Making my 11th post for what should have just been a little school project. But I figured, I have this, so I might as well run with it a little more, while taking my lessons to heart.
Dunno what else I'll be sharing in the future, but this time, I'm gonna talk about something important:
How to present your Author's Page. Again, I assume we're using the basis of fanfiction.net. How one write's one's personal profile, while not directly related to writing well, tells a reader about your general writing capability. In ways, it's like a pitch, but instead of a single story, you're going to be pitching your general attitude towards stories.
It's of course, situational, given a person has to willfully access one's Author's Profile to begin with, but you'd have to agree that probably happens a lot, already.
So, to get to the gist of things. I believe the most important part of writing a Profile is that it's short and concise. A profile is only accessory to the stories you write, and only because it's another way of organizing stories. It's only by the general grace of the Admin that they decided to give you a little spot to blurb about yourself. This should not be abused.
We come a website like fanfiction.net to read about... fanfiction. Not about your personal life. There are authors profiles on the site that sometimes are miles long. They include things like their favorite pairings, anime, TV shows, opinions, quotes, daily life, games, Bios for Original Characters, etc.
And that's just horrible. I have to scroll through all that stuff I could care less about. Maybe I care about the notices about the future proposistions of your fiction, your progress, and even maybe how your life at home is, but only because it all relates to your level of writing progress. Cold, maybe, but it's consumerism like anything else. If we don't see your face, it does get harder for us to care.
That aside, it's not like it's not allowed for you to write your likes and dislikes, but if I have to scroll through more of your personal info than I do for your archive of stories, then I'm having to commit to scrolling through more than I asked for, clicking on your profile/archive. Why do I care about what music or games you like? Pairings, maybe, but that can just be easily said in an individual story's summary. There are things worth sharing, and things you need to consider, "Why would I share these types of interests to a buncha faceless people on the internet, who's gonna be around for maybe 5 seconds on my Author's Page?"
I hate to say this too, but sometimes, when I read an absurdly long author's profile, it gives me the mental age of the writer too, who's somewhere between 13-14, and absurdly absorbed in his own ego.
Long Story Short: If your personal information is even 50-50 to the length of your archives, you need to trim it down. Good Author's keep it short.
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