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In the past few days, I have seen numerous amounts of summaries. Not to say that there aren't always summaries found somewhere, but they seem to be on a rise as of late.

There's one major problem with most of them, though. They choose to disregard two huge factors of a good summary- spelling and grammar. This is a problem that is found beyond the Writer's Forum, also. Many times I'll be looking for a good story online, and the summary will be filled with horrible spelling mistakes and grammatical error.

I will never make a second glance at any of these.

Many people write off these errors as, 'I was rushing,' or, 'I was busy' or, my favorite, 'It's just a summary!'

The last is the biggest underestimation I've heard in a long while. I'm going to write this next part in big font, so that the point gets across.


Summaries are half the story!

People who value good writing will never even give the slightest thought to a story with a bad summary! The summary is your entire marketing strategy!

Oh, so you just wanted to know how your plot is? You don't actually write stories like that?

So? Why should anyone help you out with a plot, when you obviously don't care enough about it to put in the effort to type out your words? The first, and possibly the only thing someone will tell you is:

'Try commas and periods. Also use spell check if you're a bad speller.'

Or something along those lines. If you care about your story at all, then care enough to make it look like we might consider reading it.


As an editor and a writer I find it insulting that people who supposedly care deeply about their writing can't find it in them to use proper spelling and grammar. I believe I speak on behalf of many with that statement.

Lastly, if you didn't write your summary well and someone points out mistakes, don't make and edit saying, "I WAS BUSY AND THAT'S WHY IT'S NOT GOOD GRAMMAR!" Edit the summary! That way people will actually, you know, care about the plot and not about the grammar. Because the grammar will be correct.


So, please, if you're planning on asking for help or advice with plots- or giving a summary for your latest work- then show us you care. Show us something we want to read. Don't show us jumbled up consonants with no form of punctuation.

Thank you.

Quite possibly the most annoying to me is when they end their summaries with 'Please read, my story is much better than my summary, I swear'. Like I'm going to stick around and find out.

It's really sad how many people don't realize this.

This is so ******** true.

I hate it when noobs post their "summary" and ask for feedback when just looking at it makes me want to lobotomize the author and/or myself.

I'm all riled just thinking about it.

Grammar and punctuation are univerally important, except for in law enforcement instant messages and the sort of s**t that just doesn't happen on an internet forum.

Believe it or be judged.

I JUDGE.

I assumed you were speaking of fanfiction.net and fictionpress, where they only let you write one or two sentences (and sometimes the summary gets cut off anyway even though you're below the word count).

It's really hard to screw up, honestly. You should know the basic premise before you start your story; all you need to do is put it in a sentence. It might be harder to think up what it is than actually write it out. It might not be homigod AMAZING but rarely does one simple phrase stand out like that anyway. Unless you type "gorge kontumplaytez lief, luv && pinnaplez" then it can't possibly be bad. Incomplete, maybe, but not bad.

I know just what you mean. I, for one, read a lot of fiction from the internet and I know that when I see a story less than satisfactory summary I just zip straight past it.

Authors several centuries ago used to use punctuation as a continuation of their thought. A period placed instead of a comma would symbolize finality, a definite stopping of thought. In places where the idea was not so final a semi colon would be used rather than stopping the sentence completely. The lack of a comma in a place where a comma should be was sometimes used to show urgency. A man called Don Marquis wrote a series or stories about a cat and a cockroach. Through the entire story there was no punctuation or capital letters because the cockroach would hurl his body at the keys to work the typewriter, since he had only one body, he couldn't shift the keys to make certain characters. In those stories the punctuation(or lack thereof) was as important as the plot.