How To Summarize A Story

How to Summarize a Story – An Essential Guide

Whether for professional, academic, or personal reasons, you may find yourself regularly reading stories that come in many different forms. While reading a story in its entirety can be enjoyable in its own right, understanding and remembering key takeaways are what we are looking for in the academic and professional world. 

This is where creating a summary of a story can come in handy. With a summary available, you’ll not only be able to look back on the summary to recall what the story was about, but you can also more easily share the takeaways from that story with others. 

So, how do you create a summary of a story? That’s the topic we are going to tackle below. Take a moment to review this page and you’ll soon have a strong understanding of how to summarize a story and why you would want to do so. 

What is a Story Summary?

A story summary is a shorter version of a story that aims to condense all of the important information into a concise, easy-to-read package. When a story summary is executed correctly, the reader will get all of the essential components from the original work without spending as much time as would have been required to read the full piece. 

It’s important to note that a story summary is not passing judgment on the original story, or offering any fresh perspective or insight. A summary exists to do nothing more than deliver the key points of the story with as little wasted time and effort as possible. An analysis of a story, or a critical review, may be applicable in other instances, but when a summary is called for, the task is only to distill the message down to its fundamental pieces.

Every Story Summary Starts Here

If you are going to write a story summary by hand, as opposed to using modern AI-powered technology to do the job (more on that later), you’ll always want to start in the same place – by reading the story carefully. A thorough reading of the original story is the only way to gain the understanding that you are going to need to later produce an accurate summary.

You may want to take notes as you read the story to start to organize your thoughts and make sure you don’t leave out any key sections later. Depending on the length of the story, you may choose to read it once without taking notes just to get comfortable with the material, before going back through again later to outline what you want to include in the summarized version.

Three Key Components of a Great Summary

While there is room for personal style and preferences when drafting a story summary, it’s a good idea to keep the fundamentals listed below in mind –

• Put the important details first. You want to get right to the point in a story summary. That means using the first sentence or two to highlight all of the fundamental details that need to be included, such as the name of the author, the title of the story, and the shortest possible description of the theme. Diving right into these details will get each of your summaries off to a good start. 
• Add more on the main theme. With your one-or-two-sentence introduction out of the way, use the next space in your summary to go a little deeper into the story and what it’s all about. If there is a foundational message or moral that brings the story together, now is the time to present that to the reader of your summary. 
• Develop your outline. Now that the summary has done a good job of introducing the basics and explaining what the story is about in general terms, you can put together an outline of the major events to move the reader through the story arc. This should follow chronological order to match the story, it should present the main characters, and it should end with whatever resolution the story reaches in the end.

Watch for These Common Mistakes in a Story Summary

With a little practice, you should find that putting together a quality story summary is a relatively straightforward task. There are, however, some common mistakes that you will want to be sure to avoid along the way. 

• Adding fluff. The whole point of this summary is to cut out any fluff that might exist in the original story. You want to get down to the core of the story while keeping nothing that doesn’t need to be there. It’s a good habit to go through a review/edit procedure after the first draft is complete with the goal of cutting anything out that isn’t absolutely essential. 
• Using complex language. Again, it’s all about simplicity with a summary. If the language you use is too complicated, or overly descriptive and flowery, it might prove to be easier to read the original instead of the summary. 
• Getting things out of order. The chronology within your summary is important. Be careful to put everything in its proper place and let the story arc in your summary build just like it does in the real piece. 

Leveraging Advanced AI Summarization Technologies

When your reading needs involve consuming a large volume of material regularly, it might not be practical to produce all of your story summaries manually. Going through each story in detail to produce a manual summary might defeat the purpose – you might want these summaries specifically for the purpose of saving yourself the time of reading the whole story. 

For that, there are now advanced tools like ReadPartner AI and its Chrome AI Summarizer Extension which automate the job of summarizing longer pieces of content. With AI on your side, you’ll get an accurate summary of any story in just a matter of seconds. Furthermore, if you ever want to create some summaries manually in the future, using AI as your companion can provide you with an excellent story summary example to follow. 

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have some lingering questions that haven’t been addressed above, the answers to those queries may be found below.

What is the right length for the summary of a story?

There is no one specific length that is going to be appropriate for all story summaries. Of course, a shorter story is typically going to lead to a shorter summary. Aim to keep the summary no longer than one-quarter to one-third of the length of the original story, if possible.

Which story elements should be included in a summary?

Your summary will want to feature the overall plot of the original story, along with its primary characters and setting. Also, the general message or moral of the story should be included in the summary.

How do I edit a story summary?

Once the summary is prepared, go through a round of editing to make sure it’s ready for whatever the next steps will be. Editing will not only focus on removing any fundamental grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors, but it will also review the content of the summary to make sure it aligns with the original story.

Start Creating Great Story Summaries Today

In the modern world, you’ll likely want to develop these summaries through a combination of traditional techniques and advanced technologies like ReadPartner AI. As you get used to creating summaries and having them available for personal use and to share with others, you’ll quickly be amazed by how much time and effort can be saved. Get started today and your reading life will never be the same.