Questions for the list

[kellifer]

2 things that I have been wondering about... considering I'm never particularly up with the online etiquette and value opinions...

1. For the writers - do you post stories to multiple communities? I usually pick one and my journal or just my journal and that's it but I'm seriously considering cutting back the number of communities I'm a member of because it seems lately I'm scrolling through five or six entries of the same story over and over again... I have a non-community filter but I *like* finding new authors to read but this is just defeating me...

2. Why do people put for their story summaries like - "I would summarise but it will spoil the story" *or* "I suck at summaries. Just read." I'm paraphrasing... ;) I put an excerpt because that's what I like to see, but sometime it's like, help me out and give me an idea of what your story is. Otherwise, I just skip right over it.

What's people's preferred method?

Comments

[live-momma.livejournal.com]

1) Yes, it bothers me when I see the same story spammed in 5 different places. I understand wanting to find readers, but I think that posting to the two most relevant communities (3 tops) is enough.

2) I'll most likely skip a story if the intro doesn't catch my attention (and a story without a summary is likely to fall into that catagory). I don't particularly like excerpting, either, unless the excerpt is from the very beginning of the story. Otherwise, I sort of feel like I'm being spoiled. Authors & rec'ers often give away more than they realize with their excerpts. If you're quoting the punchline of a joke, the joke loses potency in the actual story, for example. Quotes should always come from the first 1/4 - 1/3 of the story and should never be the funniest line in the whole thing. So sayeth me. ;-)

Frankly, though, the best stories I've read have almost always been rec'ed by someone I already "knew" in the fandom. For example, I'm pretty sure I found you through surrealphantast.

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

but I think that posting to the two most relevant communities (3 tops) is enough.

Totally agree!! Just in the last day I had two friends pages full of the same three stories because they'd been spammed to about six different communities each... Argh!

should never be the funniest line in the whole thing.

Ha!! I hope I haven't been guilty of that!! eep!

Frankly, though, the best stories I've read have almost always been rec'ed by someone I already "knew" in the fandom.

Too true... I've come to rely on recs from other people if I just don't have time to troll through comms...