How to Get More Clicks on your Fanfiction
B/c for some godless reason, I managed to get a piece of trash fic moderate popularity over on ff.net, so I might as well teach some of you people how to fake it til you make it. Plus, I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t read a perfectly good fic just because either something in the title, description, or format destroyed whatever interest I had.
I’m going to split this up into 3 sections: Title, Summary, and Format.
Either write the title with proper capitalization or none at all.
By “Proper Capitalization,” I mean capitalizing every word in the title except for prepositions (to, on, with, by, etc), pronouns (your, her, him, etc), or article adjectives (a, an, the). The only exception are if they are at the start of the title or the pronoun “I.”
All lower case titles are usually really long, like song lyrics, and for shorter works of fiction.
Just please, for the love of God, don’t just capitalize the first word and leave the rest in lower case, that looks so lazy, please.
Length is also important, so try one that reflects your story’s tone. Long titles give the impression that the work is more poetic and prose, while one word titles seem very serious. Metaphors and similes can seem pretentious while titles of popular songs are overused and cliche (Example: search “Angel with a Shotgun” on ff.net.) You want the title to be memorable.
Song titles and lyrics are fine, but only if they have to do with your fic. No one actually cares either way, but it still helps to set the tone of the story.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, write a damn summary. Don’t leave it blank for only the tags to explain, don’t just write “Read and find out,” just write a damn summary. Your readers want to know what the story is about. People like different things and no matter how good your title is, it’s not going to help people determine if they’re clicking a horror story or a romantic comedy.
Also, stop writing things like “I suck at summaries!!! :(” No. Bad writer. If you admit you suck at summaries, then you basically admit you’re bad at writing. That’s probably not true, but to the average reader, it’s the same thing. Have confidence.
If your story contains a certain AU that’s extremely popular (For example: Coffee-house AUs), then mention them in the summary, especially if there are no tags like FF.net. Place it at the end of the summary so the potential reader will have to read the entire summary to get there, increasing the chances they’ll read.
Quotes are… overused, but that’s understandable. The writer wants to showcase their writing, and in many cases the quotes they choose do exactly that. Just make sure you choose good ones that showcase the story. Is it a comedy? Funny quote. Is it a romance? Kissy quote. Is it horror? Scary quote.
If you want your summary to just be this quote, then… you can, but it’s the same as being vague unless it’s a REALLY good quote.
In terms of placement, it’s up to you to place it at the beginning or the end. Read it out loud to see which sounds better. Just don’t be a weirdo and put it in the middle.
Do not mislead people in summaries. Do not describe the story as lovely fluff if someone gets murdered in the opening paragraph. Do not mislead the audience, for the audience has pitchforks and fire.
Always do a last minute read-over of your summary for spelling and grammar. No text speech unless it’s a text fic.
WHEN YOU CHANGE LOCATION, TIME, OR SPEAKER, PLEASE GO TO A NEW PARAGRAPH. It doesn’t matter if paragraphs are only one sentence long. It doesn’t matter if paragraphs are one word long. We’re not in grade school, you don’t need 5 sentences per paragraph anymore.
In fact, kill the idea of long paragraph after long paragraph forever. Readers need variation in sentence structure and paragraph structure. A short sentence after an extremely long sentence feels like a breath of fresh air; it’s the same thing with paragraphs.
While writing in certain tenses isn’t as noticeable as the whole paragraph thing, if you start in past tense, try to keep it in past tense. If you started in 3rd persona point of view, don’t switch to 1st halfway through the story.
Keep excessive author’s notes at the bottom unless they are urgent, like you’re in the hospital and you won’t be updating for a few months. EDIT: Or if you are not a native English speaker. As long as you mention that, most people will be a lot more forgiving of spelling and grammar mistakes (Some people will even volunteer to beta for you!).
Excessive misspellings and grammar mistakes. Buy a spelling checker, find a beta reader, just please don’t constantly misspell common words and write only in sentence fragments. Pretend you’re going to publish your fic if you have to, just dont right lik dis.
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
