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There are, at present count, 6,136 Weiss Kreuz fanfics archived at the Pit of Voles.
6,136 pieces of fanfiction. 246 archive pages stretching back to 30th June, 2000. Filter out the M-Rated stories and you're left with a positively paltry 4,663 pieces of fanfic spread over a mere 187 archive pages. Even with the exclusion in place, that's a lot of fanfic - far, far more than the average fangirl could ever need to satisfy her cravings for florist-angst. With all the stories out there to choose from, how in the Hell does anyone browsing on spec find anything to read?
The simple answer, of course, is to let the summaries be your guide. Why, after all, are they there if not to gently steer the reader in the direction of something they'd actually enjoy reading? Oh, we as readers can filter by pairing, we can filter by word length, we can filter by whether or not the story is completed, but even writing a fic of the right length about the right people won't guarantee an audience if the summary suggests the fic itself is a stinker.
The summary, after all, is the only part of a fanfic that most people will ever see. Far more people will read the summary than ever get even as far as the author's note. For that reason alone, authors owe it to themselves to make sure that their summary is a good one. The point of the summary is to sell your story - it's your pitch, if you like. You the author have 250 characters to convince a browsing reader that what they really want is to read your story, not one of the other 6,135 stories on offer... and that, let's face it, is not going to happen if your summary just stinks.
I don't take a chance on fanfics if I think their summaries are awful. As to precisely what has me think a summary is awful... well, read on.
Of course, these are just my turnoffs. I'm not saying that it's right and proper for a reader to pass over any fic with a summary like like these, just that for my own part I do. These are the things that have me balking at the gate and backing up because yeah, maybe not. Onward!
The saddest thing about this summary is that it's not a joke. This reads almost identically to my summary for Roses in Rain, which deliberately attempts to ape Suethor Summary Tropes - and here we see a ficcer hit just about all of them so very neatly it's almost impossible to believe it wasn't done knowingly.
We've got a 'young girl'. We've been explicitly told she is a Mysterious Sue of Mystery. We've got the bit where she becomes stunningly important to Schwarz and Weiss by being. We've got the name of the regular she's destined to be swept off her daintily-shod feet by. We've even got the annoying Suethor tendency to have most of the summary consist of a string of EXTREMELY OBVIOUS QUESTIONS. All we need to add is a little disclaimer about the fic being 'non-yaoi!' as if the whole Mysterious Sue of Mystery shite didn't make it obvious and we'd have a full house. In short: painfully generic Suefic to be ignored pro tem.
This summary is trying far, far too hard to be funny. It's the equivalent of some guy standing up in the middle of a pitch meeting wearing a light-up spinning bow-tie that plays a tinny version of Camptown Races, a pair of comedy breasts and a hat with a foam-rubber mallet sticking out of it who, when pressed later, doesn't quite understand why everybody just shuffled their feet, coughed and looked the other way. Random things happening for no visible reason to a bunch of shrieking idiots does not a comedy make.
As if that wasn't bad enough, there's the word 'zany'. When was the last time you saw something described as 'zany' that didn't turn out to be painfully unfunny and cringemakingly embarrassing? Well then.
Okay, interesting choice of quote for a summary, but in isolation? It's just a turnoff for me. It doesn't tell me anything at all about the story for one thing, not even what characters it's about. This fic could be about any one of dozens of things, and - going by the helpful little addendum at the bottom that says Youji K. & Aya/Ran F. which isn't even part of the summary proper - it isn't even about either of the characters who might actually have the vaguest passing acquaintance with the book of Matthew. That's all my guesses about what the Hell this thing thinks its about out the window.
Long story short, if a summary doesn't give me some kind of idea what the actual story thinks it's about, I'm not going to bother reading it on the off-chance that it's going to be about something I like, namely Not Youji And Aya Getting It On Again. No offense meant to those as do like to read Youji x Aya pairing fics, but personally I don't and it's statistically proven to be at least twice as likely that a random fanfic is about Youji And Aya Getting It On Again as it is to be about... well, practically anything and anyone else. If I don't know better, I'm going to assume it's YxA and move on.
This is one surefire way to guarantee that I at least won't go anywhere near your fanfic. Not only does this summary suffer from the exact same problem as Whitewashed Graves above, it makes matters even worse by barely even trying to explain what the fic is about - apart, of course, from what sounds like the usual bunch of Mary Sues rolling up and utterly taking over. In 600 words.
Instead, the ficcer chooses to waste her character-limited summary on pointing out that, um, she sucks at writing summaries and to beg anyone passing by to read and review. No. Sorry, but no. Look, fanficcer, you have to give some sort of a reason for me to want to take a chance on your story and 'please read this because I'd really like it if you did' isn't going to cut it here any more than it would on the back cover of a novel. I'd rather see a terrible summary than a string of excuses for why there isn't one and pleas for me to read the story anyway even though I have no idea why I should want to.
First and foremost, the major reason I wouldn't go near this one: it's OOC. In fact, this fic is so painfully OOC the ficcer feels the need to include a warning for it in the summary. Since I'm here to read about Weiss, not The Adventures of That Redhead Dude and Normal Guy, this summary might as well just have said 'DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC' as elaborated on its premise. Hell, 'DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC' would have been more likely to make me want to read it...
Of course, I wouldn't want to read this one anyway because the fic sounds like it sucks a lot. Even setting aside the shall we say ill-advised Disease of the Week storyline, I really have to wonder why in the world the ficcer decided to take two totally unrelated characters and make them cousins... not least of which because she's clearly planning to hook Aya and Ken up. Maybe I just don't get it, but I have no idea why anyone would look at Ran and Ken and think, hm, I know what this pairing needs to make it work: more incest! Oh, and it's supposed to be a comedy because... because anorexia is funny or something?
And that solution is mass murder.
My problem with this? Well, it's a bit harder to quantify than some of the others, but in all honesty it's probably because the fic sounds really dumb. It also sounds OOC and as if the ficcer needs to be reminded she's writing about assassins, but mainly it's because the ficcer's so busy having a whale of a ship-happy time she forgot to write a story which wasn't quite painfully stupid. I just can't get on with fics where characters aren't allowed to do the logical thing about their problems. Why don't the idiots in this story just sit down and talked about things like normal human beings? Oh, of course, because if they did there would be no story. Of course the fic in question may not be painfully stupid, but after this summary, I'm not prepared to take the chance.
6,136 pieces of fanfiction. 246 archive pages stretching back to 30th June, 2000. Filter out the M-Rated stories and you're left with a positively paltry 4,663 pieces of fanfic spread over a mere 187 archive pages. Even with the exclusion in place, that's a lot of fanfic - far, far more than the average fangirl could ever need to satisfy her cravings for florist-angst. With all the stories out there to choose from, how in the Hell does anyone browsing on spec find anything to read?
The simple answer, of course, is to let the summaries be your guide. Why, after all, are they there if not to gently steer the reader in the direction of something they'd actually enjoy reading? Oh, we as readers can filter by pairing, we can filter by word length, we can filter by whether or not the story is completed, but even writing a fic of the right length about the right people won't guarantee an audience if the summary suggests the fic itself is a stinker.
The summary, after all, is the only part of a fanfic that most people will ever see. Far more people will read the summary than ever get even as far as the author's note. For that reason alone, authors owe it to themselves to make sure that their summary is a good one. The point of the summary is to sell your story - it's your pitch, if you like. You the author have 250 characters to convince a browsing reader that what they really want is to read your story, not one of the other 6,135 stories on offer... and that, let's face it, is not going to happen if your summary just stinks.
I don't take a chance on fanfics if I think their summaries are awful. As to precisely what has me think a summary is awful... well, read on.
Of course, these are just my turnoffs. I'm not saying that it's right and proper for a reader to pass over any fic with a summary like like these, just that for my own part I do. These are the things that have me balking at the gate and backing up because yeah, maybe not. Onward!
A young girl with mysterious powers and a mysterious past, gets caught up between Weiss and Schwartz. Question is, can she tell which side is which? Or will a quickly blooming attatchment with a certain German stop her in her tracks? SchuldigxOC
Romance/Hurt/Comfort - Schuldig
The saddest thing about this summary is that it's not a joke. This reads almost identically to my summary for Roses in Rain, which deliberately attempts to ape Suethor Summary Tropes - and here we see a ficcer hit just about all of them so very neatly it's almost impossible to believe it wasn't done knowingly.
We've got a 'young girl'. We've been explicitly told she is a Mysterious Sue of Mystery. We've got the bit where she becomes stunningly important to Schwarz and Weiss by being. We've got the name of the regular she's destined to be swept off her daintily-shod feet by. We've even got the annoying Suethor tendency to have most of the summary consist of a string of EXTREMELY OBVIOUS QUESTIONS. All we need to add is a little disclaimer about the fic being 'non-yaoi!' as if the whole Mysterious Sue of Mystery shite didn't make it obvious and we'd have a full house. In short: painfully generic Suefic to be ignored pro tem.
All the crazy things happened on Omi's birthdays. Whether it was Ken, Yohji, Aya or Omi himself, something comedic and zany always exploded in their faces on February 29th. WARNING: Includes flying paint, rescue missions to the moon and sugar high chibies
Humor/Hurt/Comfort - Omi T. & Aya/Ran F.
This summary is trying far, far too hard to be funny. It's the equivalent of some guy standing up in the middle of a pitch meeting wearing a light-up spinning bow-tie that plays a tinny version of Camptown Races, a pair of comedy breasts and a hat with a foam-rubber mallet sticking out of it who, when pressed later, doesn't quite understand why everybody just shuffled their feet, coughed and looked the other way. Random things happening for no visible reason to a bunch of shrieking idiots does not a comedy make.
As if that wasn't bad enough, there's the word 'zany'. When was the last time you saw something described as 'zany' that didn't turn out to be painfully unfunny and cringemakingly embarrassing? Well then.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." Matthew 23:27
Mystery/Horror - Youji K. & Aya/Ran F.
Okay, interesting choice of quote for a summary, but in isolation? It's just a turnoff for me. It doesn't tell me anything at all about the story for one thing, not even what characters it's about. This fic could be about any one of dozens of things, and - going by the helpful little addendum at the bottom that says Youji K. & Aya/Ran F. which isn't even part of the summary proper - it isn't even about either of the characters who might actually have the vaguest passing acquaintance with the book of Matthew. That's all my guesses about what the Hell this thing thinks its about out the window.
Long story short, if a summary doesn't give me some kind of idea what the actual story thinks it's about, I'm not going to bother reading it on the off-chance that it's going to be about something I like, namely Not Youji And Aya Getting It On Again. No offense meant to those as do like to read Youji x Aya pairing fics, but personally I don't and it's statistically proven to be at least twice as likely that a random fanfic is about Youji And Aya Getting It On Again as it is to be about... well, practically anything and anyone else. If I don't know better, I'm going to assume it's YxA and move on.
Six years after the anime series. There are some new kids on the block. I suck at summaries ^^* Please just read and review. I BEG YOU! -cough-
General
This is one surefire way to guarantee that I at least won't go anywhere near your fanfic. Not only does this summary suffer from the exact same problem as Whitewashed Graves above, it makes matters even worse by barely even trying to explain what the fic is about - apart, of course, from what sounds like the usual bunch of Mary Sues rolling up and utterly taking over. In 600 words.
Instead, the ficcer chooses to waste her character-limited summary on pointing out that, um, she sucks at writing summaries and to beg anyone passing by to read and review. No. Sorry, but no. Look, fanficcer, you have to give some sort of a reason for me to want to take a chance on your story and 'please read this because I'd really like it if you did' isn't going to cut it here any more than it would on the back cover of a novel. I'd rather see a terrible summary than a string of excuses for why there isn't one and pleas for me to read the story anyway even though I have no idea why I should want to.
RanKen fic. A/U, yaoi. Ran is Ken's cousin suffering from anorexia. What can Ken do to help? Rating for later chapters. (My first AU fic complete with severe OOCness. Extra long farewell chapter... give Ash a chance?)
Romance/Humor - Ken H. & Aya/Ran F.
First and foremost, the major reason I wouldn't go near this one: it's OOC. In fact, this fic is so painfully OOC the ficcer feels the need to include a warning for it in the summary. Since I'm here to read about Weiss, not The Adventures of That Redhead Dude and Normal Guy, this summary might as well just have said 'DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC' as elaborated on its premise. Hell, 'DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC' would have been more likely to make me want to read it...
Of course, I wouldn't want to read this one anyway because the fic sounds like it sucks a lot. Even setting aside the shall we say ill-advised Disease of the Week storyline, I really have to wonder why in the world the ficcer decided to take two totally unrelated characters and make them cousins... not least of which because she's clearly planning to hook Aya and Ken up. Maybe I just don't get it, but I have no idea why anyone would look at Ran and Ken and think, hm, I know what this pairing needs to make it work: more incest! Oh, and it's supposed to be a comedy because... because anorexia is funny or something?
Aya is dating Yohji who is in love with Omi. Omi is dating Schuldich who is also dating Nagi. Schu is in love with Yohji and Nagi is in love with Omi. Crawfrod is in love with Aya but dating Farefello. Ken has a plan to set everything strait.
Humor/Romance
And that solution is mass murder.
My problem with this? Well, it's a bit harder to quantify than some of the others, but in all honesty it's probably because the fic sounds really dumb. It also sounds OOC and as if the ficcer needs to be reminded she's writing about assassins, but mainly it's because the ficcer's so busy having a whale of a ship-happy time she forgot to write a story which wasn't quite painfully stupid. I just can't get on with fics where characters aren't allowed to do the logical thing about their problems. Why don't the idiots in this story just sit down and talked about things like normal human beings? Oh, of course, because if they did there would be no story. Of course the fic in question may not be painfully stupid, but after this summary, I'm not prepared to take the chance.
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