Hmm... I'm not sure if I've ever seen this. Is this just a little blurb at the beginning of the chapter giving brief notes on the major events that happened recently? You know, like at the beginning of each episode of Avatar, the Last Airbender?
I'm not too familiar with Avatar (I know, sue me), but I believe we're talking about the same thing here. My go-to-TV show at the moment would be Arrow. A more popular example, I suppose, would be...I don't know. Yu-Gi-Oh? In my head, I planned to write it in a collection of quotes labeled "Chapter 1", "Chapter 3", etc.
Recaps are a bit of a balance thing. You could go about it a couple of ways. There's the "previously on" style used in TV series, for example, where you provide a condensed view of what has just transpired in the latest / last few eps. Or there's the settings brief, which would be a condensed view of the key on-screen events in the story regardless of how ago they transpired. Or perhaps there's something in the middle.
Yeah, I was thinking of going about this the first way. Frankly, I'm not sure what the second option is describing, haha. I do, however, want to avoid phrases like "previously on [Insert Title Here]" because I don't want my story to sound like basic written TV. A simple "Previously..." would work, I believe.
And each recap style is proner to help catch up a certain kind of reader than others, so I guess part of it is who you want to help catch up. I feel loyal but non-exclusively dedicated readers would strongly benefit from the first style, whereas the second would seem to be better fit for readers archive binging or about the leap to comment / review. Just my opinion, dunno what the others think.
I agree. I don't want it to be a cheat sheet for people who want to skip chapters, though I can see it unintentionally becoming exactly that. The main purpose is to remind readers something they could have forgotten. A subtle character moment trapped in the middle of a long chapter. Or an event that transpired quite a few chapters ago, which with my pace could translate to months in time. And even if it
does become a cheat sheet, would that be the worst thing? If anything, it could make the story more comfortable for new readers, especially members whose join dates are preceded by my fic's birth date, to get into it.
Still, as Nolafus says, I don't think I've ever seen a fanfic recap. So I can't judge their utility by experience.
Me neither. I got the idea from a friend of mine who writes for fun at a different forum. He went on a year-long hiatus and started off the next chapter summarizing events from before. Connecting that with all the TV I watch, and the idea just came to me.
