Summary

It's hard for me to write summaries for drabbles, because I stick to the "100 word" rule. I'm afraid if I leave a summary, it'll give away the whole plot.

I try to write a summary that alludes to the plot but doesn't give it away. Like a quote from a character in my story or just a general quote. Also something that is not generic makes the story seem more interesting.

Summaries are only difficult for me when I've already written some of the story itself. Sometimes a random summary will pop into my head and I'll write a story based off of it. But other times I just write and then when I try to come up with a summary, it fails. It would probably be better for someone else to write it for me!

For chaptered fics, I try to write a summary that would mirror the summaries featured on the back cover of a novel and that would be a fair representation of what the story's going to be about without giving too much away.

It kind of annoys me when people just have song lyrics or a quote as their summary for a chaptered fic because that's really not enough for me to know what I'm getting into as a reader. I also really despise summaries that include questions, if only because I feel like if you're asking the question, you kinda already know the answer. For example, if I see something along the lines of, "Will Jane ever find love?" or "Will their relationship be more than just a summer romance?" I kind of already know that the answer is yes based on the question.

For drabbles and oneshots under 10,000 words or so, I feel like it's okay to have a quote, lyrics, a short excerpt from the piece because it can be difficult to summarized shorter pieces without giving a substantial bit of the story away.

I hate when summaries give too much away. Or when they end things with a question and the answer is obvious. Like "will they fall in love?" Yes. Yes, they probably will.