grumping...

[ratcreature]

Why do some authors not provide summaries? Or even just an excerpt they like, or a quoted line, or something? I'm collating the SGA thematic list I talked about earlier from my bookmarks, and how am I supposed to come up with a summary for some epic that I read months ago that I then tagged for having interesting aliens, when not even the author provided one?

I mean, with short stories I can at least sum up the point myself, perhaps not in the most flattering way, but frankly if an author cared about facilitating decent blurbs when others link to their stories, they would have written one in the first place. But that just doesn't work so well with epics, especially when the things I remember don't make a good summary, and rereading whole novels and novellas is a bit more of a hurdle than glancing over a 2,000 word story again. *grumble*

Comments

[caia-comica.livejournal.com]

I have no idea! Personally, I'm much less likely to even *read* stuff, much less tag it for posterity, if it doesn't have a summary or something attached. I like to have some idea what I'm going to be reading!

[ratcreature]

Yeah, true.

I'll read if I like the author, and I even don't have much problem reccing such stories, for which I then just say that it is a great action-adventure and whatever my reaction was (actually one of the stories I have this problem with now I have recced previously), but that endorsement isn't anything I could use for just listing it somewhere.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really hate that! With both fics and vids, actually. It's something that bugs me about the sga newsletter, because you have to just kind of guess from the title and rating if the story would be good (sometimes they give characters too, but it's often misleading). And if I don't know song/artist and approximate content for a vid (eg character, pairing, humorous or serious, etc) I won't go to the trouble of downloading it.

ff.net is particularly bad about having simply horrible summaries (or non-summaries like "I don't know how to describe this story"). If the *author* can't figure out what it's about, I'm not going to bother trying to read it unless I already know that I like the author's stories (but most of the good ones don't do that).

[ratcreature]

It totally sucks when you want to list a story somewhere. I'm maybe a third through my bookmarks and already there are two great long stories that have no summary. I'm seriously considering to list one of them based on what I remember most, i.e. like "No summary provided by author-- it's the one with the waterpark, where they fall into a bear pit and rescue a princess." Which is true, but doesn't really do the story justice. OTOH obviously the author doesn't care.