Huh, just went through my docs and found this. Wrote it quite some time ago, but apparently I forgot to actually post it, oh well, here it goes:

We have lots of tips up here that can help you improve your stories/writing, but something we haven't talked about yet is how to get people to read your fic in the first place. I put together a list, partially from problems I noticed while prowling the Pit (it gives great lessons on how not to do it), and partially from people ranting about things that annoy them. Nothing on this list was inspired by fics on here; don't worry.

The Title:

You absolutely do not want to have any spelling mistakes in your title. The title is usually no more than a few words, and when I see a writer who can't even get that right, I will move on without even bothering with the summary.

The same goes for grammar or punctuation mistakes. That's not a problem in most titles since they can be as short as one word, but sometimes you do need a comma (if you list things for example), so don't ignore them just because it's the title.

Do not call your fic "Untitled" or "Couldn't come up with a title yet". I know it can be difficult, believe me I do, but not having a proper title dramatically reduces the chances of people reading your fic. Most of the time when I see people ranting about this, they say that if the author can't even come up with a title, how can he/she have enough imagination to write a good story. I don't agree with that, since writing a story, and coming up with a good title are completely different things; but not even trying does show a lack of effort. You can't think of a good title? So use a bad one! It's a rewrite of S6 and you can't think of a title? Call it "Season Six Rewrite" for all I care, just call it something. Hell, half of the books on my shelves have titles that don't really relate to the stories inside; it didn't stop me from buying the books.

The Summary:

Where it says summary, you want to put the summary and only the summary. This is not the place for your disclaimer (the readers aren't interested in that anyway, they are perfectly aware that you don't own BtVS), nor for personal comments, jokes, pleas for reviews or anything of that sort. You feel the need to tell people that this is your first fic, or how much you love B/S, or that your mother thinks the story is awesome? Put it in an AN on the inside (we'll get to ANs later), not in the summary.

What I said about spelling, grammar and punctuation in the title, goes for the summary as well. Many authors seem to be under the impression that those things are not important in a summary, even those authors who do look out for them in the story itself. They are wrong! If anything, making sure the summary is well written and error-free is more important. In a thousand-word chapter with interesting content, most readers are willing to overlook the occasional spelling mistake or missing comma, but the same amount of mistakes in a three-sentence summary, well….

No matter how hard you think it is, do write a summary for your story. Never put "I can't think of a good summary" or "I suck at summaries" or anything like that in the box. The summary we're talking about here doesn't actually have to be a summary of your whole story (which would be kind of impossible with most longer fics), you can just let us know about the idea behind the story, or the opening scenario – after all, what you're trying to do here is getting people interested in your fic, no more. You can even take a few lines from your fic and use them as a summary; anything is better than saying: "Here is a dish full of unidentifiable mush and I can't tell you what I put in there, but I want you to eat it anyway."

This is actually part of the spelling, grammar and punctuation bit, but I'm making it an additional point since I see this problem so often. Capitalize names! Don't use net-speak! There seems to be some kind of disease going around, that makes people think using net-speak and not capitalizing anything is acceptable in summaries. It's not! In fact, while I might overlook most of the other things I listed here if I'm desperate for something to read, a summary like this: "buffy and spike spend the n8 2gether" will guarantee that I won't touch the fic, ever.

Be careful not to be too vague in your summary, lest it look like you don't know what you're on about. The expression "and then stuff happens" is something to be avoided at all costs. And it's so simple too. Instead of "When Spike is injured, Buffy realizes she loves him and then stuff happens.", how about "When Spike is injured, Buffy realizes she loves him and suddenly they have to deal not only with the new Big Evil in Sunnydale, but with their friends’ reactions to their relationship as well." There, the second version doesn't really tell the readers much more, and it doesn't even limit you to the "stuff" mentioned, but at least it doesn't look like you didn't put any thought into what will happen in your story after the "injured" and "in love" part.

Another expression (or word actually) you should definitely avoid is "randomness". "There is randomness in this story." I almost choked when I saw that the first time. To have random things happening in a story means things that make no sense and aren't explained, reactions that don't fit the situation the characters are in, missing consequences. What the author might call randomness and think "cute", others will call plot-holes and laziness.

From what I've heard, for a lot of people "a mysterious girl" is kind of the Red Alert for a Mary Sue. So whether Mary is part of your story or not, you might not want to use that expression because it's gonna scare away many potential readers.

Actually, you might want to be careful about using "mysteriously" at all; after all, if something "mysterious" happens, the investigation and "demystifying" of that event will be part of the story. At least I'd hope so, because unexplained events that the characters simply accept smell of lazy author.

It's generally a good idea not to put too much emphasis onto the fact that you have OCs in your story (if you do). No matter how well written and three-dimensional they may turn out, your readers don't know them yet, they are only here because they are interested in the canon characters, so information concerning your OC is unlikely to interest them. If you have to mention them, keep to their importance to the plot, stay away from physical descriptions and names.

The Author’s Note (AN):

I'm not talking about ANs in general here, remember, this is about the first impression. This is only about the AN at the top of your first chapter.

Now let's say your title was fine and your summary intrigued me, so I clicked your story. Guess I'll start reading the fic now. UNLESS … Unless the AN at the top of the first chapter, being the first thing I see after opening your chapter, puts me right off the idea.

Again, spelling, grammar and punctuation are important, even if it is just an AN.

No net-speak! Use capitalization! No caps-lock!

Avoid silly jokes and personal comments. No matter how clever you might think they are, not everyone will agree. If you absolutely have to tell us how the story-idea was sparked by a note someone passed you in history class, put it at the end of the chapter, or the AN of the second chapter. That way your readers have already gotten a taste of your story, and even if they think your AN silly, they will probably continue reading.

I know putting something like where you got your story-idea from anywhere but at the beginning of said story sounds weird, maybe what you really need to do in a situation like this is sit down and think how that background information will sound to your readers. If it is something that not everyone might get or appreciate, find a different place for it; if it is important to our understanding of the story, phrase it in a way that won’t send your potential readers rushing for the back button.

Never, ever apologize for, or even mention, characters being OOC. If a reviewer mentions it and you want to comment on it, fine, do it in the next chapter; just not at the beginning of the story. If you do, that only makes me wonder why you bothered posting the story in this form at all. After all, the story is supposed to be about those characters, and if you know you didn't capture them well, why didn't you just fix it before posting? (That's like handing someone a cup of coffee, saying "Sorry, I know you only drink it with sugar, but I forgot to bring any." and sitting down instead of going back into the kitchen and getting the damn stuff.)

The Author's name:

I probably shouldn't do this, but whatever. If you are a new writer, and don't already have a screen-name that you want to keep for whatever reason, give some thought to the impression a name gives before you pick one. Mostly it doesn't matter, but some names I've come across look so immature, the expectations for a fic written by those authors are extremely low. Random capitalization in a name (like gamers seem to prefer) looks out of place for an author, and long sentences containing net-speak mashed together (Iluvspike4evaandevaButangelsux) don't exactly inspire confidence either. Not saying you can't use names like that, but take into consideration that a reader already unsure on whether he/she wants to read your fic might give up upon seeing a penname that looks like an eight year old on speed choose it.

Oh, and no matter what else you do, never ever use the sentence "I was hyper when I wrote this", no matter the circumstances. *shudders* Sorry, I still haven't recovered from visiting the HP fandom; it's a scary place.

Word-count and Chapters:

Not all archives have the 1000 words/chapter rule, and some (like us) are rather lax about it, but when you write a multi-chapter story, I'd suggest you try to stick to it. When I see a fic that has 3000 words in ten chapters, I tend to expect a choppy, unorganized mess. After all, scenes shouldn't be split into several chapters, and if the scenes are that short, the thing can hardly have any flesh on its bones. Of course this suggestion is to be ignored if you're posting a collection of drabbles as multiple chapters, but then, that's something you'll probably want to mention in the summary anyway.

/end rant

As you can see I didn't touch the writing itself at all in this "essay", Slaymesoftly did several good posts about that, and there are many god resources available on the net that can explain things much better than I. These are merely some tips on how to make a good first expression.

Remember, until they started on the actual story, your readers are only potential readers. Being lazy about the very things that are supposed to catch the readers' interest will make sure they will stay "potential" forever.

*cough* As one of the mods, can I just say that those first impressions are pretty important when you are submitting a fic for the first time, too?  You really don't want us clicking on it with trepidation because your summary or AN made us think we weren't going to be happy to read it. 

Thank you so much, both of you! I keep notes every time you post something on writing (and really hope I actually put them in good use :P)
And I'm definitely extremely happy about never having written "I suck at summaries" despite the number of times I've thought about it! Yay me!!!

xxx

What do you think about putting all the awards that a fic has been nominated for or won on the fic summary?  Sometimes those lists can get pretty long.  Is that helping the summary "Look, other people like it!" or hurting it, "Look how great I am."?

Good question, goldenusagi (and congrats on your noms:)

I think when a fic is nominated somewhere, it's ok to show that when you post the next chapter. Especially if it's an award site that has a "readers vote" function.  I think it depends on how long the list is going to get when putting it in a summary.  If you don't already have a lengthy list, then you could put the announcement about the nom in the summary too. Awards won should go either in the beginning, or at the end. And, again, a long list maybe should be shortened somehow.  "Winner of multliple awards" would be what I would do if the list is long.  If it's just one or two, then, yes, it never bothers me to see that in a summary or in an AN.(perhaps more appropriate there?)   Not really awake yet, so I"m not sure if this has all made sense or not?

I think whether you put a list of the stories awards (or just a note that it won any) depends a lot on the site where you post it. The information that the story won awards can help a potential reader decide to read it or not, so it makes a certain sense to tack it at the end of the summary. I'd only ever do that if adding the list of awards doesn't mean shortening the summary though. If the archive in question has a length restriction for summaries, I'd rather a writer leave off the awards-list than part of the summary.

I'd also stop at listing two or maybe three awards though, everything more I'd put in the AN. I mean, just look at how it is done with real books, you'll find comments like "Award winning novel" or "Winner of the best newcomer award" or "No#1 bestseller of 2007" on the cover, but I don't think I've ever seen a book listing everything it has won or been nominated for. They usually stick with the most "important" award they've won and put everything else on the inside. Now it is a bit harder to decide which award is better than another in fandom, but you could for example leave off a "best WIP" award if you also have a "best finished story" one. (Could be just me, but if a fic lists all twenty (or whatever) awards it has won, maybe even with some of them being from the same awards site and different rounds, I consider that slightly tacky. Kinda gives me the "Looooook at me, I'm so great!" feeling you mentioned above.)

As for nominations, I think it's OK to list those until the voting has finished, esp. since several award sites have rules that demand you put a note on your story that mentions the nomination anyway.

Good point, Dia, about some award sites insisting on a button or a link to them.  Noms, I think, can go away when judging is completed - either to be replaced with the award it won or to just fade away. I don't use nominations as a guideline to whether I want to read something as much as I do the actual award winners (although, when I'm using an award site as a listing of potential stories to read, I do, obviously), because just about anything can be nominated by anybody. But if something is an award winner - then, yes, I'll take a second look, even if the summary might not have moved me all by itself.

one thing that as a reader I would appreciate, is dates - especially those that voting has been completed -

Hmm... maybe I should go back and update my summaries on my older fics. On some stories, I've noted that I was nominated for an award, but once the story is finished, I rarely go back and update the summary, whether I won the award or not. (Especially now that I have an LJ, all my awards just go up there.) So, I do have some summaries that still say I was nominated for an award months ago, and then I finished the story and never took the nomination out of the summary.

Good question, goldenusagi (and congrats on your noms)

Thank you!  I'll admit, it was what prompted me to ask.

But I have noticed it before, the listing of noms and awards.  For instance, I like what UB did in the summary of Forward to Time Past, short and sweet and current, but also letting you know.  But I've seen summaries where there's four or five lines listing every nomination or award, which is sometimes longer than the story description itself in the summary.  And all listed like that, especially on the summary alone, it tends to blend together, IMO.

For one, I agree and that is one of my pet peeves - long award/noms lists in the summary that's like three times longer than the whole summary! To me, it really just looks pretentious, don't you think?

And for shame for the dig at my newest fandom :P lol

And some of this some of us have ranted before at other pet peeves threads and other topics. But this reminded me of a conversation I had with Tina (Im Bloody English) a few weeks back when she was asking me about if I wanted to read a few chapters to the fic she was working on. I asked for the summary and what she gave me was really a teaser. Now, I think this is more of personal preference, not a major faux pas - but I'm the type when I'm going through the recent pages at archives, I might pass over a fic if it only has a "teaser" that doesn't really tell me what goes on in the fic. I mean really, I don't need a play-by-play of the fic... but I think a good summary can have a teaser as well as what I might expect to be reading. Maybe I'm weird for that, but hey - I own my weirdness! lol

I think it really just comes down to personal taste. Some people like to see a list of awards a fic has won, some people find it quite crass.

I think whatever you do it is best to keep it short and sweet and above all tidy...rather than listing each and every award won, do as Slaymesoftly suggested and say multi-award winning fic or something to that vein... or give a link to your awards so people can go and have a look if they choose.

Nominations should, I think, be kept as current as possible, having said that keeping track isn't always easy and people aren't always going to remember to go take that nomination button off a fic that was nominated for an award however many months ago. 

Also, I think the noimination button should only go up where the fic is linked to, so if you post at several differnt websites and the fic has been nominated at one and linked to there, that is where the button should go up, there really isn't any need to put the button up all over the place--the obvious exception would be if it is a peer judged award site and you want to let your readers know that they can go and vote.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Okay, I just had to go back to the original subject because Editorrent's latest postings had to do with what the reaction is from "real" submissions editors when a fic's summary or first three or four paragraphs are full of mistakes.  It doesn't surprise me, but apparently it does some writers, to find that the editors go into the story already thinking "Reject, reject, reject".  If someone cannot manage (or be bothered) to write out a couple of paragraphs without multiple typos, punctuation errors and with poor sentence structure, what are chances that the story is going to be worth reading?  Right away, the author has given a very poor first impression - one that may well get the story rejected without its even being read completely.  Just something to think about...