How-to: Make Your Story Page Interesting — Part 4: Description · 6:07pm May 20th, 2014
Oh hi. You’re still here. Huh. That’s cool. Welcome back! With title, cover image, and tags out of the way, we’ve completed the things that are mandatory for the first glance of an average reader to get attention. Now we need to focus on the thing that reader glances at only split seconds after: the description.
This is by far going to be the most subjective of all lessons and also the longest one (about twice as long as the previous ones). Remember when I said this entire series is all just my personal opinions and everything I say has potential to be downright wrong? Yeah, make that double for this blog. I will still try my best though.
Let’s get started!
Length
Looking at the description from a purely pixel-oriented way, the size it takes is by far the biggest one on the average story page. That has a good reason too: the nicest cover image and funniest story title mean nothing if the reader feels like the story isn’t great. More than that, though, is that the rule “less is more” applies here way more than all the other aspects combined.
When you browse through lists of stories, whether by a certain author or the entire search function, you want to know immediately or at least in a very short time if this and this story is worth your time. That means long descriptions will just turn readers away because they don’t care enough to read the entire thing, even if your story is the greatest thing ever.
Therefore I’ve given myself a certain limit/rule I always keep in mind when designing my descriptions:
Long Description = Short Description
In other words, the 250 characters you get as limit for writing the short description is your best friend. Instead of writing a long description and then shortening it down to that size, write the short description and then simply copy it over to the long one. Not only does this save you time by not doing the work twice, you’ll also find that writing with such limited space can be very helpful to summarize your story to the minimal aspects.
Mostly, though, it’ll encourage your reader to read the description. If you have a story that can’t be summed up in two or three sentences at the most you are doing something very, very wrong. Yes, there are exceptions, but somehow you MUST be able to shorten what you’re trying to say. There is no case where one needs a novel to describe a novel.
Meta Content
There’s only one thing to mention: I’m only talking about the description of the story itself; meta content such as a list of editors and everything is fine to be added of course. However, and I want this to be very clear:
Even though your editors and friends and whatnot are awesome people and rightfully deserve their spotlight in the description, don’t put them over your description! In fact, don’t put anything over your description. Every time I see someone telling me their story was featured on day X, that it is a one-shot, or putting that obnoxious “This is 100% approved by Twilight’s Library!” banner into their description I could cry, but it’s much worse when they feel like this information is so necessary to be put right at the top of the description. Argh.
Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but the Twilight’s Library banner, for example, is so freaking huge that it leads to our next topic:
Vertical Size
Because the description doesn’t have any limit (at least one that I’m aware of), people can just add content to it forever and ever. For designing purposes, a description simply breaks off at a certain length. This brings us back to the issue of discouraging your reader to actually take their time and read the entire thing. That’s why some people simply go by the More button: if it exists, the description is obviously too long.
Now that doesn’t mean every description with this button is bad. In fact, sometimes it’s nice to have some interesting side facts listed there or even a carefully organized list of fan content. However, this button to expand the description should ONLY be used for that. If the actual description of what your story is about is hidden in there it will just further turn your reader away.
Additionally, try to design your expansion button around the paragraphs. It’s just annoying when a sentence cuts off in the middle because
Writing the Description
Awesome, we got the technical aspects of a description out of the way. What’s missing? Oh right, the description itself.
Here’s where things get tricky, because one problem exists, sadly: no matter what you do, it’ll never be perfect. Of course, this applies to anything, but I personally feel like the description is always the thing that lacks the most. Therefore, it is vital for you to bring across the most important aspect of a description as good as possible:
A description isn’t about telling the reader what your story is about, it’s to show him why he should read it!
Memorize this and you already won half the battle. This falls back to the "Character Verbs (a) Noun" death threat we already talked about for the title. Well, yes, of course you need to talk about what your story is about, but that’s not the only thing you do there and by far not the main point of a description. You want to make the reader interested.
For that there is a simple trick you can use. Basically, talk about a bunch of trivial facts of your story. Then, add a twist, without directly mentioning what it is. This twist can be a pun, foreshadowing, etc. As an example I will use a story of myself (The Perfect Gift for a Cellist). Sorry for spoilers.
Octavia loves cellos—that’s a fact. Octavia loves hot nights—that’s also a fact.
Vinyl has the best idea ever for Hearts and Hooves Day.
This is literally what I described above with facts and foreshadowing. Without knowing what the story is about, you know that something is going down. Of course, what happens from here is different from reader to reader, but the point of the description was done: everything was summarized in two lines.
Now I’m going to give you a description of the same story and show you how boring you can be if you don’t even really try and put too much unimportant information into it:
Vinyl Scratch, a famous DJ, and her marefriend Octavia, a popular cellist of Canterlot, have a nice day out on Hearts and Hooves Day. They talk for a little while and enjoy each other’s company. After a while, Vinyl Scratch says she has a gift for Octavia. However, that gift turns out to be a sex toy and Octavia is angry about it.
Wow, this was tougher to write than it looks, but I hope you can see where I’m coming from. The amount of mishaps in this description are just insane. It’s too long (goes above the limit of 250 characters), puts a bunch of unimportant crap in it (we don’t need to know who Vinyl and Octavia are), and it presents the story’s premise without any additional charm.
But the most important problem is that it outright spoils the entire story. Now that I already know what that special gift is and how Octavia reacts, I am only left with the possibility of seeing HOW she reacts, which may or may not be still interesting for some people, but I can definitely tell I wouldn’t be interested in such a story by one bit.
However, that is a 1k-words short story. Usually writing a description there is not hard at all. Therefore, let’s look at another, longer story, once again by my lovely Spanish friend: Long Story Short, Things Went Down by Aragón.
When Carrot Top discovers that her coltfriend is cheating on her, her first reaction is to kick him to next Monday. The fact that at the moment her coltfriend is attending Blueblood’s birthday party doesn’t seem to convince her otherwise.
The good news, her friends are all there to get her out of trouble.
The bad news, her friends are all a bunch of sociopaths.
This a case where the rule of three sentences at max can be broken. It is simply not possible to describe what is happening here without making that compromise. However, since the story has over 50,000 words, that is also excusable. Remember this: the longer your story is, the longer your description may be.
But anyway, I wanted to talk about the contents. The selling point is obviously those two lines at the bottom. We don’t get presented what exactly these sociopathic friends are and why exactly it’s a bad thing, but we know (also in connection with the title, "Long Story Short, Things Went Down") that bad things are bound to happen. I do not want to destroy the story of Aragón by spoiling anything, but I can say the description could’ve ruined the entire thing if it didn’t add some twist or if it outright told us what the deal with the story is.
As final words, although I expect this to be self-explanatory: Make sure there aren't any typos or other grammar mistakes in your description! Naturally, that goes for the entire story too. The difference is that a description with bad mistakes casts a very bad light on the entire story, further reducing your chances for attention.
God dammit, these blogs are getting longer and longer. Well, I knew the description was going to be the toughest aspect, so that was to be expected. The worst part is that I still feel like I forgot to mention a billion things, but I didn’t want to bore you too much either. The human attention span is a dick…
But hey, now we’re technically done with the story page! The only thing left is a little thing about chapters and word count which I will (hopefully) shortly talk about in the next and last part of this series.
Tuna!
You are falling into "shenanigans ensue" trap. It's as bad as X does Y.
Shenanigans ensue in every interesting story. That's what makes story good to read. Saying "somethings gonna happen" in description does not help.
I prefer stories that give short background information instead.
X is a sales pony. Now he moves to Canterlot and tries to find love.
vs
X moves to Canterlott and tries to find love. Shenanigans ensue.
Your examples are just padded X does Y.
All you did was shorten does for 's and added some useless padding.
You could have written "Cellos,hot nights, Hearts and Hooves Day" and I would have gotten same amount of information, as long as you tagged property.
That said X does Y is the best description you can give. Simply if its the only thing happening in the story, it's probably ether really short story, or a bad one. I like X does Y descriptions, as they are easy to read, and tell me exactly what to expect.
As long as you don't add spoilers to it
is perfectly valid short description. And it has warning about what is probably gonna happen.
Is a bad description, as it gives away whats gonna happen.
would be same thing without X does Y Stamp.
MY favorite descriptions are from MarineMarksman
Short and to the point, without giving us any real spoilers, while explaining what is in the story.
I hope you understood where I am going with this.
Man these tings are hard to explain, and you end up using examples, instead of saying anything smart.
I guess I am trying to say that you need to put the story focus in the description without spoilers. It's really hard to say what kind of background information you can give without spoiling the story, as each story has different twist.
So tell what your story is about without spoilers.
2129258
As I said in the first part of this blog, everything is subjective and that goes double for the descriptions. Everyone has different tastes and interests, so it's only natural that my personal preferences differ from yours. I personally don't think "shenanigans ensue" is anywhere near as bad as X does Y, as long as it's done properly.
However, I think I was pretty clear when I said that you shouldn't put any spoilers in the description, so I don't get what you're trying to say with this:
I felt like I explained that pretty well.
Also, thanks for making these comments. You're the only guy who actually takes his time to read into my blogs. :V
I must say thanks, for these blogs have been really helpful with fixing up a lot of problems with my story. I can't wait to read more of these.
2129293 You put way more emphasis on foreshadowing, then not giving spoilers. What is foreshadowing for some, is spoilers for others. Especially in fan fiction, when you already are familiar with characters.
2129331
Two more to come (well, really just one and a half). Thanks.
2129345
Eh, I didn't know emphasis matters to get the point across. Quite honestly, I think everyone should know themselves how much they want to give away in the description, so I ruled it all out with that example of my own story.
Once again, my main interest in descriptions is showing me why I should read the story, not telling me what it's about. I think foreshadowing is the best tool for that.
I dunno about others, but I really like leaving in quite a bit of mystery in the description. I usually just barely have enough to let the reader get the general idea and where it could go, even if there are a bazillion ways that it actually could go. I've always like those myself because the description is basically acting as your hook.
The hook is the first line of your story, right? It's the first thing people read. So in this instance, the description is your hook, which in turn makes it tied with the single most important part of the entire story (the other part being the end). Well, the title is also the first thing they read, but whatever :P
2130617
That's exactly what I mean with "show us why we should read your story, don't tell us what it's about". Of course, the challenge here lies in finding that perfect balance between mystery and still talking about what the story is.
Hmm. A thoughtful way of doing things.
I have a different way of operating when writing a description, so allow me to clarify.
You are indeed correct that most of the time, a reader will want a short, to the point short synopsis when evaluating a story to see if it is worth their time or not. Often the limit is two paragraphs maximum. However, I sometimes find myself drawn to more detailed descriptions to give me a hint for what is in store. I suppose it might partially have to do with me being a fast reader, but I actually like long descriptions to be included to give me a general idea if this story will carter more specifically to my interest.
The way I write descriptions is to first write up the short synopsis and have it at the top. After that, anything is completely optional. I.E: Having a long synopsis at the bottom end to give more detail for a potential would be reader if they need some form of clarification. I suppose you could say that the long description for me is the bait attached to the lure. The lure is fine, but the bait is the extra juicy tease that the reader will find if they wish to proceed further on.
Otherwise I find no additional tidbits that I find off point.
2135152
I like that people object and show their opinion on this matter. It underlines that you really can't please everyone when creating the story page.
With you being a fast reader I can only understand why you have no problem with longer descriptions. However, I wrote this guide based on personal experiences and the input of people I talk to regularily. I also added some statistics into the consideration (mostly average reading speed). I wrote down what I believe is the best "casual solution", so to say.
2135289 Might i make a suggestion that you do a blog on the topic of canon and fanon?
Something to do with how to resolve a conflict between the two. This one is a personal request, considering my history with this fandom has led to some rather... Sour moments. As in giving up in even having a fanon kind of thing.
Mostly this request has to do with on how it seems rather pointless to even keep a fanon if all that is going to happen is that it will break at some point in time. I don't know about you, but it feels that there is some semi-passive aggressive aura in the air that conveys a message that one must be true to canon, no matter how big your epileptic tree is at the time. I believe that our local Latias has already done a small blog on such a thing, but I would like your opinion on the issue, seeing as you seem to be a mostly neutral party in such an affair. I apologize if I appear to be forcing this on you, but I have been looking answers to such a conflict for a long time, ever since Season 2 start to be specific.
What I want to know is if it is possible to have a number of separate "inner mind" universes inside one's own head, each having a different mix of the amount of fanon and canon in each.
I.E: One universe completely devoted to the fanon mythology dedicated in it, regardless of what canon might have come along in the meantime. Mind you, the original spirit of the show is still preserved, just branched off so to speak.
Another would be in a sense that a writer continues to employ both fanon and canon in separate projects or in a mix if one so desires.
Something to this effect if you could elaborate with your own opinion on the matter would be very much appreciated.
2135723
That sounds like me being the a messiah and deciding what's wrong and right on a whole different level than I already did it here. Eh, no thanks.
2135942 No, not that.
Just your own two bits to contribute.
Though I understand if you do not wish to write the blog.
Still, something would be nice to have eventually in the future if you are able to at some point.