Changes to the presentation of lit deviations

*sleepyowlet Nov 6, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Because the way it is now is bad. DeviantArt is a site geared towards visual arts, and that is fine. What is not fine is allowing literature deviations, and simply slapping the visual art presentation on them. Because it doesn't work. At all.

A thumbnail gives you all the information you need to decide if you want to see the whole for a picture, but it doesn't do the same for a story. What is the story about? What is the setting? Who are the main characters? I want to know all that before clicking on it. I mean, you don't go to a book store or library and randomly pick up books, right? You look at the cover, and you read the text on it.

My suggestion would be to keep the cover images, but as soon as you mouse over them they change into the scroll text you already have. In this scroll text there will be a summary and whatever the author wants you to know (like specific warnings), and not just the beginning of the story. Maybe simply display the author description (where the summary and such can be put) instead of the deviation itself? That should be doable.

This would be very helpful, thanks.

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Devious Comments

~OxfordTweed Nov 11, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I hate when people change the thumbnail on their lit to an image. It tells me nothing, and I'm not going to waste bandwidth to load the page.

There does need to be a set of special fields though. For now, I've taken to pasting onto my submissions the header AO3 generates. That what, when you mouse over the icon, the first text you see is word count, title, characters, summary, warnings, and a bunch of other stuff. And then the story!

*sleepyowlet Nov 11, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I think the cover image is a good idea - otherwise all the lit deviations look the same (and really drab in comparison to the visual art). It just needs to be combined with the scroll text for information.

Putting a header into your story that deals with all the "reader needs to know that" stuff isn't an ideal solution in my opinion - that kind of thing has no business being in the body of a deviation proper; it would be like forcing an artist to write the description on their painting. It's ugly. So if you want to show/see a description when you mouse over, then why not show the description in the scroll text instead of the start of the deviation?

~OxfordTweed Nov 11, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Funny. That's a staple of how it's done everywhere else. AO3, FP and FFN, LJ, DW... On all of the sites, the information is right there on top of the story. dA's the only one who puts it at the bottom.

*sleepyowlet Nov 11, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Yeah... well, nothing wrong with information on top of a story, It's just shouldn't be in the body proper, messing up the layout.

~Balaria Nov 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This would be nice to have. Just remember to make PDF files support it too

*sleepyowlet Nov 7, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I'm glad you like the idea! And I would be very grateful if you'd help spread the word - I'm not exactly active in the lit community...

!prosaix Nov 6, 2012

" What is not fine is allowing literature deviations, and simply slapping the visual art presentation on them."

But the only way for literature deviations to get a decent amount of views to to trick people into clicking on a pretty picture they use as preview...

*sleepyowlet Nov 6, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Which I very much doubt will make them read it - more likely they will be grumpy about being "tricked" and leave. And that is actually the case - I see a lot of people asking for the preview picture for lit deviations to be removed for that very reason...

I think giving people a nice picture and some information (summary, warnings, etc.) would result in more people actually reading, and in less people grumpy about being tricked.

!prosaix Nov 6, 2012

No one reads literature on dA anyway.

=markusglanzer Nov 10, 2012 Professional General Artist

I agree. 99% of the cases my reaction is "ah, it's a fanfic" and click it away.

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