Story summaries in posts

[q-dicted.livejournal.com]

First of all - I really appreciate this community. It has helped me many times and I have found some really great stories through other people's queries as well. Kudos.

I was wondering though, is there some way of asking for help with a specific story (rather than, say a genre) without giving away the entire plot in the process? It's great to jog the memories of those who can help, but kind of takes something away from the story-telling for those who may not have read it yet. Perhaps starting with a general description and then spoiler'ing the details that are obviously major plot points? A clunky solution but maybe somebody has a better idea.

Moderators: if this is not allowed, please delete, but I'm hoping maybe it can help the comm in general.

Comments

[vlredreign.livejournal.com]

Good question!!

I think that what happens is, in the search for a fic, a requester is trying to give as much info as possible to describe the story, not realizing that when they're done, they've pretty much described the whole thing. And so, yeah, you're like, "well, hell, don't need to read this, I know how it ends!"

A good example of not giving up the entire might go like this - let's use Myrna's If You Needed Me, since practically everyone has read it.

"I'm looking for a B/J fic, it's in four parts with different POV's, and it's about Justin having a brain tumor."

As opposed to

"I'm looking for a fic where Justin has a brain tumor, and he gets operated on, and moves in with Brian after, and they were broken up so Justin was with Ethan first, but then he dates another guy and Brian gets jealous, and..."

Thing is, it's all in the details. I think so many of us have been around so long, we've read all of the classics and forget that not everyone else has, too. I find that rec lists are very helpful when looking for fics. Most of them give a basic story outline without spoiling the whole thing.

Any way, consider this as your official mod permission for this post! After you've received some helpful (hopefully!) hints, will you update? I'll keep an eye out and make sure the discussion doesn't veer off too much.

[meta1960.livejournal.com]

Well, sometimes is enough to read one sentence and you know the story and the author, but other times even a big summary can't trigger someones memory. When I search for a fic, I try to post a small description as possible, but sometimes I'm not good at it. So I write and write as much as I remember from the story. And if the story that I found intriguing,(from someones else's search) it doesn't matter that I know almost all of it, I will still read it. But to each his own.

I've seen requests from people who gave a long or short description and the story was never found. It happened to me to. So, I think that people will give as much information as they remember or they want to put it in the search, because at the end, we all want the story we are searching for, to be found. But that is just me. Metka

[ipitydaf00l.livejournal.com]

I both like and dislike this idea. The reason why I dislike it is because what if it's only the major plot points that someone remembers. Do they have to then put everything under a cut? How would they make it non-spoiler for others if those points are the only ones they can remember.

I know years ago in a yahoo group I was a member of, I requested that those who wrote reviews put a "Spoiler Alert" and lots of space before their review because when you logged onto the group you could always see the first sentence or two and most were going, "OMG I can't believe so and so did this! Not to mention that that happened!" Sort of defeated the purpose of my reading the chapter, so I understand where you are coming from with this request. There are new fans coming into this fandom everyday, but even while being told what happens in a fic I've discovered many through this community that I might never have read before if someone had not asked about it.