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.

I always use quotes. Titles are hard enough to come up with.

Yeah, quotes are pretty much what I pull out.

Titles still wind up defaulting to song lyrics, for which I APOLOGIZE.

Which reminds me, I shouldn't be judging people for titling things with Fall Out Boy lyrics, yet I do. Because I'm a huge hypocrite who both uses lyrics as title defaults AND knows where the semi-obscure lyrics came from. SO.

Thirty lashings with a wet noodle to me, I guess.

Which reminds me, I shouldn't be judging people for titling things with Fall Out Boy lyrics, yet I do. Because I'm a huge hypocrite who both uses lyrics as title defaults AND knows where the semi-obscure lyrics came from. SO.

Those have me more likely to click because I've likely incurred a pleasant ear worm and I find it funny. Especially when I'm curious how the fandoms intersected.

I shouldn't be judging people for titling things with Fall Out Boy lyrics, yet I do. Because I'm a huge hypocrite who both uses lyrics as title defaults AND knows where the semi-obscure lyrics came from

EXACTLY.

Also, considering I know what fandom you're reading in right now, the idea of someone using FOB lyrics for titles is comedy gold.

Oh my fucking god, so many FOB lyrics. And a few good FOB vids. Like War Paint (Winter Soldier vid to The Phoenix).

I've used FOB lyrics on a bunch of Dean/Castiel stories, which amuses me because Dean would barf.