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

[c425cc33.livejournal.com]

Moderation in all things. I can manage scrolling through a few announcements of the same fic because some of the comms I subscribe to have overlapping subject matter. And lately I've seen people post !different! summary content for their fic announcement depending on the comm. It's interesting to get the author's take on who they think their audience is. *g*

True, sga_newsletter can be very helpful for some topics, but, hey, no summaries and often no ratings and I really need those. There's just too much to read; some wonderful and others not my cup of tea. I only know that I'm missing a lot.

One of my guilty pleasures is metafandom and a number of weeks ago there was a pointer to a heated discussion about summaries, spoilers, and warnings. Character death warnings were offensive to several writers because having that warning would affect the reader's experience of their work. Hmmm.

Thanks for good questions and too, for listening to this reader's rant...

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

people post !different! summary content for their fic announcement depending on the comm.

*blinks* That's bizarre!

Character death warnings were offensive to several writers because having that warning would affect the reader's experience of their work.

Ah, yes... the dreaded death!fic warning... It is a bit of a problem if the death or whatever is intrisic to the story but spoils if you know what's coming... but some people just can't stand seeing their favourite characters die...

I had a Daniel/Janet Ripple story where in the alternate reality Cassie had been gone for a few years and so I put something along the lines of 'Alternate Universe minor character death in the past' because I didn't want people saying that I'd killed Cassie and hadn't warned them...

*sigh*