a world"-ness with one of mine and used four successive questions: "Can they overcome the past and be triumphant?" sort of thing. A wag on the anonymeme wanted to know, "Is it a quiz? Will there be extra credit?"

I do better summarizing and titling work I beta than I do my own.