Wikipedia:How to streamline a plot summary

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This page in a nutshell: One can streamline a plot summary with minimal loss of information by rephrasing verbose passages.

In order to maintain readability, plot summaries should have just enough detail to give readers an understanding of the work. Occasionally, you'll find excessively detailed plot summaries that overwhelm readers with a summary of every scene. In this case, it's frequently best to rewrite the plot summary from scratch. However, if you come upon a plot summary of around 800 to 900 words, it's frequently possible to streamline it such that you don't lose any significant amount of information. The context may change slightly, but it's usually not terribly important. If you are unfamiliar with the work in question, then it's probably best to stick as closely to the original wording as possible.

Examples

Meaningless or unnecessary words

English has many meaningless, unnecessary, and redundant words. They may be a bad habit picked up in informal speech, used for unnecessary emphasis, or purple prose. It's easy enough to streamline these out of the plot summary. Some words can always be removed: actual and its derivatives serve no purpose. Just and some are frequently (but not always) unnecessary:

"The girl was actually sitting in a tree just to the left." → "The girl was sitting in a tree to the left."
"The boy eats some actual lunch." → "The boy eats lunch."

Other examples of needlessly verbose phrases include "as well as", "in addition to", "in order to", "in an effort to", etc:

"In addition to his pistol, the cop carries a baton, as well as a stun gun." → "The cop carries a pistol, baton, and stun gun."
"In an effort to escape, the thief intentionally dislocates her shoulder." → "To escape, the thief intentionally dislocates her shoulder."
"In order to save his brother, the knight cuts the binds." → "The knight frees his bound brother."

Deciding to do something

In Wikipedia plot summaries, fictional characters frequently decide to follow a course of action. You can remove the bit about making a decision:

"The thief decides to steal the painting and begins to formulate a plan." → "The thief formulates a plan to steal the painting."
"Deciding the challenge the dragon, the knight gathers his courage for an attack." → "Gathering his courage, the knight attacks the dragon."

You don't have to describe every step of the process. In more complex scenarios, you can streamline out the entire preparatory phase by rewording a sentence. Depending on the context of the scene and the themes of the work, you might also be able to further streamline it. If theme is

Successful attempts

A related concept is the successful attempt. If it's obvious, there's no reason to tell us that the attempt is successful:

"The knight manages to slay the dragon." → "The knight slays the dragon."
"The thief attempts to flee; successful, she returns to her base." → "The thief flees to her base."

If the attempt failed, you can often simplify that, too:

"The thief attempts to flee, but a cop catches her." → "A cop catches the fleeing thief."

Setting and year

People like to explicitly state the setting of a story even when it's irrelevant. The worst writing uses "in the year", which is pointlessly verbose.

"The story takes place in the city of London in the year 1522." → "In 16th century London, ..."
"Far in the future, in the year 2760, a thief plots her heist." → "In 2760, a thief plots her heist."

In-universe dates are probably extraneous details.

"In Galactic Year 882, the evil emperor is crowned. In Galactic Year 892, the space knight begins his quest to depose the emperor." → "Ten years after the evil emperor is crowned, the space knight begins his quest to depose him."

Identifying scenes and their transitions

A related issue involves identifying specific scenes and the transitions between them.

"Later, a cop arrests the conspirators. In the next scene, they escape from jail." → "A cop arrests the conspirators, but they escape from jail."
"In the opening scene, a mother swears revenge for the death of her son." → "A mother swears revenge for the death of her son."
"The film ends as the two lovers reunite in the final scene." → "The two lovers reunite."

Adverbs and adjectives

The quickest and easiest way to streamline a plot summary is to strip out unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. You need to use your judgment, but you can often tell a sentence is too flowery when there are multiple modifiers in the same sentence.

"Deep within the cavernous cave, the enormous dragon roars angrily when it sees the intrepid knight purposefully approach." → "The dragon roars as it sees the knight approach."

If the plot is short enough, then you let through some extra detail. If it's 1000 words, then the flowery words should be the first casualties.

Countdowns and timelines

These are endemic in thrillers where some nasty event will take place in exactly one week. Variations include ghost stories where the protagonists are cursed and will suffer a horrible fate in one week, a police thriller where time counts down until a bomb goes off, a crime thriller in which a parent has a limited amount of time to rescue a child, etc. Let's focus on the ghost story:

"(DAY ONE) Although the couple scoffs at the curse, they experience unexplainable phenomena." → "Although the couple scoffs at the curse, they experience unexplainable phenomena."
"On Thursday (day six of the curse), the couple becomes frantic." → "On Thursday, the couple becomes frantic."

Most of the time, you can compress these day-by-day reports into a single sentence or two. For example, assume that the first 20 minutes of a feature-length film depict a couple who slowly come to believe in a supernatural curse. You need to speed through this in order to describe the main plot, which takes up the remaining runtime: "Although initially skeptical, the couple experience unexplainable phenomena. By the end of the week, they have become frantic." Those 18 words can replace an entire paragraph of unwarranted detail in a 1500+ word plot summary.

Quotations and catchphrases

Generally, these don't add anything to the reader's understanding of the plot. Iconic catchphrases might be warranted, but others should probably be moved to Wikiquote. In most cases, it's possible to paraphrase a quotation down to half its original length. Keep in mind that quoting any specific bit of dialog will place potentially undue emphasis on it.

"As the cop listens the tape, he recognizes the corrupt banker through his catchphrase, 'You can bank on it!'" → "The cop recognizes the corrupt banker on the tape."

For a film like I Come in Peace, you may need to explain the significance of the title. However, the one-liner at the end, "You go in pieces", is probably not suitable to be included in the plot summary.

Writing styles

What works in creative writing might not fair as well in an encyclopedia article. Changing the writing style is often a more time-consuming affair than simply removing excess adverbs and adjectives.

Show, don't tell

Show, don't tell is a writing style that favors implying information rather than explicitly stating it. It's more evocative and creative, but it takes more words to express the same concepts. When you're summarizing a complex work into several hundred words, it's frequently best to avoid this. Instead, simply and explicitly state everything. Remember to avoid original research and personal analysis of the work as much as possible.

"The knight staggers in the dragon's dark lair, unsure of where he prey lies until its flames illuminate the cave." → "The knight uses the dragon's flames to track it in the dark cave."
"The collector frowns as he surveys his art collection. The next day, he hires a thief who has stolen great treasures from around the world." → "Unsatisfied with his current collection, the collector hires a skilled thief."

This writing style would probably most commonly be found in a long, descriptive paragraph rather than a single overwritten sentence. In these cases, you can often replace the entire paragraph with a single sentence that explicitly states the central idea. For example, if a paragraph shows how a character becomes increasingly stressed, replace it with "Bob becomes increasingly stressed". This is unnecessary in shorter plot summaries, of course.

Passive voice

As much as English teachers hate passive voice, it's a legitimate part of English. However, when it's used unnecessarily, it bloats a sentence with unnecessary words. You can reword these sentences to use active voice:

"The thief is chased by a cop." → "A cop chases the thief."

Sometimes long sentences are written in passive voice so that the writer can string along several clauses:

"The bank is robbed by a thief who is later revealed to be an employee." → "A thief, later revealed to an employee, robs the bank."
"The dragon is slain by a knight from a neighboring kingdom ruled by an elf queen." → "A knight from a neighboring kingdom slays the dragon."

It might take a bit of work to disentangle the phrases, order them properly, and decide which details are extraneous. If the the elf queen doesn't figure any further in the story, why even mention her? Use your judgment.

If the subject is obvious, you can also use passive voice to streamline a sentence:

"A prison guard shoots and kills the escaping prisoner." → "The escaping prisoner is shot and killed."

Purple prose

Purple prose overwhelms the reader with unnecessary detail written in flowery language. Remember "it was a dark and stormy night..."? That's purple prose. Although purple prose is traditionally found in creative writing, excessively detailed and flowery writing can creep in anywhere. Sometimes the opening or closing scene of a work is described in loving detail:

"As a heavy storm in the distance threatens to enter the city, the camera slowly pans up from a pair of high heeled shoes as a 45-year-old, dark-haired woman who is wearing a mink fur coat gingerly steps out of a 1965 Chevrolet Corvette just as a fair-skinned man wearing a blue hat and coat speeds by her on a customized 1964 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, splashing mud on the woman's fur coat and drawing her ire." → "A man on a motorcycle splashes mud on a middle-aged woman's fur coat."

Metaphors are also a good candidate for pruning. While they may make you sound creative and intelligent, it's often easier to flatly state something rather than get poetic about it.

"The icy jaws of death begin to close around the knight during his climactic fight." → Who knows. Probably just remove it.

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