WRITING STAR TREK STORY SUMMARIES from Carol Thomas Stephen Ratliff asked me to scribble a couple of paragraphs on writing Star Trek summaries for new summarizers, and this file is the result... . But it occurred to me that everything I "know" about writing these little suckers I learned through trial and error and writing hundreds of them myself. (I've been summarizing the adult stories since November 1995, so I probably should have learned something by now.) So, I pass on this information so that you won't have to go through the trial and error period yourselves. First, the format. My standard uses four lines: (1) the FTP path within the /pub/startrek directory, (2) the title and author, (3) the date posted and (4) the summary. This format makes it easy for Stephen to incorporate the summaries into the ASC Web page and gives any readers who see the summary outside the Web page the location of the story in the FTP archive. For example: /adult/tos/TurningPoint Turning Point Killashdra Posted: January 29, 1996 Kirk is finally being promoted off the Enterprise. At loose ends for a day, he takes Spock to New Orleans, and to an unusual club. What message is he sending his oldest friend? If you use a different format, make sure to check with Stephen that it's easy for him to use. Second, the content. The most important thing to remember when writing a story summary is: give the reader enough information to determine whether this is "their kind of story" but not enough to spoil the ending. If you can do that, everything else is gravy. The rule of thumb I use is to summarize the first third of the story. By the time you're a third of the way in, you know the set-up and which characters are involved, but not how the main complication in the story will be resolved. Note, however, that you do have to read the whole story before you can summarize it: it's always possible that something you thought was a minor point will turn out to be an important one. You want your summary to accurately reflect what the story is really about. My personal approach is to end many summaries with a question or an ellipsis, to give the reader the idea that there is more to the story than is being told in the summary. That's just a matter of personal style, however; your own summaries will quickly come to reflect your own style. A few miscellaneous tips: 1. If the story is a sequel to another story available on the archive, make sure you've read the previous story first. Sometimes this makes quite a difference to how the story is meant to be read. Similarly, if you're summarizing two or more stories that form a series, try to write the summaries in the same order as the stories are supposed to be read. This creates a more accurate impression of the story for the reader. 2. Make sure sequels are marked as such so that readers won't download stories then realize in frustration that they have to go back and download another story before they can read this one. As examples: Taste for Vengeance, A -- by Karen Colohan Gul Dukat comes to DS9 with insidious plans to destroy the relationship between Garak and Julian Bashir. A sequel to "Getting Away From It All." Postscript -- by Colleen Tom finally confesses his feelings to Harry, but will Harry ever reciprocate them? A sequel to "Ghost in the Machine" by Killashdra. 3. If the story is a romance, make sure it's clear to the reader who is involved in the romantic relationship. This is important to many readers. 4. If the story involves a character invented by the author, provide the character's full name and a little information about him/her so that the reader doesn't think s/he is missing something. For the same reason, if the story involves a minor character from one of the TV shows or movies, identify where that character came from. As an example: Academic Sabbatical -- by JoAnne Soper-Cook Starfleet Cadet Anna Mithrais gets more than she bargained for when she becomes an assistant to Dr. Tolian Soran ("Generations"). 5. If the story's author keeps something a secret throughout part of or most of the story, make sure that you don't give away that secret in your summary. That sounds obvious, but it's easy to slip up here. (If there's a sequel to a story like this, try not to give away the secret in your summary of the sequel, either.) As an example, the identities of the main characters in the following story were kept a secret until the last paragraph, so I gave a sense of what the story was about without giving that away: Beauty and the Beast -- by Nancy Brown Fleeing through dark caves, a human and a Klingon find unexpected comfort in each other's arms. 6. Try to keep your summaries down to four screen lines or fewer. If the story events are very complex, as is often the case, ask yourself what the main theme or conflict of the story is, then try to pare down your summary to reflect that. Not every detail is needed; give the reader just enough to get an idea of what kind of story this is. 7. Don't let your biases show up in your summaries. I've summarized a few stories that I just *loathed* (for one reason or another) but I know there are people out there who will appreciate them, so I try to keep the summaries as neutral and accurate as possible. 8. Proofread, proofread, proofread! It's horribly embarrassing (I know -- it's happened to me) to have a writer e-mail you to tell you that you've misspelled her name. Even worse is realizing after a summary makes it to the Web site that a word is missing and therefore one of the sentences doesn't make sense. That's it! Or at least, that's everything I could think of. Happy summarizing, and if any of you come up with other tips for writing story summaries, please pass them along. Carol Thomas Adult Story Summarizer lemmings@interlog.com