PSA: Why Summary Fic is a Bad Idea

[azn_jack_fiend]

There are less than 20 entries at whoverse_las now, so it's a very manageable size to read and judge.  The quality is nice this round too! Lots of dark, interesting, quirky stuff.

Without discussing my vote in any way, because that would be against the rules, I'd like to give a piece of general advice to writers.  This is from my perspective as a reader, that's all.  

Please try not to write summary fics. They are almost never fun to read. 

I think of summary fic as something that's basically a tardis.wikia.com entry with some emotional color added.

Here's an example from the recap for Gridlock.

The Doctor arrives at the Motorway, where he discovers thousands of Volkswagen-like hover vans in a traffic jam. He starts to cough and choke from the fumes. A cat person invites him into his car, introducing himself as Thomas Kincade Brannigan and his human wife as Valerie. Their kittens, two months old, have never seen sunlight or trod on ground. The Brannigans themselves have been driving for twelve years, and have travelled only five miles.

Here's my summary fic version.

When the Doctor arrived at the Motorway, he discovered thousands of Volkswagen-like hover vans in a traffic jam. He coughed and choked from the fumes. A cat person and his human wife invited him into his car. Their kittens, two months old, had never seen sunlight or trod on ground. The Brannigans themselves had been driving for twelve years, and had travelled only five miles. The Doctor sobbed.

I don't think anyone sets out to write something like the "fic" above. It's just that the exciting events and character arcs of the show tend to explode out of our brains in this form unless we're careful not to let it happen.

Summary-plus-emotional-color isn't an invalid mode, by any means.  I remember reading recaps of Battlestar Galactica and Six Feet Under at Television Without Pity, and the recappers there had raised it to an art form. Sometimes their recaps were more moving than the episode itself! Plus, judging by reactions and comment rates, they probably had a larger audience than most fanfic.  But the recaps didn't present as fiction: they were part of a conscious dialogue between the recapper and audience, and that dialogue enhanced the emotional content and made it feel powerful and immediate.

Summary in pure fiction is fine too.  Science fiction could barely exist without it. Sometimes writers have to summarize the rise and fall of civilizations over millions of years. As long as they keep an element of suspense and make it entertaining and work out a good style for it, it can be fantastic.

But in fanfic, it's usually deadly. There's no possibility for suspense when you're describing events that everyone already knows about! You have to trust that emotional detail you reveal will make up for the lack of suspense.  But the emotional detail won't be powerful, because it's not grounded in time and place and person.

I've seen it done well in fanfic; it should ideally be very short, very punchy and have a nice twist.  The Harkness Variations has some good examples.  I think everyone loves that (or at least I love it).

If you're a writer in a contest, and your non-punchy summary fic is up against another piece that's actually grounded in time and place and person, and has unique imagery, you'll be at a huge disadvantage.  Your readers will have a nagging sense that your emotional content isn't powerful. 

I've been reading the wholas entries since they started, and I believe the voting results bear out my theory.  Summary fics don't fare well.

Comments

[joking.livejournal.com]

Now that I've read and voted on the latest round, I see what you mean. The criticisms you made here are the same criticisms I made of the fics I voted down. The stories felt detached, not grounded in the emotion of the Now.

On the other hand, there were some damn fine fics this round, rich with subtext and original ideas. In one of the categories I wavered between my top two choices for a whole day.