Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting - Writing summaries for your comic

How do you guys come up with an accurate and or intriguing summary for your comic?

I don't fully endorse TvTropes, but I think the Better Than it Sounds trope sums up my feelings on summaries (meta!) pretty accurately. I'm not going to link to that page because I have a heart, but basically "better than it sounds" is when you try to sum up a story you love and suddenly realize that at the bare bones it sounds kind of stupid. This can happen to even the best of stories. Try it! Casablanca? Two former lovers meet in a bar during WWII. Count of Monte Cristo? Guy in prison escapes and executes his elaborate revenge. A hundred stories could have that basic plot, but there's only one Casablanca and only one Count of Monte Cristo.

Maybe the genre will get you, maybe a minor detail, but usually a basic description isn't enough to get me interested in a story. Granted, the above stories have credentials that cause people to watch/read them on faith alone. But amateur webcomic artists usually don't have that advantage.

I'm unsure how to go about creating a good summary for my own stories, and I was wondering if anyone had some sage advice. Do you describe your premise and hope it intrigues someone? Do you forgo actually describing it and instead mention one detail about the comic you think will grab readers? Do you just paste a line of dialogue?

For my comic, I used the description "this comic isn't actually about monsters." I think this came from a conversation I had with my dad:

Snark: Hey Dad, wanna read this comic I made?
Dad: *reads* So, it's just a story about monsters.
Snark: Um...actually, I was hoping to impart a bit more meaning than that.
Dad: Oh, you mean how [long, pin-point description of subtext]?
Snark: Dad, that was the whole thing. What you just said.
Dad: Oh. I guess it wasn't just about monsters.
Snark: DAD

What are your thoughts, everyone? What problems do you run into, how do you fix them, etc, open for discussion.

well. My summary of my comic is very uninteresting. But I usually don't get all excited about summaries in general. I usually just start reading it without expecting much out of it, and then it's the tensions within the story that gets me keep reading.

I tend to ignore comic summaries too. I'm curious if anyone ever read a summary and that was the main thing that got them to read a comic.

Usually, the things that get me fastest are 1) recommendations and 2) sudden whims. Not very encouraging if the rest of the webcomic readership is made up of a bunch of me's.

The point of having an interesting description/summary is to lure readers in by just your words alone. There are a few ways to make a good hook.

You can...
1. Make a comparison. "It's Indiana Jones meets The Little Mermaid!"
2. Pose an intriguing question. "What if your dreams came to life?"
3. Put irony in. "This is a story about a monster who wants to be a superhero."
4. Throw a curveball. "A classic boy-meets-girl love story. Except one of them turns into a zombie."

Typically, you also want your summary to be as short as possible. Under 5 sentences. If you can do it in 1 sentence, that's even better. I think above all of these, you should put some kind of irony in. It's formulaic, but ironic statements can definitely reel people in.

I tend to look at the artworks more..I know that story is just as important, but cool artworks does draw my attention. But obviously I'd discard it if it turns out to be a terrible story.

This thread reminds me that I have to write a new summary soon....

I don't.

jk I do but they're horrible because I can never think of what to write, and yet I always read the summaries on other comics. Anyway, kup's adivce is pretty much all you need to know about writing descriptions. You can include pictures into the inscriptions with some fiddly coding, but I would not have the first clue how.

tbh, one of the summaries is basically how another person on a different website described it. :U IDK should probably edit them.

...now I am trying to come up with ironic statements and failing.

I think part of my problem is that writing descriptions goes against ever fiber of my being that urges me to show don't tell for every other aspect of storytelling. But the other part of the problem is that I get really embarrassed when I try to explain my stories to people.

The better you understand the underlying theme and subject of your story the better and more concise your description will be.

Casablanca is about nationalism, the impossibility of neutrality and the need to make sacrifices and hard decisions.

If you can pick out themes from your story you can generally write a better description of it. The plot and setting just convey the theme.

^ Yeah but that would be a horribly unpopular summary for Casablanca.

It is kind of interesting for the point of this exercise to read/hear the words the studio used to market it in the trailer:



OOh! Maybe it helps to read your summary text with that movie announcer guy's voice in your head (or out loud, whatever :o).

You could practice this a bit with stories/comics/films/shows you already know. :U

- "The story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together." - Arrested Development
- "A wheelchair-bound journalist spies on his neighbors and uncovers a gruesome secret." - Rear Window
- "Set in a bleak, dystopian England, a mysterious, masked vigilante takes a young prostitute under his wing." - V for Vendetta

It works best when you know the story completely. But, it is hard to figure it out, Cans of Beans took me a while to figure out a summary that's both decently intriguing without giving every freaking detail away.

Other problem: Anybody There is 32 pages long, so if a description of the premise is too detailed, it's the whole story. And a description of the theme would feel a little unclassy. Like saying: "this is what this story is supposed to mean to you. Now read it and find meaning!"



THIS SOUNDS SO FUN

Casablanca is allowed to call itself enthralling, though, and kinda nobody else is.

let's see

"There's this shapeshifter guy and he has a goopy face!"
"Watch as faces goop!"
"If you came for adventure, be prepared to watch two guys have a conversation in a car!"
"Something happens at the end!"

If all else fails there's the old "In a world where..."

If you check my profile you can see all else failed.

WHELP.

Best get to revising mine and making a new one.

I dunno, I think your description gives a good expectation for what your comic will be like. Although I think your author profile is an even better attention grabber: "I love BDSM and kinky demons." You gotta respect someone who tells you everything you need to know in such a concise way.

....

...."in a world where there are monsters that do things, monsters do things."

Yes, this!

It actually took me a couple of years of drawing my comic to begin realize the underlying themes (physical change & its traumas, trans/gender attributions (can women be strong, muscley superheros,too, but w/in an ordinary life?). This is a really good exercise to understand our stories, I think, and control the way we present them to others, on many levels; maybe even this helps tighten up the art itself.

In marketing, they have the 'elevator speech'-- where you have just a few minutes to capture the interest of the lit agent or comics publisher or whatever person you're riding the elevator with-- you have to distill into a few sentences what about your project would capture interest.

Whether or not people actually read my summary, I want to work on it to help me think about the story--it's challenging. Thanks for the thought-provoking thread.:)

I stumbled upon this website the other day. There are lots of interesting and helpful articles there (at least, they've been helpful for me). But this particular article applies to this thread really well, I think. You've got Chris Oatley (a character designer for Disney) talking how to craft a good comic pitch. In other words: coming up with a catchy summary for your story.

For the longest while, I couldn't settle on a good summary (I'd change it about once every other day). This helped me nail down the current summary for my comic. I'm not saying my summary is perfect, it could use some improvements here and there, but it's loads better than what I was using before.

Here's the article (and its video). You might find that some of the other articles are a big help too.

How to Lose a Fan in Ten Seconds: The Common Flaws of a Comic-Con Pitch

My summaries tend to be weak.

My character summaries were incredibly long, ramblish, and not well-written, originally. When I made my TVTropes Character page, the summaries on there were far better--but still a little bit...lacking, I suppose you could say. So I wrote new ones, combining the length of the original with the conciseness of the TVTropes ones, and overall, I like how it looks right now. (I've only finished the new format on four of my currently twelve characters, but it's on my to-do list.)

When it comes to my actual COMIC summary...well...that could use a little patching up.

By which I mean a lot. :P

It's somewhat-rambly, it doesn't convey the feel of the comic, it's obsolete, and redundant with the Character/About pages. My summary as it is now, If that doesn't induce yawns in you, nothing will. :P

Naturally, my TVTropes one is better, but still feels inadequate. And, well...quite frankly, both sound like they were written by me. Like they're extremely-close-might-as-well-be-first-but-is-technically-third-person. (There are multiple types of third person, and when written WELL, it's pretty effective, but when written poorly, it's pretty much the worst, and is quite frankly what most amateurs use when writing, without realizing it's what they're using.)


I'm thinking, however, that I can revise them, and kinda get the best of both.

Not the best, but it's concise, not very rambly, doesn't feel as "made-by-Ranger" as the other two do...and it's pretty good, really. I might include some extra details, like who's making it (that'd be me), specific things about its genre and art style, what to expect...but those are all optional things.

And to me, that's what I think a summary really should convey--it's something that should be no more than three paragraphs (and that's pushing it!--generally, the summary itself should be no more than a paragraph with no more than a paragraph to extra info like who makes it, when it updates, its genre beyond what's listed, things inside, etc.*) yet still convey the heart of the comic. (Which, in my case, is 1: the characters, and 2: that it takes place in a gaming world I built.)

*Basically, a paragraph about what the comic's about. For instance, get a paragraph describing the plot if at all possible. Mine's weak, since I can't really give much of the plot without spoilers and I've got too many characters for any single summary of their story to fit in a concise space, but it's basically what your webcomic is focused on:
People? The plot? Humor? It's essentially an elaboration on your chosen genre. Label it as fantasy, and describe the story within to say WHY it is fantasy, along with what other genres it may also fall into, but which aren't the focus. (...This...made more sense in my head. :P)

And then a paragraph of the leftovers. Made by Brian/Ranger. Is a fantasy comic with action, adventure, and most of all humor thrown in as well. Updates yaddayadda, you (hopefully :P) get the idea.

Play a game. You have to pitch the idea for this comic script as a movie to a potential producer. How could you sum up your idea into a short paragraph that'll describe what you've written and want the guy to put up money to make it?

What's your pitch? What's the blurb that would be on the DVD package?

Make it short, sweet and sell it!

It has to hook interest and draw in people without burdening them with detail. There's a reason why tropes are tropes and other ideas are idiosyncratic failures.