vixenscratch asked:

I know "I'm bad at summaries" and "I'm bad at tags" are not sentiments to voice in the summary/tags of a fic. But, genuinely, I don't consider myself good at either. (This is background.)

The actual question is, how do I learn these? Especially tagging. My fandom background is sparse, at least far as participation in broader fandom culture is concerned, so I wasn't part of fandom when current tagging practices on AO3 evolved. It's difficult for me to grasp, and I suspect I end up treating the tags more like CWs than search terms as a result.

Great for people who want to filter out particular unpleasant elements. Not so great for people who can't find my fic because I didn't think to tag something someone else might see as obvious. I have severe social anxiety so joining e.g. a Discord to ask for help isn't really a viable option. Tagging fic isn't worth panic attacks.

ravensilversea:

ao3commentoftheday:

Tagging fic isn’t worth panic attacks.

100% agreed!

When it comes to being “good at tagging” that definition is going to vary from person to person. It will also vary depending on what your goal is.

I’m a fairly minimal tagger myself. I’ll tag the fandom and the major characters, the general vibe (e.g. humour, smut etc) and then anything else I might think of. I don’t personally like to tag smut fics with all of the various sex acts in them, but I’ve done it before because I thought I was supposed to. Since it doesn’t really feel like “me” though I’ve since stopped doing that. If folks want to avoid my fic as a result, that’s totally fair. If folks who would like it can’t find it 🤷‍♀️ maybe it’ll be a rec someday.

All that is to say that tagging is not a thing it’s possible to be perfect at, so just aim for accomplishing whatever your goal is.

I get what you’re saying, though. I wrote a fake dating fic once without tagging it as fake dating because I didn’t realize that fake dating was a trope. It was only when a couple of friends started referring to it that I realized and added that tag to my fic.

One way to learn about those kinds of tropes is to pay attention when you see them tagged on other people’s fics. You can browse through tags that are similar to ones you already use and see what else people add to their fics and whether those would work for yours or not.

You can also visit Fanlore! It’s another project by the OTW (the people who run AO3) and it’s a great resource for learning about fandom. You can look up a common tag like Alternate Universe, and it will give you examples of different types of AU and link out to pages that will link out to pages that will… you get the idea. It’s wikipedia but for fandom stuff.

As for summaries, there are a lot of ways to go about that too. I’ll let folks add ideas in the notes. The way I do it is that I include the name(s) of the major character(s), and outline the inciting incident for the fic. Since I post as I write, I might or might not tease something that happens later on (because I might or might not know yet).

The way to get good at doing it is just to keep practicing. When I was in university, I took a Russian Lit course where we had to write a summary of each novel in 200 words or less, 10 sentences or less - and semicolons were cheating. I did that 13 times in 8 months, and by the end of that I was really good at writing summaries. Add in the fact that I started posting fic back on FF.net where there was a character limit on summaries and you can see why I keep them pretty short.

That’s another thing that you can analyze in others’ fics, though. Find a summary that you think is well-written for whatever type of summary you like and then look at that author’s other fics to see if you can spot a pattern to how they do it. Once you find the pattern, it’s a lot easier to replicate it and then it’s just a matter of repeating it until it feels natural.

My summaries are often lines from the fic itself! I just pull one or two that really encapsulate what the fic is about and go from there, either using them as is or editing them to work better as a summary. Alternatively, since I write mostly one-shots, sometimes my summary is essentially setting up the scene. For example:

Chrome thought Kyoko would love the crystal grotto, so she takes her to it on their next date. She was, of course, right.

It’s a trick I’m pretty sure I picked up from one of @ao3commentoftheday’s posts years ago about writing shortfic. Something about ‘don’t stress too much about including all of the context of a scene in the fic itself if you just want to write the scene. You can put the context in the summary if you want/need be’

For tags, I honestly refer to this infographic @mostlyinthemorning made a few years back. It doesn’t include a full list of possible tags because that list is endless, but it does offer broad categories to think of and some example tags for each. It helps with that “Where do I even start?” feeling that I feel when facing the empty tag box. 10/10 highly recommend it.

My method for writing summaries is geared towards original fiction, so it doesn’t really work for large chunks of ficdom. I will, however, say this:

For a fic writer on AO3, tags are a cheat for writing summaries.

Why? Two reasons.

1. If your summary is weak, the tags pick up the slack in the sense that they give potential readers an idea about what to expect in the body of the story.
2. Perhaps more importantly, looking at how other fics are tagged tells you a lot about what people are looking for in a fic. There’s a lot of overlap between fic writers and readers. Plots repeat themselves because people keep wanting to read about fake dating, huddling for warmth, soulmarks, etc. And a plot that’s common in one fandom but rare in another might still do well if it’s introduced. This is especially true if you’re moving laterally between media, e.g. from a movie fandom to a video game fandom.

quilleth asked:

I'm not sure if you're looking for prompts, but if so- affectionate moments meme for your Claude and Kade # 21? Please tell me more about them i am Intrigued

leahazel:

I had an idea for this one almost as soon as you sent in the ask, but it took me this long to get it off the ground. Whoops.

Anyway, here’s Claude and Kade, at the very end of week 6. Spoilers, obviously. Prompt 21: A Promise.

Keep reading

Sufficient Cause is now cross-posted to my AO3. Also, Claude got his own series. Since his main continuity now has three distinct complete fics.

On a related note, I have another story featuring a Revaire widow with week 6 spoilers. I posted it recently, but I’ve been sitting on the draft since I first played week 6. So, about five or six years.