Story Descriptions - over rated?

[destinie21]

All and all ther description line is a bastard but oh well. It was made up for people like me who are so wordy their synopsis would require a synopsis.

 

[Quasimodem]

I have decided that there isn’t enough room to actually describe the story. All there is room for is a tagline, like they use for advertising movies.

“The Mummy” - Death is only the beginning!

“Groundhog Day” - He's having the day of his life . . . over and over again.

“The Crimson Pirate” - Ask me no questions: believe only what you see!

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” - Still the fairest of them all!


None of the examples actually describe the movie, they only try to get you through the door.

After you have seen the movie - good, bad, or indifferent - then the tagline makes sense.

So, I thought I would try it out.


Title: cum-up-pants

Story Description: A punishment she deserves.


The trouble is, I don’t write BDSM!

I guess you’ve got to do the exercise the other way around.

First Story, then Title, then Tagline.

 

[FlyontheWall99]

Got to say that these days I'm actually sitting down and writing out draft descriptions for my upcoming stories. I want a bit more than just "X meets Y and sex ensues" which seem to become common. I do like witty one liners but it's hard to fit them into the space limit .....

Anyway, in summary, I'm working on them, but I don't particularly like having to sell a story I've spent so much time writing in just one line .....

Back to writing ....

Fly ....

 

[KenJames]

I have decided that there isn’t enough room to actually describe the story. All there is room for is a tagline, like they use for advertising movies.
. . .
None of the examples actually describe the movie, they only try to get you through the door.
. . .
I guess you’ve got to do the exercise the other way around.

First Story, then Title, then Tagline.

I agree that a description works best as a tagline. That's what I've started trying to do.

You could do the tagline or title first. In the old B-movie days, it was fairly common to have an artist paint a poster first. Then a writer wrote a script based on the poster. That was done with pulp fiction covers, too.

 

[Lovepotion69]

I hate coming up with titles and those description things. I'm terrible at it. That's why I end up asking friends... (In other words, if you hate my title or description, it wasn't me!)

 

[Chicklet]

just another grumble:

i was looking through my own descriptions. the only thing going through my mind was "huh?"

I think i might actually go back and re-submit most of them just for better descriptions. is that really really weird?

we should come up with a support group for this.

-chicklet

 

[Jenny _S]

I spent some time going through the story lists. This is typical:

"Bob and Jenn get together"
"Carrie and Sean finally meet"
"Wendy has her father"
"Alicia goes on a picnic and get more than a sandwich"

These suck, but then so do mine. The problem is that you write a story of 2-5000 words then stuff it into one little box of 10 words or less. That's an almost impossible task. All the description lines end up sounding pretty much the same.

The description is one of the places the writer has to attract readers. If that line is so similar to all the others, what good is it?

 

[SlickTony]

I have the impression that many people are at a loss for decent titles. There are so many of them that are the same.

 

[MathGirl]

Originally posted by Chicklet we should come up with a support group for this.

Hiya, Chickie,
What a great idea! There are lots of issues here in the AH that could use support groups. This might deserve a thread of its own.
MG
Ps. Several problem areas come to mind: Superfluous apostrophes, sheep fixation, solid waste disposal, colonic hygeine .... Gosh, the list would be huge. About four feet.

 

[Quasimodem]

. . . Gosh, the list would be huge. About four feet.

As I remember the reference, the list could be 54 feet, before we ran out of storage space.

Better ask your family doctor, to be sure.