Have you ever seen a movie you enjoyed so much that, the moment you saw your best friend, you just had to tell them about it? You didn't reenact the entire movie, did you? Rather, you probably gave a shortened version of the story retold in your own words. This is a summary.
A summary is condensed, or shortened, retelling of a longer work (this can be a movie, book, play, long poem, and so forth). Summaries are meant to be short--the purpose is to communicate the basic idea of the piece and the relevant details. It gives a person who has not read the story or book a good idea of what the book will be about.
You've probably seen a summary before--they're the short blurbs on the backs of books that describe the main events of the stories inside. Sometimes, especially with academic papers like essays, writers will end the text with a summary of all the main concepts that have been discussed.
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When you sit down to write a summary, the first thing you want to do is read or watch the original. Make sure to pay attention the Six Ws:
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The who, what, when, where, why and how should be answered in your summary if important to the overall text and if those answers are available in the original text. And keeping an eye out for these answers while reading will help you with the next step: finding the central idea, or theme, of the story.
Sometimes, the theme will be written in a topic sentence--usually in the first paragraph of the piece. But more often, especially with narratives, the central idea is spread out within the story. The key is to look for an overarching theme that seems to be focused on or repeated throughout the text. Once you've found the central idea, write a topic sentence that communicates it. The remaining sentences of the summary will provide the main details of the story, including the beginning, middle and end, in our own words.
Keep these tips in mind when filling in the details:
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Let's try this with a story you're probably already familiar with: The Three Little Pigs. We know that this story is about three brother pigs who built different types of houses to keep the big bad wolf away. So, we could write our topic sentence as:
There once were three little pig brothers who were to build a house but had different ideas of how to do it and were in danger of being eaten by the big bad wolf.
Now, we'll retell the main points of the story, from beginning to end, in our own words. Our final summary might look something like this:
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A summary is shortened retelling of a longer piece, like a book, movie or essay, in your own words. When writing a summary, try to answer the who, what, when, where, why and how of the piece, and provide a topic sentence to tell the reader the main concept, or theme, of the piece. Then, fill in the relevant details of the story, leaving out unnecessary information and unimportant characters.
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This lesson taught you all about what a summary is and how to write one. Now, it's time to explore what you've learned in more detail with these activities.
You can probably think of some reasons why summaries are useful, especially based on what you have learned in this lesson. Write a paragraph explaining the reasons that this lesson gave (plus any others you can think of!) for why being able to write effective and accurate summaries is a good skill to have. Guess what? If you explain why a summary is important based on what this lesson taught you, you just wrote your own summary! Good work!
Summarizing a lesson is great, but take this opportunity to write a narrative summary. That means a summary of a story, like you would find in a book or a movie. Choose your favorite book or movie and write a summary so that someone who has never read or watched it can understand what happens. Remember to include only the most important details and the important characters; you don't need to say every single thing that happens. For example, if you say a character's name, make sure you explain to your readers who that character is. When you have finished, read your summary to a friend or family member and see if they can understand what happens in the story. If they have questions, you can always edit your work to make it clearer.
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I would definitely recommend Study.com to my colleagues. It’s like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. I feel like it’s a lifeline.
