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Part of covering a work of fiction is giving a concise summary of the plot. But what this means, exactly, is a trickier business. We want the plot summary to be concise because Misplaced Pages's coverage of works of fiction should be about a whole lot more than just the plot. But we still want it to be thorough enough to give a good sense of what happens. But on the other hand, overly long and thorough plot summaries are hard to read too, and end up being just as unhelpful as overly short ones. This essay tries to give some specific guidance on how to write a good plot summary for Misplaced Pages.

The point of a 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.

What summaries aren't

A plot summary is not a recap. It should not cover every scene and every moment of a story. A website like Television Without Pity is a great resource, but we're just not doing the same thing they are, and we shouldn't follow their lead on summaries. On the other hand, we should be sure to use the best source available for summaries. This is a case where secondary sources may not be appropriate - a summary of a summary is less likely to be useful. Consulting other summaries may be helpful in narrowing down on what the major plot elements are, but be sure to consult the primary source material in this case to make sure you get it right.

Not only should a summary not go scene by scene, there's no reason why a plot summary has to cover the events of the story in the order they appear. For some stories (Memento, 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 Memento 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 again, the point of a summary isn't to reproduce the experience - it's to explain the story. If the original is confusing or experimental in its structure, we have to acknowledge that fact. But we also have to try to clear up the confusion. In fact, for a confusing story, we should assume that some of our readers will look the story up because they didn't understand it. Just repeating what they saw isn't going to help them!

It is always tempting, in describing the plot of something, to attempt to recreate its emotional impact. This should be avoided. Misplaced Pages 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. Our article should not try to be a replacement for actually reading the play.

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. Misplaced Pages's goal is to provide complete and thorough information on a subject. This cannot be done while avoiding material that could be considered a spoiler. (See Misplaced Pages:Spoilers for more information on this.)

Ways of organizing a plot summary

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)

What to cut

Michelangelo supposedly created David by taking a block of marble and cutting away everything that was not David. Writing a plot summary is a similar process - you take a long work, and you cut out as much as possible. The question is, what do you cut?

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 and repetitive 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. 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 the 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 may know how the Odyssey ends, but it's hard to say they understand the plot.

A good middle ground might be to say that Odysseus "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. All of these, after all, are iconic moments of The Odyssey, and it's difficult to say that one understands the work without knowing about them.

Characters, locations, etc.

In the cases where we have articles on characters, locations, and other parts of a fictional work, we often have a section that amounts to a fictional biography. These sections are, essentially, just a different kind of plot summary. For instance, an article on Hamlet the character as opposed to Hamlet the play would just summarize Prince Hamlet's individual plot arc through the play. This works just like any other summary - again, you come up with a thesis statement, and defend it with evidence from the play. So you'd start the section with something like "The play charts Hamlet's tragic downfall as he pursues revenge against his uncle Claudius." And then you'd summarize the events that contribute to that tragic downfall, using all the same guidelines you would in general.

Case study: Little Red Riding Hood

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

How to begin

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.

Establishing the premise

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.

Getting to the good stuff

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" dialog is an iconic moment of the story, and this encounter is one of the major beats of the story. Simply put, this scene is a vital piece of information about the overall work. 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 encounter, 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.

Putting it all together

So what does that give us?

Little Red Riding Hood is the story of a young girl's encounter with a dangerous wolf in the woods. The girl, named Little Red Riding Hood for the clothes she wears, 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. She is noticed by a wolf in the forest, who wishes to eat her. 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 capture her grandmother. 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 to devour her. 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.

Not half bad. Obviously when you're writing a plot summary you probably won't go into as much careful detail in thinking about every decision - 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 of the logic that underlies a good summary.