Wikipedia:How to write a plot summary

The point of a summary is to condense a large amount of information into a short, accessible format. It is not to reproduce the experience of reading or watching the story, nor to cover every detail. For those who have not read or seen the story, it should serve as a general overview that fills them in on the major points. For those that have, it should be detailed enough to refresh their memory - no more.

When teaching writing, a recent trend is to teach the summary as a form of argument. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it makes sense. The point of a summary is to get somebody to understand the major points of something. This means persuading them as to what those points are. A summary should thus have a thesis statement - "X is a story about Y," and then follow with well-organized details and examples from the story that make a convincing case why X can be said to be about Y.

A plot summary is not a recap. There is no reason why a plot summary has to cover the events of the story in the order they appear - indeed, for some stories (The Prestige, for instance, or If on a winter's night a traveler presenting events in the order of the original will simply add to the confusion. In these stories the events are presented non-linearly, and much of the experience is based on untangling what's going on. But for our purposes we don't want to add to mystery - we want to explain. So we should be certain to break things up into a more understandable order. For something like The Prestige where the original order is there for a dramatic reason we might note that the story is structured in a particular way, and we'll surely want to explain what parts of the story are treated as big revelations. But we should make sure our order makes sense to read. That's more important than being faithful to the original.

Often it is preferable to break summaries down into individual plot threads. For instance, in a television episode with a main plot and several subplots, trace the main plot, then separately treat the subplots. (An example of this can be found at Parenthood, where the individual characters each have their own individual arcs laid out)

The basic structure of most narrative plots is that they have lengthy middle sections in which characters repeatedly get in and out of trouble on their way to the climactic encounter. Most episodes of Doctor Who, for instance, involve the main characters getting captured and escaping repeatedly in the middle portion of the adventure. Although such events are exciting to watch, they often clutter a plot summary with excessive detail. Often it is best to move quickly over such sections with a brief mention.

On the other hand, it is easy to go too far in this direction. While it is possible to summarize The Odyssey as "Odysseus, trying to return home from the Trojan War, has many adventures which he uses his wits to escape. He finally makes it home and kills them men who were trying to take over his kingdom." After all, the middle portion of The Odyssey does basically consist of a long sequence of dangerous encounters and escapes. But in cutting out this middle section too much of the story is lost - the reader gets no real sense of The Odyssey. A good middle ground might be "has many adventures which he uses his wits to escape. For example, early on in his voyage he encounters the Cyclops, who he escapes by blinding and sneaking out with his men wearing sheep skins on their backs, thus fooling the Cyclops into thinking they were sheep." This gives lots of information - the sort of encounters Odysseus has, the sort of way he escapes them, etc. Similar sentences could cover Calypso, Circe, and the other events.

It is always tempting, in describing the plot of something, to attempt to recreate its emotional impact. This should be avoided. Wikipedia is not a substitute for the original. As emotionally moving as the end of Hamlet is, the final fight does not need to be described in exquisite detail that attempts to recreate every emotional beat of the scene. On the other hand, it is equally important not to try to leave out information to avoid spoiling the reader. "Hamlet and Claudius have a fateful confrontation" is not an acceptable way to describe the ending of the play.

Let's go through an example - Little Red Riding Hood.

The first thing we should ask is "What is Little Red Riding Hood about?" If you had one sentence to describe what it's about - not summarize it, just describe it - what would you say? Probably something like "Little Red Riding Hood is the story of a young girl's encounter with a dangerous wolf in the woods." Now that we have that, the next step is to figure out what the parts of that claim are that we're going to have to explain. There are three major ones - there's a young girl, a dangerous wolf, and an encounter. We're going to have to explain what all of those are.

We should start, probably, with the young girl - she does, after all, come first in our description and in the story. What is there to know about the young girl? Well, we'll want to know her name, what she's like, and what she's doing. So perhaps we'd continue "The girl, Little Red Riding Hood, is described as 'a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her.' She begins the story by trying to take some food to her ailing grandmother in the woods." This is good for a couple of reasons - the brief quote from the text serves to provide good evidence that the summary is being honest, and gives a good sense of her character. The basic premise of the story is described.

The only problem is that the name of the girl might be a bit confusing - Little Red Riding Hood is an odd name. We don't want to have things in the summary that will make the reader feel like they don't know what's going on. So perhaps we should rephrase. "The girl, named Little Red Riding Hood for the clothes she wears, is described..." These few words quickly clear up a source of confusion.

Let's move on. We've already gotten the girl. Now we need the wolf. What can be said about him? Well, he's another main character, so we'll want to get the same basic information - what do we call him, what's he like, and what does he want? Again, this can be done quickly: "She is noticed by a wolf in the forest, who wishes to eat her." Again, everything is there - we've got a wolf, and we know what he wants - he wants to eat Little Red Riding Hood. Which happens to be a pretty good description of what he's like too.

Now all we need is a description of the encounter. Here we'll want to figure out what the major parts of the encounter are. Obviously the highlight is the "My, what big teeth you have" sequence in the grandmother's house. But as with Red Riding Hood's name, if we just drop the conflict in the house in without context it will just confuse people. So we're going to have to unpack it a bit. On the other hand, we don't need everything in the story - we just need to get enough that the big events make sense.

So what do we need to know? We'll need to know how the wolf gets into the house and in the grandmother's bed, mainly. But here we have a choice - do we want to relate the story chronologically, or not? In this case, since the story has such an iconic scene, it might be best to start with that and work backwards. So we might write, "The wolf's plans come to a head when he encounters Red Riding Hood in her grandmother's house, having tricked her into revealing her destination and into stopping to pick flowers, giving the wolf time to get there first and eat her grandmother." What we've done here is clearly flagged the encounter in the house as the climax of the story, then gone back and filled in how we got there.

Now all that remains is to play out the encounter. Here, since we're describing a pretty short portion of the story, we should probably just be chronological. "The wolf, dressed in the grandmother's clothing, lures Red Riding Hood closer. Red Riding Hood grows suspicious, noting that the wolf does not look like her grandmother, remarking, "Oh, what big eyes you have," and "Oh, what large ears you have." The wolf explains all of these things tenderly, noting that the eyes are so she can see Red Riding Hood better, until Red Riding Hood remarks on the wolf's teeth, at which point the wolf springs forward and devours her." This is, of course, much more detail than we've gone into elsewhere, but in this case it's worth it - the "what big eyes you have" dialogue is an iconic moment of the story, and this encounter is one of the major beats of the story. All the same, we have attempted to be concise - we've given only two examples of Red Riding Hood's questions, and only one of the Wolf's answers before jumping to the big one - the teeth.

Are we done? Well, no - we've still got a major part of our thesis unfulfilled - we've got some of the encuonter, but the encounter isn't over. Thankfully, the ending here is quick and, really, less important than the scene before it. All we need is "She is saved when a woodcutter happens by the cottage and hears the wolf, charges in, and kills the wolf to rescue her and her grandmother" The woodcutter is really a bit of a deus ex machina to clear up the ending, and all we really need him for is to make the reader understand that we've come to the end of the encounter.

And at that point we've got it - we have all of the elements we laid out in our first sentence explained. The reader knows who the girl and the wolf are, and knows how their encounter plays out. Obviously when you're writing a plot summary you probably won't go into as much careful detail - for the most part, stuff like picking what's important and what's not is intuitive, and doesn't require a lot of analysis. But this gives a sense