Summaries that are crap.

[ladydrace]

Hey, I'm so sorry for this, but I'm in a crap mood. (loooooong story)

So I just want to express my annoyance with summaries that are just a random line grabbed from the fic. Isn't a 'summary' supposed to 'summarize' the fic? It doesn't tell me dick about the fic if the summary is something along the line of: "Merlin was tired, when he entered Arthur's rooms." No it doesn't.  Pisses me off.

Sorry if anyone on my f-list does this. I don't hate you. I'm just pissed.

That is all.

Comments

[lonespark.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I kind of like "summaries" like that. But they're not summaries. They should call it "tag-line" or "teaser" or something.

[lady-drace.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[cyranothe2nd.livejournal.com]

It depends. I have a really talented writer friend who masterfully crafts her taglines so that they are summaries. But generally I totally agree with you.

I also hate:
1. People that misspell common place/character names in their genre.
2. Mary Sues (forever and ever, hate!!! "Okay, in my story Harry Potter has a daughter and she's totally cool and powerful and her name is exactly like mine but she's totally NOT ME, okay? Totally not!")
3. People that don't write in the right dialect. For instance, using American slang in Harry Potter or not using tech lingo in Trek. It doesn't have to be prevalent, but you can't have a Phantom of the Opera (occurs in 1880) character saying things like, "That's cool." Come on--try a little!
4. People that write "I'm bad at summaries, just review" as their summary. Umm, if you can't write a summary, you probably can't write a story either.
5. Severe AU without cause. I like some AU fics but there needs to be a reason that the universe is altered, beyond the writer just wanting to make things easier for themselves ("OMG, I am going to write Harry Potter but instead of Hogwarts he lives in my town and goes to my school!") Some of the best fics I've read tweak something in the canon and produce a whole alternate universe around it, but those writers think it out, plan the story that way and are aware of WHY things are different.
6. Really really REALLY out of character romance without extenuating circumstances. If you want Dukat and Kira to fall in love, that's fine (I kinda want that myself) but you CANNOT write that without dealing with the issues of racism, genocide, etc. in the source material. They cannot just get together without there being any reason to forget how much they hate each other.
7. For that matter, OOC stuff in general. I mean, sure, you could write a fic where Hermione goes off and joins the Deatheaters but not without dealing with some serious canon issues which cannot and should not be ignored.
8. Crossovers. I cannot stress enough how much most crossovers suck. There are very very few worlds that can successfully coexist. And no, Star Wars and Star Trek are not two of them.
9. Warnings that leak the whole plot. I know, if there is sexual content, violence, etc you want to warn but don't specify which character is going to get killed/raped/tortured. *sheesh*
10. If you are going to write a sex scene, please have had sex and know something about the mechanics of it. Please!

[lady-drace.livejournal.com]

1. YES! If you can't even bother to look up the name on the web or something, you're not enough of a fan. I judge you like hell. (That sounds like a fandomsecret, right there...)
2. I haven't seen all that many of them, thank god. But your example is... horrific.
3. Oh yeah. I agree completely. When in doubt, make it bland. Dialect don't make good fic. But it's a nice detail. :o)
4. AGREED!!
5. I'm totally with you. In stories like those, my bullshit detector goes off wildly.
6. Indeed. If you go: "wut?" then it's wrong.
7. Anything can work with the right background. Like that G/B fic where Garak ended up a Bajoran monk... after about 75.000 words of explanation. IT WORKED!
8. it 'can' work, but there are just SO many factors that need to be just right. Not to mention that you're appealing to 2 different fangroups and if you don't know both worlds, you run a great risk of most of your readers ending up confused. I read a REALLY good one yesterday, though.
9. Way to kill the surprise.
10. YES!!! GOD YES!!!

[cyranothe2nd.livejournal.com]

LOL, I go into a debate with a chick who had never had sex on how to write sex scenes and she insisted that you didn't need to have done it to know. And I'm like, "Well, it kinda helps!"

About crossovers, the most successful ones are in worlds that are really alike, like "How I Met Your Mother" and "Big Bang Theory". Or "Sherlock Holmes" and "Phantom of the Opera"...they occur in the same timeline, their stories don't actually intersect and there is nothing prohibiting them from being crossed. But in fics like Star Wars/Star Trek, you have to explain why the tech is so different, why there is the Force in one but not the other, etc. Its just a really big stretch.
What was the one you read?

About OOC, don't get me wrong, I LOVE it when a character grows into something totally different and then the author goes about explaining how the change occurred in a believable way. One of my favorite fan fics takes the misanthropic Severus Snape and slowly changes and explicates his character through a series of letters. It's brilliant because you find out that some of the things you thought about him weren't true (can be done because HP is not from his POV) and the very act of forming the friendship with the person he's writing to challenges him to change himself. That's great.
What I can't stand is things like suitless Darth Vader--just changing canon so that some romance or something can take place. It's infuriating! (Plus, there's a lot of good reasons that Vader can't be Vader without the suit. I mean, it keeps him isolated and being in constant pain serves to keep him angry. I have this whole theory that the Emperor actually crippled him on purpose by putting him in the suit rather than healing him in any real way, in order to keep him on the Dark Side...).

[lady-drace.livejournal.com]

I agree completely about the crossovers. But I must say, that if you do happen to feel like writing an insane crossover of Powerpuff Girls and CSI, you can always label it crack and have fun with it, without anyone raising an eyebrow. :oP

The good one was a cross between Merlin and Dresden files. I'd never actually readwatched the Dresden Files, but the fic was done so well, that now I really want to...

Link here, if you're interested: http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/21542.html (And I SO SO SO wish there was more of it...)

About Darth Vader: That's a really good theory. I wouldn't be surprised about that either.
Who wold want to write a suitless Darth Vader, anyway? He's not Darth vader without the suit, is he? Unless of course he's Hayden Christensen slaying younglings... I'm totally not buying it...

[cyranothe2nd.livejournal.com]

Don't EVEN get my started on how crap Hayden Christensen was in that role!
I write Star Wars fan fic (mostly Old Trilogy, Darth Vader stuff) and one of the hardest things to deal with is the slaying of the younglings. I just don't buy it. I mean, there's evil...and then there's killing kids evil. I just...it doesn't compute for me. There isn't some switch you flip and all the sudden you are a psycho kid-killer. I think that Lucas f-ed up bigtime in the prequels. Which is a shame because he had so much time and such a rich tradition to draw from. It was such a huge let down.

LOL @ Powerpuff/CSI cross! HAHAHA!!! Seriously though, its really about skill and know what can and cannot be done. In crack/comedy you can do some off the wall stuff. Have you seen that book "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters"? That's crack fic!

[lady-drace.livejournal.com]

No I haven't! LOL! Sounds hilarious! Especially since I'm a huge Jane Austen fan. :o)

I'm not at all happy with Hayden Christensen either, but if only Lucas didn't fuck up the movies so much in the first place, I think he could have been ok. I still don't think he should have been in the suit, though.

[cyranothe2nd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, kind of a slap to the guy who played him in the OT. Also, I don't like that the changed the ending of Jedi (where Luke sees Anakin's spirit) to include Hayden's image instead of the original actor. Was pretty unfair.

[lady-drace.livejournal.com]

I activley loathe that ending. It makes no fucking sense what so ever. All the other jedis are the age they were at their death, but Anakin isn't? I know some people argue that it was because "he died when he turned to the dark side". But if that's true, then Lucas flushed his own plotline down the drain. Because then Luke didn't save Anakin at all, and he shouldn't have been able to do the spirit thing, either.

I HATE THAT!!

And... I miss the original Ewok end party too. :o(

[idanianspice.livejournal.com]

I'm not too crazy about those type of summaries, but I don't mind them if they at least point to what is going to take place in the fic. Like in your example, I would expect maybe, after a hard day of spellcasting, Merlin is going to get a nice full body massage and some hot handjob action from Arthur and then fall blissfully asleep. But if the story turns out to be them going to fight a dragon, or something, then I would really wonder WTF.

[lady-drace.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I don't mind a summary grabbed from the fic, if it just makes some sort of sense. My example... didn't.