English Writing Teacher

First, read the short story, novel, play, poem or other form completely, from beginning to end.  If you don’t understand parts, get help.

Longer works of fiction are usually divided into chapters or acts.  To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, is divided into 31 chapters.  To summarize the whole book, summarize important actions in each chapter.  For example, in chapter 1 of Mockingbird, the narrator, Scout Finch, introduces readers to the setting:  her hometown, Macomb, Alabama, during the early 1930s.  She introduces her father, Atticus, an attorney; her older brother, Jem; and their friend, Dill.  She also introduces the children’s obsession with teasing their reclusive neighbor, Boo Radley.

Some chapters are more important than others, and those chapters should take up more space in a summary.  Less important chapter contents can be either omitted or lumped together with other chapters.  For example, many chapters in Mockingbird concern various ways the children tease Boo.  You don’t need to write a chapter summary of each prank.

A summary should be written in the same order as the book is written (usually in chronological order).  If the book is not strictly chronological, you can say that in a flashback, a particular action happens.  A summary should use words like exposition, inciting event, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution to label parts of the story.  A summary should name the important characters and identify the way the main character changes.  If certain themes or moods are important (for example, racism or suspense), those should be identified as they appear.

A summary is not a conclusion.  You want to identify what happens to whom, and who grows or changes throughout the novel.  If the ending is a cliffhanger, you can say that, telling what the reader is left wondering.  Or if the ending leaves the reader wondering about a moral decision a character has made, you can say that.  But you can’t say that the ending is good or bad.

How long should a summary be?  For a book of 300 pages, it is possible to write a terse, two or three-sentence summary.  Take, for example, Romeo and Juliet.  “After Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly marry, violence breaks out in Verona, and Romeo is forced to flee; distraught, Juliet takes a potion leading to a deep sleep.  Romeo thinks she is dead, and kills himself.  Juliet awakens, finds Romeo dead, and kills herself.”  Most summaries are not this short, but summary means a short version with unimportant details and characters left out.  If you are writing for a school assignment, your teacher will tell you how long your summary should be.

A play can be summarized by summarizing each act or each scene.  For example, Act One of Romeo and Juliet can be summarized as “Romeo and Juliet meet and immediately fall in love.” If each of the five acts were summarized this way, the whole play could be summarized in one paragraph.  Or each scene can be summarized, leading to a more complete summary.  The first of the five scenes in Act One could be summarized as “In Verona, Italy, in the 1500s, two wealthy families and their servants continue an age-old feud.  They are threatened with death by the authorities if they continue.  Romeo, the son of one family, has just broken up with his girlfriend, and he is depressed.  His cousin, Benvolio, encourages him to date other girls.”  With 24 scenes, a summary of each scene might lead to a two-page summary.

A short story summary summarizes each scene, or if the story is really short, each paragraph.  In fiction, something happens to someone causing that someone to change.  What happens to whom and how that person changes should be the heart of any summary.