What will happen? · 7:13pm Mar 17th, 2014
This has to be the most useless phrase in a summary ever.
"Random Brony goes to Equestria and meets the Mane 6. What will happen?"
Well, what will happen is the story, dipshit. Because if the story isn't about what will happen, then this is the story:
"I'm a random brony. One day I just woke up and I was in Equestria! And the Mane 6 were surrounding me! The end."
The phrase "what will happen?" can probably invariably be struck from any summary anywhere. The story is about what will happen. The summary should not contain language wondering about what might be in the story; the summary exists to tell us enough about what's in the story that we're interested in reading.
Also, "Fluttershy is falling in love with Discord. Will he return her love? FLUTTERCORD" is a redundant summary, because Fluttercord. If Discord was like, "No, this is awkward, Fluttershy, I really like you as a friend but..." then it would not be Fluttercord, so asking if he will return her love in the summary is unnecessary. (Whereas "She wonders if he will return her love" is not unnecessary; that would signal that the story is about Fluttershy's doubts and fears regarding whether Discord loves her or not, not about whether he does love her or not. Declaring the story to be Fluttercord pretty much establishes that by the end of the fic Discord and Fluttershy will be together, so Word of God from you, the author, is "yes, he loves her, or he will come to, anyway." But Fluttershy didn't read the summary so she can still be legitimately confused on the topic.)
"What could possibly go wrong?" or "Nothing can go wrong" is incredibly overdone at this point. We all know that something is going to go wrong because that's why there is a story. Otherwise the story goes like this:
"It's perfectly safe for me to practice this new spell, Spike!" Twilight laughed. "I've got it covered. What could go wrong?"
"I don't know about this," Spike moaned.
Twilight's horn lit up. She cast the new spell. Nothing went wrong.
"See?" Twilight said. "I told you!" The end.
"What could go wrong" was funny probably the first three hundred times, but please, just stop.
In other things that are wrong with summaries, aside from asking pointless questions:
PRETENTIOUS BUT MEANINGLESS PHRASES
The words. The spacing. The pretentious phrasing that tells us nothing. This is the story.
Yeah. How about a summary that sounds like it even vaguely begins to tell us what the story is about?
CLICHED PHRASES
Chaos ensues.
Doesn't Order ever ensue? How about bacon? Does bacon ever ensue? It's like the phrase "veritable plethora". You never see "plethora" without "veritable", and you never see "ensue" without Chaos.
SHIFTING PERSON
This is how I found myself in Equestria, where he will meet new friends.
Who's he, the cat? If the story is first person, your main character is I. If the story is third person, your main character is he or she (or in some cases it, but try to avoid that most of the time.) If the story is in second person, the main character is you. Pick one and stick to it!
THE SUMMARY DESCRIBES THE FIRST THREE PARAGRAPHS
I see this a lot with the self-inserts. "My boring life was boring and I hated it! Then I found a portal..." What ensues (not Chaos, but chapters!) is twenty thousand words or more about my exciting adventures in Equestria, whereas my boring life got, like, half a chapter. The overall plot of the story is not about me finding a portal, it's about my life in Equestria and the portal was just an excuse to get me there. (Whereas "Chrysalis enacts an evil plan..." in a story where the first chapter is about Chrysalis' evil plan and all subsequent chapters involve dealing with the consequences of Chrysalis' evil plan, including the quest to find and defeat Chrysalis, is okay. You can use the summary to describe the setup that occurs in the first chapter if the setup is integral to the events that occur. However, unless it is your main character's magical power to create portals, probably the fact that he found a portal is irrelevant to the rest of the story and was just how you got him into Equestria.)
BAD GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION OR SPELLING
this is the story how celesta become princes of the Sun and how she got her cutey mark
great, and this is the story of how i am not going to read your story because if your summary is that awful god only knows what horrors you've hidden away in the text of the thing
A CERTAIN
This is also way overdone. "A certain purple unicorn is feeling depressed until a certain pink pony cheers her up!" They have names. Unless your cute twist is that you are not talking about Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, you should avoid "a certain". It's massively overused.
Thank you.
Someone else finally writes out my thoughts. Nothing turns me off a story more than crappy synopses containing this sort of material.
The bit about cliched phrases gets to me particularly. I hate it how general society seems to think that certain words can only be used with others. Though I would have used "veritable smorgasbord" as an example instead, but it's essentially the same thing. For the record, I try to use words like "ensue" and "veritable" in other ways.
I hate tense and focus shifts so much.
"A certain—" No, STAHP. Say their name. Thank you, Lady Rogers.
I'm sure there are other things that irritate you about writing, but that's probably a blog for another time?
1933553
Yeah, for this time I was confining it to the summaries. There are other things about summaries that turn me off, but they tend to either be very me-specific, or they are perfectly accurate descriptions of a story I just don't have any desire to read, which isn't actually an issue with the summary at all.
Sometimes I think it would be kind of funny to write a fic in which each chapter parodies a different trope of bad fiction, but I'm not sure if that might not be declared too meta.
Yes! Let me roll around in your words for a few minutes. I am not fantastic at descriptions but even I know most of this.
What summary did you read that made you write this?
1933605
All of them.
This would also make me not want to read the story, because it sounds as if whatever "will happen" will be extremely boring and unimaginative, mostly consisting of either the Pony characters gushing all over him for his wonderfulness or being insanely cruel to him -- in either case, for no obvious reason.
"Oh, I. Random Brony! You are so humanoid and your thumbs are so delectably opposable! Let us marry and have biologically-impossible children!"
See, now that is why Fluttershy needs to read the summary! Pinkie Pie would read the summary!
Rarely, save in the very special and important situation of systems with self-emergent Incidentally, I actually have a case of "order ensuing" in the first chapter of Nightmare Are Tragic, but I do not actually use the phrase -- maybe I should!!!
I hereby pledge to have a veritable plethora of cases in which there shall be veritable cases of things other than Chaos ensuing. Will Chaos or Order ensue if I do this?
But your point is very good. These cliches speak of very superficial ability to describe one's own story, and this in turn makes the reader wonder "If he can't even describe his own story, how can he describe the events depicted in the story itself?"
Along with that, shifting tenses, especially within a single sentence. One should always be aware of whether events are happening relative to the narrator in the past, present or future. Things get very confusing when this is uncertain or contradictory.
Oh, indeed. If one cannot bother to, or incapable of, editing the text in one's title or summary, then how well will one have edited the text in the story itself? It's easy to miss typos deep in text -- I still occasionally comb a few out of work I wrote months ago and have re-read several times. It's less easy to miss them if they are in the title or summary.
By the way, the whole premise of "I had a boring life in my world but then fell through a portal into exciting Equestria where I had wonderful adventures" self-inserts deeply alienates me.
The reason why is that a person who has no life in this world probably won't do all that well in Equestria, or Barsoom, or Xanth, or Oz, or wherever. He may find opportunities (and perils) there that he didn't have at home, but unless he is able to grow as a person he won't be able to build much of a life in the new world either.
Furthermore, if he had no life in our world, I can't sympathize with him. What, he had no friends? No family? No job? No hobbies? No dreams or goals? What, was he born in a gray-walled apartment and just sat there alone eating pizza and watching the TV news until a magic portal opened and he fell into Equestria?
The reason writers do this is to give him absolutely no reason to care about anything he left behind. But then he has no real character; he's just a blank screen on which we project whatever the characters in the new world want to do to him, and he reacts to these actions. In short, he's boring, and one wonders why we care what happens to him at all beyond basic human decency. I mean, I wouldn't want him to get fed feet first into a meatgrinder, but I don't really care if he finds True Love or High Adventure or the Element of Mundanity or whatever victory conditions he's handed by the Exposition Character when he shows up in Fantasy Land. Do you?
Bad grammar is the #1 reason for dislikes. Few and far between? Alright, I'm fine. Just about everysingle sentence? USE MICROSOFT WORD!
1933796
Sometimes they have Unbelievably Tragic Circumstances in which everyone they loved either died or dumped them. This... is frankly, quite unbelievable most of the time. Sometimes they died, in which case I can buy that they aren't all that eager to go home. But yeah, when they're just boring dudes with boring lives... and that's the other problem with self inserts. By definition, if you are a person who sits around writing fanfic based on a cartoon, your problems are First World Problems. You are not a totally awesome badass, you are not the nicest and most charismatic person ever, you're not out there doing exciting things... you're sitting at a desk writing about cartoon ponies. So put you in a world full of excitement and adventure and you won't know what you're doing. You're not one of the Mane 6 in the real world, you're a background pony, so why would you be anything else over there?
I'm not saying it can't be done well, but it is hard to do well, and most of those who attempt it really aren't up to the challenge. It's better when it's a crossover, then at least you're matching heroic characters with heroic characters. But odds are, if you were larger than life, you wouldn't be writing fanfic. So you simply don't match tone with other larger than life characters.
And don't get me started on the ones where the hero solves all the problems for the characters and essentially the whole plot gets rewritten to shoehorn them being awesome into it. Fact is, if the story wouldn't have gone any differently had your character not been there, your character doesn't belong there. If the character's a brony and seen every episode, then a good writer would either have it turn out that in real Equestria, Shit Ain't Like That, or else have the episode go wildly off script the first time Random Brony inserts himself into a plot action, and from that point on he has no idea what's going to happen because he's changed everything.
And if the character is going to save the day, they ought to do it with a real world talent they actually have that the ponies couldn't have (and opposable thumbs, though awesome, have been done before. Seriously, Spike's got'em.) Like, it might be really nifty if a human with a good deal of knowledge about information theory, say a computer science major or something, came over and helped Twilight find some organizing principle of magic that enables her to make breakthroughs she couldn't have otherwise, because a human with an information theory background has something no pony could have: exposure to a world of computers and the Internet. And that would be a realistic talent for a brony to have. Some of the military guys do pretty well as well, since they come over with realistic knowledge of weapons and tactics that the Mane 6 don't have. But most of the time these stories end up imbuing the character with magic. Which... isn't wrong, but it's a cop-out most of the time.
There are some ways to do the trope that it's never been done before as nearly as I can see, and I may experiment with some of them one of these days, but usually, it's just plain played out, boring, and unrealistic. And by unrealistic I don't mean by real world rules because seriously, cartoon ponies are also unrealistic; I mean it doesn't match the rules of the fictional universe.
1933761
Okay, Jordan, this is your fault.
Summary: Fluttershy is falling in love with Discord. Will he return her love? FLUTTERCORD
Fluttershy was worried. Ever since she'd reformed Discord, she'd found herself having feelings for the Spirit of Chaos. Feelings that couldn't be explained by mere friendship. Maybe... love. But wasn't falling in love with the Spirit of Disharmony a quick way to end up with a broken heart? Could he possibly return her feelings?
"YES! HE TOTALLY DOES! TELL HIM, FLUTTERSHY!"
Fluttershy stared in bemusement as a certain pink pony bounced up and down next to her. "Pinkie? When did you get here?"
"Just now, silly!"
"But... how did you know I was thinking about my feelings for Discord?"
"Because I read the summary and it said Fluttercord! That means the two of you are destined to be together in this story cause the writer said so!"
Fluttershy blinked. "That doesn't even make any sense..."
"That's okay, things don't have to make sense! Why don't you tell him right now?"
At that point Discord appeared. "Buon giornio, my little ponies! How are my favorite diminutive equines today?"
"Tell him," Pinkie said in what was supposed to be a stage whisper, except it was rather louder than that.
"Oh, I couldn't... I mean... eep..."
"My dear Fluttershy." Discord reached down and lifted Fluttershy's chin so she was looking up at him. "Can it be true that you've actually fallen in love with me? The God of Chaos? Why, I don't look anything at all like a pony, and I'm completely insecure about it! I'm a hideous, monstrous creature! How could any pony possibly care about me?"
"I care about you," Fluttershy said, fluttered up to him and kissed him.
Discord swept her into a close embrace. "Oh, my dearest Fluttershy!" He turned to Pinkie Pie. "Pinkie, be a dear for me and see if the mature box is checked? Also the box for sex?"
"Nope! Just Romance, Comedy and Random!"
"Oh. Pity that. My darling, we will have to consummate our passionate and newly formed romance offstage so that the audience can't see!"
"What?" Fluttershy said.
"Never mind. Shall we go, my sweet? I have dozens of roses and a diamond ring and all sorts of completely traditional, non-chaotic, thoroughly expected signs of my affection to give you!"
"Yay?"
With that, Fluttershy and Discord disappeared together in a flash. In front of Pinkie Pie there was a giant milkshake glass, taller than she was, with a lengthy bendy straw hanging out of it. It was full of chocolate milk, with a large dollop of whipped cream on top. In flashing neon lights, the side of the milkshake glass said, "Thanks for checking the summary for me, Pinkie, you're a true pal."
Pinkie sighed deeply. "Chocolate milk with whipped cream. Nirvana!"
At that point a random brony stepped out of the Everfree Forest and said "Wow, aren't you Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony?"
1933948
Indeed. I'm a reasonably strong and smart guy, could handle myself in a normal fight, but put me in the middle of the Everfree and I'd be monster chow. And I know it. I'm not an ex-commando who's taken up fencing on the side and can live off the land by eating snakes and building shelters out of two twigs and a leaf.
One thing I think the show does not make clear to some people (because it wants us to identify with the Mane Six and Spike) is they are all basically superheroes in the context of their world. Twilight is a powerful mage and (eventually) alicorn; Rarity can do precision multiple-object telekinesis, she's a skilled martial artist and a cunning negotiator; Fluttershy has mind control, tele-empathy and can talk to animals; Rainbow Dash is the fastest flier in that world and has a flight-field strong enough to create massive explosions; Applejack is very strong and athletic,a natural fighter; Pinkie Pie can outright warp reality and possibly causality; and Spike is a freaking dragon (though a small one). They're not just any Ponies, and if you tossed (say) six random Ponies into the middle of one of their adventures, they'd just get killed if they failed to run away fast.
Yes, and it's the sort of knowledge that might actually lead to some important Ponies taking notice of oneself beyond "Ooh, you're a very unusual creature. After you die, would you donate your body to Science?" Or, in dark alternate Equestrias, possibly being dragged off for vivisection.
Rick Cook got a whole series out of that premise (computer scientist in Fantasyland) in his Wizardry series. Information theory and game theory are both very useful fields, the latter offering logical arguments for and against moral systems (though Equestria may already have that as it's a purely mathematical discovery which could theoretically have been made in Classical Antiquity, though it's easier if you have matrix algebra).
Equestria seems to be on the threshold of proto-Information Age technologies such as electromechanical punch-card computing; they already could theoretically build a Babbage Engine given the tech in widespread use, and are close to Hollerith card filing systems. Technological knowledge in general would be useful (though one might have to beware of possible differences in physical law at the micro-scale).
Yeah ... a military veteran, especially frontline infantry or special forces, could handle himself fairly well. I don't think that the Equestrians are entirely ignorant of such things, or even the Mane Six (Twilight is the sister of a professional military officer, Rainbow Dash comes from a military subculture, and Applejack's common sense is such that she has the basic "good NCO" attitude without even having served) but there have been some real advances in the military art over the last century, and Equestria just hasn't fought that many wars recently by comparison. And humans are probably on average better "natural killers" than the Ponies -- though I wouldn't wager the chances of the average human in a life-or-death battle with (say) Applejack (who is one damn tough mare).
1933979
ROFLMAO!!! Perfect!!!
Heh. It's funny because it's true.