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sourweather-fics · 9 hours ago

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I'm Gonna Talk About AO3 Fic Summaries For a Minute:

I'm saying this with all the love in my heart and I'm saying it to hopefully help some fellow fic writers:

If your fics have a tendency to flop, especially if the ship is popular enough that multiple fics get posted a day, there's a possibility that you may just not be good at writing summaries.

And I get it! Writing summaries is the WORST! I just wrote the whole fic, now you're telling me I gotta write it again but in a short way? Well yes! Because the summary is the part people are actually looking at to decide whether or not to click on your fic. For a lot of (I would even say Most) people, tags are usually not enough unless the tag happens to be their super niche fixation.

The good news is that writing a fic summary is not actually hard. The better news is that the best summaries are short! I feel like the expected comparison would be that you want it to look like the blurb on the back of a book, but I'm gonna take it a step further and say you actually want it to look like an elevator pitch for a book, which is to say, like 3 sentences. You only need a paragraph.

There are a lot of great articles online on how to write an elevator pitch, and I genuinely think a lot of what you'll find in them applies to a good Fic Summary, but let me give you an idea of the pattern I'm most fond of. It's something like:

"X is Y. But when Z occurs, X becomes A."

1: establish the existing circumstances. Give us an idea of something that is true at the beginning of your story

2: introduce the inciting action. What causes the existing circumstances to shift.

3: hint at how characters might react to the inciting action. It depends on the story you're telling how much you'll want to give away here, but you can be vague if you want, just give us an idea.

Some examples of the summaries for a few of my fics so you can see how I apply the formula:

"The first time you make eye contact with your soul mate, you see a vision of their greatest accomplishment. They call it your Peak. Unfortunately for Will Graham, his soul mate's Peak is a vision of blood and horror. Fortunately for Hannibal Lecter, his soul mate's is too."

-this is the summary for my most read fic. Four sentences, in and out. As you can see, it adheres to the formula pretty exactly. The first two sentences establish the conceit of the au and tell us what world we're in, the other two sentences tell us both what the inciting action is and how both romantic leads will (at least initially) respond to it.

"Will and Bev have a game they like to play. They go to bars and see who can get the most phone numbers from strangers. One night, he meets a very interesting stranger. Is he safe falling hard and fast for Hannibal Lecter, or is the mysterious man making his way into Will's heart hiding something much more sinister beneath the surface?"

-this one was a lot tougher to summarize, because the hook of this fic is actually that it leans really hard into the idea that the reader knows Hannibal is a serial killer but Will doesn't. But I wanted to make it clear that it was also an Alternate First Meeting AU, so I eventually arrived at this 4-sentence summary that might not be perfect but still gets the job done. Also, including it here allows me to talk about my trick of ending the summary with a question. It's a little bit cheesy, but sometimes that's what I'm going for. It's very "will Vanessa stay with Roberto or leave him for Sebastian? Tune in Monday night to find out!" In a way that I think is kind of cute and fun.

"Will is both embarrassed and intrigued when he finds himself drawn to a collar at the pet store. When Hannibal finds out by mistake, it escalates into some very ethically questionable therapy"

-included this one just to show that the formula can work for smut, too. This one's only 2 sentences but it tells you everything you need to know

Okay one last thing I want to address before I leave this way-too-long post, and thats the inclusion of quotes from the fic in your summary. I don't personally do this very often, but I totally think it can get people to click if you use it correctly. In fact there have definitely been some fics that I might've scrolled past, but their voices for the characters were just too perfect. The keys to using quotes in your summary, in my opinion, are:

-Stick to sections that are mainly dialogue. If your voice for your characters is good, that's a selling point. Show that off.

-Make the selection relevant to your pitch. Use quotes that relate back to the inciting action.

-include a Summary after/before your quote. The quote alone is not enough. Even if it's just one sentence, sum up the hook in your summary.

-keep it brief! Only give us what we need to know we wanna click the link!

Okay that's all I got for now but I hope this is helpful to someone out there maybe 💖 good luck, writing summaries is annoying but you gotta do it.

#fanfic #ao3 #writing advice #writing #fan fiction

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sourweather-fics · 8 days ago

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It's new years you know what that means: time for me to share my favorite snippets of my fics from every month of 2024!!!

January:

I was twenty-nine, at the time, and desperate to find some remnant of Charlotte. Something solid enough to close my first around, something I could clutch to my chest when the whole world looked like it was burning. It wasn’t an accident that it all happened when it did. I woke up one night, sweating bullets after another nightmare. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment, in the not-so-nice part of Natchitoches, trying like hell to figure out what I was gonna do with the rest of my life now that I’d left the force— and it hit me like a brick to my gut.

Charlotte Graham was twenty-eight, when she died. And there I was, feeling clueless and lost and so fucking young— but I’d outlived her. I was older than she’d ever been, ever would be. And it felt so… wrong. Not even in the sense that it was cruel, or unfair. It felt wrong in the most basic, logical sense. She couldn’t have been younger than me. She was already married, when she died. Already had a husband to leave behind, a son to feel lost without her. She can’t have been so young.

I was clawing at the image of her in my head, ripping paper to shreds and feeling furious when I found nothing underneath. I was convinced, somehow, that some integral unseen piece of me was locked inside of Charlotte, that I needed to understand her, and then I would finally understand myself.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/53239315

February:

“I suppose I wouldn’t keep coming here, if I wasn’t getting anything out of it.”

Nigel whistles, takes a sip of his own drink. “You really know how to make a guy feel special, don’t you, angel?” he deadpans.

“I can either stroke your cock or your ego, Nigel. I don’t have the energy to do both.”

Another low laugh. Nigel shakes his head. There’s something fond on his face, he tries to hide it behind the rim of his glass but I see it. I knock my drink back so fast that I barely even taste it.

He’s not a bad guy, Nigel. That is, he’s a terrible fucking person, but he can be alright to be around. We’ve got some strange, unspoken understanding going between us. There’s something ugly in Nigel’s past, something he’s been running from ever since it happened. He can tell that I’m in the same boat, I think.

It makes my stomach twist. Paradoxically, I almost think I’d like him better if I liked him less. He doesn’t have any illusions about what this is, we’re both just using each other to get out of our own heads for the night. Still, I get this sick, guilty feeling whenever I catch him looking at me like I’m his friend.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59977387

March:

'I don’t really like thinking about the future much, to be honest.’

‘Why not?’

He frowned, hard. He regretted bringing it up, now. ‘It’s hard for me to picture a future that has me in it, I guess,’ he signed, and winced up at Hannibal. ‘Is that depressing?’

‘A little,’ Hannibal replied with a sad smile. He reached out, caressed the side of Will’s face. ‘You’ll be there, though. It won’t be like this forever. Things will change.’

Will sighed. There was something so… effortless, about Hannibal’s brand of hope. It soaked in easily, slipped through the cracks of Will’s cynicism. The world just seemed better, when they were together.

Hannibal nudged at his chin with the tips of two fingers, playfully urging him to cheer up. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up, darling?’

He thought it over for a long while, listening to the river flow by and leaves rustling in an errant breeze. Eventually, he lifted his hands. Curled them into fists, placed his thumbs over his middle knuckles. He crossed his wrists, pushed them away from each other, twisted his hands outward.

‘Free.’

https://archiveofourown.org/works/35340571/chapters/137387179

April:

He moved to stand at Nigel’s side, leaning against the kitchen counter and swirling the dark liquid a little before bringing it to his lips. He grimaced at the taste, quickly setting the bottle down, but he made himself swallow it anyway. Nigel laughed again, giving Adam another glimpse of his sharp teeth.

Adam huffed in embarrassment. Nigel’s laughter rang in his ears, made him feel childish and hot all over. He lifted a hand to wipe the beer from his mouth, but Nigel caught his wrist. Not tight enough to hurt, but more than enough to make every thought in Adam’s head screech to a halt.

Before Adam could so much as question him, Nigel’s mouth was on his own. His muscles went board stiff, paralyzed in place while Nigel kissed him. Nigel sighed against his mouth, gently kissing the alcohol from his lips.

Adam remembered how to move a few seconds later, and quickly turned his head away. The kiss couldn’t have been more than a handful of moments, but Adam panted like he hadn’t breathed in hours. The air tasted like beer, like the smoke that’s always clinging to Nigel’s clothes, like cinnamon gum.

“Tastes better on you,” Nigel breathed into Adam’s ear, and Adam shivered from head to toe.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59538061

May:

I was working on my book okay cut me some slack

June:

He shoves Will under the water, then, grinding his cheek painfully into the ground. Bubbles fly from his mouth, his nose. His father’s hand is tangled up in the knotted mess of his hair. With his heart pounding like this, his lungs start to burn in seconds. He reaches up, fights with all his remaining strength to shove at the arms holding him down. His father’s other hand pins him by the chest. When pushing doesn’t work, Will starts to claw at him.

Will’s chest spasms. Every cell in his body begs him to open his mouth, to breathe. The heel of his creator’s palm forces the meat of his cheek hard against his own teeth, it feels like one of them might snap loose. Will’s hands turn clumsy, dumb. He can’t feel his fingers.

Eyes rolling, Will looks up through the haze of water. It’s late afternoon, the sun is mere minutes away from ducking behind the trees. It’s bright, warm. It feels wrong, Will thinks, seeing the sun right now.

In scary movies, people get killed in the dark. You’re not supposed to die in broad daylight.

Helpless, he caves to the pressure. His body forces him to gasp, sucking water down his throat. Will paws at the arm pinning his chest for another moment, then his hand slips down. His vision is going dark around the edges. He wraps his hand around his father’s wrist, he squeezes. The gurgling of the river sounds like his mother’s voice.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/35340571/chapters/144330733

July:

"Christmas in July, it's today. What, you never heard of it?"

"I have." In gimmicky sales advertisements and commercials for hokey TV movie marathons, primarily. He's never met a soul who actually observed it, though. It's an illegitimate holiday, at best. A string of meaningless words to be thrown around during the months where nothing particularly interesting happens. "I just don't usually... participate."

Adam's hand finds Lawrence's chest. They've both been sleeping in nothing but their underwear, lately. Trying to get the best of this damned heatwave. Unfortunately it doesn't do much to cool them off when they can hardly keep their hands off one another. Like overeager twenty-somethings, even a glimpse of Adam's bare spine beside him in the darkness is enough to make Lawrence ache.

Adam traces idling paths into Lawrence's skin as he speaks, fingertips dancing over his chest. "Oh man, I celebrate it every year. Have since I was a teenager. It's the best." He snorts, laughing at some unseen memory just behind his eyes. "Me and my roommate, we threw this huge party one year, and— you know that board game, LIFE? She had an old set in the back of her closet, so we made up a LIFE drinking game. But everybody wanted to play, and it only comes with like five of the little plastic minivans, so we had people using, like, bottle caps and shit. And my friend Ash, she was a crazy lightweight, right? She was the kinda chick to get fucking wasted off like three Mike's Hard Lemonades. And she made it all the way to the part at the end where you get old and retire without throwing up, and we were all so proud of her that we just declared her the winner. We weren't gonna count up all that fuckin paper money, anyway, who the fuck wants to do math on Christmas?"

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57673036

August:

Perhaps Will couldn't bring himself to do it, even after all they’d been through.

Hannibal scowls to himself as he sits up in bed, entirely and irrevocably awake. It's possible, of course. It wouldn't be the first time that Will's conviction has wavered, where Hannibal is concerned. Perhaps he saw Hannibal, sleeping and vulnerable, and that anger within him faded. Just slightly, just enough to give Will pause.

The thought makes Hannibal's heart stumble, plucks at his most humiliating weaknesses. It's something he's noticed before. Even when Will wants, more than anything, to kill him, he never seems to actually want Hannibal dead. No, Will wants them both suspended in the violence, trapped together on the razor’s edge of life and death, forever.

It’s the closest thing to being truly loved that Hannibal’s ever felt.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60678688

September:

The darkness is typically a sign that Adam's already crept off to bed, but the lazy croon of an old lounge song drifting in from the far end of their apartment tells him otherwise. Nigel lets himself be guided by it, pulled down the hall and all the way to their bathroom, a gentle glow peeking at him from beneath the door. He's close enough to identify the song, now. Julie London, ‘I'm Glad There is You.’ One of those songs that makes Adam want to slow dance in their kitchen, to tuck his face in the crook of Nigel's throat and sway against him all night long. Nigel takes the doorknob in hand, and pushes it slowly open.

Just shy of two years, they've been together, but Adam still manages to take Nigel's fucking breath away from time to time. He's soaking in the tub, languishing like a chick in an old oil painting. His pretty, pale body stretches out beneath the water, one arm propped on the rim of the tub to hold a small paperback novel safely out of the splash zone.

He looks up at Nigel when the door opens, crystal blue eyes flicking to his lover's mouth. His petal lips curl into a welcoming smile.

"Hi."

Not for the first time, Nigel is reminded of how exceedingly fucking lucky he is. "Steaua mea căzută," Nigel purrs, moving to kneel beside the tub. He leans close, and Adam turns his face to accept a soft kiss to his cheek. My fallen star.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61182601

October:

I was moving idk

November:

"...I mostly just wanted to say that I'm still here, I guess. And that I— I don't really know if I necessarily believe in heaven or hell, or anything like that, but... I hope that wherever you are, right now, it's nice."

Across the circle, Margot smiles at Will. Will doesn't notice. A lone car drives down the road that passes the cemetery, and its headlights cast Will's face in eerie relief for a single, fleeting instant. His features seem to glow in their wake, his eyes like burning stars.

"I miss you," he adds, softer than before. "I don't know how, I barely knew you. But I do. Sometimes... Sometimes, you show up in my dreams. And I wake up angry."

He laughs at himself, breathy and rough. "I get so mad at you, some nights. Really, really mad. Because I don't understand how you could leave me here, like this. Wherever you went, you should've taken me with you. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, now. You were my mother, you were supposed to help me figure shit out.”

Will sniffs. For a few breaths, he doesn't speak. Hannibal watches as he ducks his head, smearing his wet cheek against his shoulder without breaking the circle.

"...But I love you. So much. I wish I'd gotten to know you better. I'm just… just sorry that we didn't get more time."

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60277048

December:

The thoughts Daniel is boradcasting start to stray. He tries to maintain focus, but little flashes find their way to Armand regardless. Daniel, fourteen, begging his mother to bake her special chocolate cake recipe for his birthday. The one with a cup of dark roast coffee in the batter. It's his last birthday before his mother begins to see him as a disappointment. The cake tastes like love.

The frosting melts on Daniel's tongue. Armand licks his lips, chasing a flavor that isn't there. Daniel, seven, holding a mug of hot chocolate that his grandmother made for him. The mug is too large for him. He holds it in both hands, smells the steam. The warmth from the first sip feels like a hug, like it touches every part of him.

Armand doesn't tell him to focus. He keeps eating. Chocolate. Daniel, twenty-two. Armand sitting beside him, right now, lips gently parted like he's on the very edge of speaking. Armand's lips, his kiss, the way words seem to dance on his tongue. Chocolate. Armand's hands. Turning the pages of a book, plucking at the buttons on his shirt, wrapped around a coffee cup in a diner at three A.M. Chocolate. Black hair spilling over a pillowcase, long legs that effortlessly fall in step with his own when they walk together, glowing eyes like a big neon sign, one that points toward home.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61808881

2024 was a big year for my writing! I know my fics were coming out a bit slow but I was doing a lot of original work that I'm hoping y'all will enjoy next year!!!

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