Reader's Guide to Writing Fanfiction

the first thing you see

Ok for this chapter I won't be as harsh cause I realize sometimes I can be really mean...

However this chapter will also be slightly on the negative side :))

(Also holy frick I just saw a bird fly into the side of a building and die)

Alrighty folks, let's talk about the first thing that people see/do when trying to find a good fic to read. They look at the cover photo + read the title.

In my experience, cover photos say a ton about the story you write. Usually, an original photo with a fancy title on it and the author's username on it = better written stories. HOWEVER, this doesn't exactly mean that stories without covers or original titles aren't any good either. Sometimes I get lazy and don't feel like putting a nice photo together, or I just simply don't have the storage to do that- so I can imagine other people with the same problems. (Also this is why this specific story's cover looks so unprofessional. It was made with snapchat lol.)

Now, this leads me to my next point.

Since we know that good covers and original titles are something that really catches the reader's eye but still aren't everything...

THE STORY'S SUMMARY MAKES OR BREAKS THE READING DEAL.

if a story has a bomb frickin ass summary you can expect I will read the shit out of that fic. For example,,:

Tessa Summers never thought her life would be the same after blah blah blah. So she moves to Random Idaho Town with only two belongings in hand, and the keys to her car in her other.

One cool evening cruising down the street, she spots someone she thought she would never see again. His tousled hair and harsh eyes were timeless and left imprints on her thoughts she tried to eliminate.

Although this is a pretty basic summary, it is so much better than:

Tessa Summers moves to a new town. Will something romantic happen with the hot boy across the street ;) read to find out

The third thing is: a story with a bad summary and a good cover/title can still push someone (at least me) to not read it.

1) good cover/title + interesting Summary = 97% success

2) no cover/original title + interesting summary = 65% success

3) good cover/title + bad summary = 55% success

3)no cover/original title + bad summary = 39.1% success (reason being sometimes you just say "fuck it" when you're really trying hard to find a good fic)

So what does a good cover, title, and summary contain?

Good cover: Includes something eye catching, like a person or an artistic landscape of something. It also cleverly includes the storyline or the title. (I think Obama is pretty eye-catching, right?)

Good title: Something that relates to your story in a clever way. For example, if you're writing a creepy fanfiction about Harry Potter or some shiz like that a good title could be: The Serpent's Song

This is clever because it could be taking about Voldemort's snake and maybe she is related to one of the horcruxes or can speak Parseltongue 

Good summary: An interesting summary usually includes more than just one sentence and is almost always written with correct grammar/spelling. It can be a quote from the story that is enticing and makes the reader think about what could happen, or it could be more traditional and introduce some of the characters and plot of it. (Make sure not to give anything too big away and at the same time not summarize every single thing at once)

A bad summary is short and has insufficient (= too little) information.

farewell