Do You Really Want Me To Read Your Story? · 8:36pm Aug 15th, 2012
Of course you do! Just about every story on this site was written and put up in the hopes of getting as many people to read it as possible. Trouble is, I don’t have as much time as I might like to read stories, and there are so many stories that go up on a given day, far more than I can read. So, if you want me to read YOUR story, you have to catch my attention. You’ve got... oh...
Ten seconds of /my/ time to get me to want to read what you wrote.
Go.
*bzzzt*
Time’s up.
Still befuddled and collecting your thoughts? Well, just this once I’ll write my little guide to making a /useful/ description for your story. A useful description is one that I, as your prospective reader, can use to find out if I want to read more or not. It should tell me what I can expect to find if I read the story.
It may be that I decide to pass on a story, even if it has a great description, because it isn’t want I want to read, but without a good description, my answer will be an automatic “no.” On the other hand, that means the only way to go is up!
First, here’s some more general advice on the technical side of writing your description. Invest just as much care into the description as you do to the story. It’s all I know about how well you construct words and sentences... And I don’t want to hear any excuses about your writing ability. Yeah, I can sort out poorly put together words, decifer baad speeling, and grammar unfold jumble, but it takes more of /my/ time and energy, and gets irritating, both of which can lead me to skipping your fiction. I’m going to assume the rest of the story is written the same way as you write the description. Show me how much care you put into the story by putting the same care into the cover. And if you don’t care enough to make it the best you can, why should I care enough to read it?
Also: fimfiction’s front page display eats line breaks, so ending each line with a period followed by a space will make it easier to read from the front page.
Onto the specific advice. You’ve got 4 tools for getting my attention and telling me what to expect: the story & character Tags, the story Title, the story Picture, and the story Description. With the Tags, just be honest, and check out the tutorials on using them effectively that others have made. Being deceptive with these will only anger people who read your story, expecting something different, and mean that those interested in what you’re really writing about are more likely to miss your badly-tagged story.
For the Title try for something pithy and related to the story; your goal is the metaphor that identifies the story. Brief is good. Try and be original, and stick your title idea into the search box and see what comes up before you commit to it. A unique name will help your readers spread word about your story, as they will be able to tell friends what title to search for. But, you can change the name later, if need be, so don’t obsess over it too much at the start.
The next step is the optional one: The Picture. With a good title and description you don’t need a picture to get people to read your story. But, it can help, so here are some pointers:
The pony creator can be an easy tool for creating a picture of an OC... and everyone knows this, and nearly everyone winds up using it. Don’t just toss up a screen-cap from the pony creator. It /looks/ lazy and uncreative, no matter how much time you spent in the interface’s many menus, and doesn’t reflect care being invested in the story. You can use it, but make a custom backdrop or something, a fancy title, whatever, that shows you put more time and thought into it than pressing the ‘random’ button a few times.
But, if you want something easy that doesn’t look lazy, well, there’s LOADS of FiM art out there or take an image from the show. Find something that looks at least somewhat related. Be careful, some art is popular for being used for a story, and won’t make your story stand out if you use it. Equestria Daily’s Drawfriends are a good place to start, as is http://www.ponibooru.org/ or http://bronibooru.mlponies.com/. If it’s fan-art, do the polite thing and contact the artist for permission, if you can; it’s not needed, but it’s the nice thing to do. The people that create fanart do so to express their love of the show to others, and other fans enjoying their art is one of the biggest ‘thank yous’ they can get. But using art specifically commissioned for another story is tacky, at best.
If you’re doing a crossover fic, a good shortcut is to grab a nice picture of something in the non-FiM component, something recognizable or iconic. For my Star Trek Online fic I took a screenshot of the Starfleet ship in the story, a screenshot from the game.
Now we’re into the Description itself! Because of the way fimfiction truncates story descriptions you want to put the most important and interesting stuff first, so here’s a formula you can use:
First: Interesting Stuff
Next: Other Tags
Last: Everything Else you want every reader to see
Now, to break that formula down...
Interesting Stuff should be what makes me want to read more. This can be either a 3rd person plot summery, or a few lines from the narrator about the story written 1st person. (The latter is particularly good if most/all of the story is written from that perspective) Whatever you put here, make it about the story itself, and make it INTERESTING.
Next, put in those critical details that the existing tag options don’t include. If it’s a crossover, include the themes that are being crossed. If it’s a ship-fic, include the parings. If it’s a story in a series, include enough information to find the others in the series. You can include links pretty easily, using the same syntax used for putting links in comments, in the story body, etc.
The Other Stuff category is everything else that applies to the whole story, or to the description. Telling the readers about changes you’ve made to the story (and if they need to worry about those changes), giving full credit for the image, a shout-out to your editors, etc.
If you follow this formula I can’t promise that your description will be a thing of beauty, but it will at least be solidly useful and informative.
One last bit of general advice: if you want to do chapter-specific author’s notes, put them in as a comment on the chapter before you hit the big shiny “publish” button on that chapter.
The above advice should apply to any story, written to help any author make a more useful description. The things below the line are more issues of my personal taste...
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Or to put it bluntly, things that are likely to make me stop reading your story’s description, ‘cuz they merit a nearly automatic “no” from me. Others may be less put off than I
“You must first read X before reading this”
As I mentioned above, I’ve got limited time to read fan fiction. I don’t want to have to do homework before I’m allowed to read your story. If the events in THIS story require reading your earlier story to fully ‘get it’ then it would probably work better as an addition to the first one. If you want this story to be its own story, or if the first wasn’t written by you, then put in extra effort to the writing, to bring the reader up to speed. If it is to be its own story, it should stand on its own.
“This is my first fanfic” or “I am not a native English speaker”
Again, I have limited time/energy to read stories. Unless you’ve got an absolutely STELLAR idea/story, I don’t have the time to be your creative writing teacher, or your grammar teacher. There are people in the fimfiction.net community who do like helping aspiring writers, but I’m not one of them. Check the Groups list to find these Kind and Generous souls, but today I’m being an Honest soul.
And that’s my charitable interpretation of that kind of thing. My cynical translation goes, “I don’t care enough about this story or my readers to put in any real effort to proofreading it, but I still want it to be popular, so please ignore how hard it is to read and give me a thumbs up anyway.”
Just leave those things out of the description. Even if it is your first fiction, saying so in the description is more likely to keep me from reading a story I might actually like, than it is to get me to read it.
“Brony”
Pinkie Pie breaks the fourth wall for the lulz, and gets away with it because the breaks are brief, and can be ignored by the other characters. The plot point of MLP:FiM being both a TV show AND Equestria being a real place shatters the fourth wall. It is /NOT EASY/ to use this plot point effectively, and when I see “brony” in a story description my immediate reaction is, sadly, to assume that the author is engaging in the next item in this list.
“Self-Insert”
Yeah, yeah, I’ve thought about what would happen if I found myself in Equestria, and what would happen, either as a human, or if I was converted to a native, or my pony equivalent. We all have. But while it’s a useful exercise as an author to contemplate such, it doesn’t make for an interesting or original story; just about EVERYONE has written a story like this at some point. There isn’t much in the way of new ground for you to cover. A story with nothing new to say isn’t going to be interesting enough to be worth my time.
Further, writing a believable, interesting, and flawed character in a work of fiction requires understanding that character. Understanding, their motivations, strengths, weaknesses, virtues, vices, etc. And I’m not just talking about physical weaknesses, I’m talking about interpersonal, personality weaknesses. And it is DAMN hard to know yourself well enough to pull this off.
This doesn’t mean you can’t use your avatar as a character; just make sure that your avatar character isn’t YOU.
...No. That's not how a sequel works. It's the same thing in books. You don't read Eldest and not Eragon. You don't read The Return of the King without reading The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. People are allowed to write sequels that require the reader to have read prior works in order to understand what's going on. There is no need to make each story "stand on its own," as you put it.
I know a lot of us feel the same way about these excuses.
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My counter-argument is that The Fellowship of the Ring isn't a complete story on its own. I'm not saying that each story has to stand on its own, I just want to be able to pick up a series in a later book, if I should want to, without being told that I /have/ to go read a prior one. I read Thud! long before I read Guards, Guards without any substantial confusion, and a lot more desire to read the earlier books.
Also, there's a reason I put it below the 'your mileage may vary' line in my essay; I'm actually reconsidering this point.
428405
It's also the sort of statement that INVITES criticism in the comments, (the best kind, specific and actionable criticism) so if you're going to use it, I hope you know what's coming.
428424 I see a lot of people that use those phrases specifically to get constructive criticism, so there is that. So I hate it as an excuse, but I don't care so much when it's a plea for help. In a sense.
428439
Truth. I can put up with a LOT from someone I can see is trying to improve. That's why I put it below the line; I don't really have time to be one of those helpers. I will say, as an author that hasn't been featured on The Train Wreck Explorers, that good constructive criticism can be a big help. As well as letting me know what I can improve, it tells me that people care enough to invest their own time into my work.
Ponibooru was shut down in August.
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I did not realize that. I think I know a good replacement... Thanks for the catch.
434887
derpibooru?
Excuse me for a moment.
That first moment, you set your creation out, worried that a stray raindrop will wet the paper and cause it to come crashing down. That moment when someone first likes, that moment when someone first reads, that moment when someone first comments. I must write, I cannot stop the drive that makes me jump to paper, and type. Write write write, done. Read it over, fix errors, and step back and think. What do I do with this? I want so improve, but I can only walk so far alone...I need a site, a person, a chance. Here, a welcoming site, fresh author, fresh story. Not the first, a lot of people around, must make my story unique, but also not. Nothing is unique, except my view of it, my interpretation of it. Start small, start with an idea that's been done before. Write write write, it's done, the world is there and now to let it fly on it's own, and hope for the best.
Fly, fly please fly. Silence, nothing, no comments. Sadness, but I cannot abandon my characters, leave them standing in their idleness, left there for eternity. Another chapter, write write write. What is this? Comment...Comment, write write write, critique. New story, new idea write write write, what is this? People,commenting, replying, coming. Critique, of course it seems of obvious now. Write write write, revise review wish for prereader but too afraid to ask. Featured, more people, more comments, must keep them guessing, keep them from the expected, not resort to the status quo. Revise revise revise and...done. Finished, far from perfection, but story complete. What now? Sequal, write write write. More people, more comments, people like it.
Idea for new story, inspiration, write, twice as many on my other one. New idea, new story, more people, more comments. Must write, must learn, must create with what skill I have been given, craft the world around them, immerse them so they can see what I see. Get better, featured, critique, suggestion on how to get pre reader, lucky so lucky they granted me with their skills. Write write write, must not let them down, must not let myself down, must not let the characters down, I must write. Must grow, must learn. Slowly, step by step, one fanfic at a time. Learn the skills with help along the way, and then, finally I can create THE story. Always there, always waiting for it's chance. But I must keep you up there, until a time I can stand up to the level you deserve, I cannot fail you.
I will write you one day, bring you to life, and maybe(just maybe) you can fly free, there for people to enjoy.
Sorry about that, I was struck by this urge to write that down, and I don't resist the urge to write, ever. No matter the story, no matter the cliche, excluding romance because I'm not into those kind of stories, I will write.
Do I want you to read my story? Course I do, I LIVE for it. Do I need it? No, at the end of the day I will continue writing. Slowly improving, but never stoping.
You can't keep me down, one view, one thousand, one million I don't care. Each one is a gust of wind keeping my story aloft, but I can blow the wind if no one else does. Why? Because it's my right as the author, my right to keep my story going, even if no one else likes it. And you know what?
I'd love every moment of it. Watching my characters move, breathe, cry, laugh. Tell me, do you have what it takes to be an author? Do I? No, I do not. But by hell, I'm not giving up until the last breath leaves my lips.