How to summarize a story

What is summarization? How to summarize a story?

Summary is a short text of a story. Summarization is nothing but a response to the story that has been read. A sequence of events are recorded or documented in order to summarize a story.

Summarization helps in breaking down the story into bits. These bits together will act as an element to create a summary on it.

It is not hard to summarize a story. It takes simple ways and good writing skills to complete it. 

Why is summarization needed?

1.It increases the reading and comprehension skills.

2.It increases the absorption skills thereby making the brain sharper.

3.It helps in consolidating the points out of the original text thereby increasing creativity.

4.Summarization includes note taking hence will enable students to note down important keywords and phrases.

10 Easy ways to summarize a story

1.Read the story thoroughly: In order to analyse a story, it must be read properly. Reading it in detail will help in bringing out the essence of the story. The story has to be critically read so as to summarize it in a proper manner.

2.Have an in-depth analysis on the story, its elements: How the story starts, how it develops and how it ends, these are the things that has to be analysed. An in-depth analysis of the story allows to write better bringing out the elements of the story.

3.Make a note on the important points: After the story is critically read, the important to make points of what you have understood .This way, it becomes easier to summarize a story as the points collected will help in bringing clarity to it.

4.Organize the points to form a summary:  The points that are collected must be organized. Organizing points will help in forming a summary. Organizing skills include prioritizing the points according to its importance and maintaining the readability.

5.Write an introduction: The skeleton of a write-up always includes three sections. They are an introduction section, a body section, and a conclusion section.  These are the fundamental aspects which must be added.

The first section is the introduction. This section is very important as it introduces the story and brings about a fair explanation to it. Necessary hook statements must be added in the introductory part so that it grabs the reader’s attention.

6.Include a body section: The body section is the heart of a summary. It must have details of the story, its elements, how the story was developed.

It must be written in a paragraph structure with 3 or paragraphs. It must depict the story, its characters and how the plot changes from the start till it ends.

7.Conclude with a convincing conclusion: The final part of summarizing is conclude it with a strong conclusion.  As this is the last stage of the write-up, it must conclude properly so that it is given the righteous justice.

8.Edit the summary: After all the three sections are completed, it must be edited. Editing is a stage where the existing text is checked for any kind of error. If some of the information which was missed while drafting can be added or any additional information which is unnecessary can be omitted in this stage.

9.Proofread the write-up:  The last stage of summarizing a story is to proofread the content. The story must be given a last check so that it does not get published with silliest error.

10.Include necessary elements: It must contain summarization of the plot, the characters and the effect of the characterization on the plot

Tips to consider while summarizing a story

1.It is very important to be a critical reader and have critical thinking in order to summarize a story.

2.Use journalistic question Why, where, how, what, why to have more impact on the readers.

3. Summarizing a story does not involve copying and pasting the same content. It must be an amalgamation of the content and the outcome that the story has to offer.

4.The length of the write-up should not be too long nor should be too short.

5. Opinions are not entertained here. It is not a review of the book but just the summary of the story.

6.It must not increase half the length of the original text.