Making Summaries Interesting

[Netardapope]

Making engaging description is a topic I see covered a great deal, but I never see people talking about making good-sounding summaries. A lot of times, action can get repetitive and we just want to skip through areas we'd otherwise be describing, and this makes summaries as invaluable as description. But my problem with summaries is that they're too hard to make interesting.

"Johnny went upstairs, where he came into his room. He took out a toy from his room and exited into his sister's room, only to leave that room as well. Then he went back down the stairs."

You see, writing this left me feeling empty, but this could be tolerable in a short scene. The problem is when I'm writing scenes that take place in large areas over a long period of time. After a while, all the summaries of my character's actions and of the setting end up sounding similar.

Does anyone have tips to spice up the process of summarizing?



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[Ireth]

"Johnny went upstairs into his room to find [toy]. He ducked into his sister's room for a moment [did he put the toy in there?] before going back downstairs."

Not necessarily "spicier", but at least more concise.

 

[Heliotrope]

Voice and characterization.

The summary is way more interesting in the POV of the character or the narrator.

"Johnny went upstairs, where he came into his room. He took out a toy from his room and exited into his sister's room, only to leave that room as well. Then he went back down the stairs."

Johnny trudged up the fifthy wooden steps and down the hallway decorated by an ancient threadbare rug before finally coming to his room.

He had no clue where he had last seen the toy, and in the disaster that was his closet he was pretty sure he would never find it.

But after a short time searching he finally found what he was looking for underneith September's issue of MAD magazine, the one he had sprayed chocolate milk on when he laughed so hard he couldn't swallow.

Holding the toy in both hands like a million dollar tiara he gingerly sidestepped a pile of scattered wooden blocks before making his way back down stairs.

 

[Netardapope]

"Johnny went upstairs into his room to find [toy]. He ducked into his sister's room for a moment [did he put the toy in there?] before going back downstairs."

Not necessarily "spicier", but at least more concise.

I see what you mean, and I think that'd work perfectly for a short scene. It's just that when it comes to long and large scenes, there's the issue of giving it just a sprinkling of the magic that comes with description. My main worry is that summaries can feel really detached at times, and almost jarring.

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[Netardapope]

Voice and characterization.

The summary is way more interesting in the POV of the character or the narrator.

"Johnny went upstairs, where he came into his room. He took out a toy from his room and exited into his sister's room, only to leave that room as well. Then he went back down the stairs."

Johnny trudged up the fifthy wooden steps and down the hallway decorated by an ancient threadbare rug before finally coming to his room.

He had no clue where he had last seen the toy, and in the disaster that was his closet he was pretty sure he would never find it.

But after a short time searching he finally found what he was looking for underneith September's issue of MAD magazine, the one he had sprayed chocolate milk on when he laughed so hard he couldn't swallow.

Holding the toy in both hands like a million dollar tiara he gingerly sidestepped a pile of scattered wooden blocks before making his way back down stairs.

I like the direction you're heading in, and it's pretty close to the solution I envisioned. It's just that what you wrote is not as short a summary as I'm envisioning. Ideally, it'd have the same amount of character as your description, but placed inside of a length of 1-2 paragraphs

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[Heliotrope]

Johnny trudged to his room to search for the toy. He peaked into the disaster that was his closet and was pretty sure he would never find it. After a short time searching, however, he finally found what he was looking for underneith September's issue of MAD magazine.

Holding the toy in both hands he gingerly sidestepped a pile of scattered wooden blocks and made his way back down stairs.

 

[FifthView]

He peaked into the disaster that was his closet

Ouch! That's some vibrant, odd magic there. :bounce:

 

[FifthView]

Johnny went upstairs, where he came into his room. He took out a toy from his room and exited into his sister's room, only to leave that room as well. Then he went back down the stairs."

My view is that this is rather dry, with generic (general) words. I don't know, but it's a little like an AI/robot delivering just the basics and nothing else.

Not that a simple straightforward summary is necessarily a bad thing. But making it concise in such a situation is probably better than using lots of words.

Johnny went upstairs to his room, grabbed a toy, wandered into his sister's room but soon left it and headed back downstairs.​

Alternatively, you could make the summary more vibrant by using something other than general terminology—verbs and nouns—with some specificity.

Johnny trudged upstairs to his room, snatched his armless G.I.Joe action figure from the fallen Lego fort he'd built yesterday, wandered into his sister's cluttered room looking for her favorite Barbie doll, but couldn't find it and headed back downstairs.​

For me there are two very general approaches. The simple concise summary used just to get from Point A to Point C, and the summary that adds information (which a simple generic summary doesn't.)

A continuum exists between the two extremes.

 

[skip.knox]

So, you're talking about summarizing lots of events, probably over an extended period of time, right?

Summarize only the important stuff. Before you claim it's all important, remember that the only criterion for importance is this: does it further the plot? The other only criterion <g> is, does it develop a character, but summaries rarely serve that function.

The trick, of course, is figuring that out. Try this: go to the next chapter(s) without any of that summary. Does the reader trip at any point because of a lack of information? If not, you don't need the summary at all. If so, then that information needs to be worked in, somehow. That could be in a simple narrative summary, but if the chunks are small enough it could be handled in pieces, or even handled in dialogue.

I'm going to assume, though, that you have already decided you have a large chunk that needs a narrative summary. If so, then write it. Don't worry about the spice, just write it. Put down the information you think is needed. Write it the best you know how. Let it sit. When you come back through on an edit pass, then you can evaluate how well that worked and whether you want to improve it or even dismantle it.

 

[Heliotrope]

lol! PEEKED.

Crap. Damn phone.

 

[Svrtnsse]

"Johnny rushed up the stairs and in the kitchen his mother rolled her eyes and sighed. What was he going to bring her this time? Some toy again?"

To sum things up, I think you first need to decide what's really important.
+ Is it that he's going upstairs?
+ Is it the toy?
+ Is it that he's going into his sister's room?

Once you've figured that out you can scale off everything else, and then flesh out the important bit.

 

[Netardapope]

My view is that this is rather dry, with generic (general) words. I don't know, but it's a little like an AI/robot delivering just the basics and nothing else.

Not that a simple straightforward summary is necessarily a bad thing. But making it concise in such a situation is probably better than using lots of words.

Johnny went upstairs to his room, grabbed a toy, wandered into his sister's room but soon left it and headed back downstairs.​

Alternatively, you could make the summary more vibrant by using something other than general terminology–verbs and nouns–with some specificity.

Johnny trudged upstairs to his room, snatched his armless G.I.Joe action figure from the fallen Lego fort he'd built yesterday, wandered into his sister's cluttered room looking for her favorite Barbie doll, but couldn't find it and headed back downstairs.​

For me there are two very general approaches. The simple concise summary used just to get from Point A to Point C, and the summary that adds information (which a simple generic summary doesn't.)

A continuum exists between the two extremes.

Sorry about that. That wasn't the actual prose I was writing, it was an example that I made to highlight how unimaginative summaries can be at times.

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[Devor]

"Johnny went upstairs, where he came into his room. He took out a toy from his room and exited into his sister's room, only to leave that room as well. Then he went back down the stairs."

So, toy is super-generic, I'm not sure what Johnny wants it for, and I've got no idea why he's going into his sister's room. There's no immersion, no description, no emotion, no motivation here. I mean, I assume that's the point as an example. But it's painfully flat.

I'm going to try and go with the spirit of the example in my response, instead of addressing the obvious issues I mentioned above. That is, presumably readers already know why he's getting the toy, and the next line is probably something like, "Hey sis, you need to clean you room."

Johnny went upstairs and into his room, where he found the toy he wanted. Then he came out and popped into his sister's room before heading downstairs.

Compare to the original and notice a couple of things:

- Good prose is all about the verbs. Wherever I could consolidate two actions into one verb, I did. He went upstairs and into his room. He popped into his sister's room.

- Clear actions rely on words like into, under, then, before - these words add an immense amount of clarity to the prose and help to define each distinct action.

- Use diverse sentence structure.

No, it's not super interesting. But they don't need to be. Two quick sentences to keep things moving - you just need them not to stand out like a stale hole in the prose. Really, here, the bar is low.

 

[FifthView]

Sorry about that. That wasn't the actual prose I was writing, it was an example that I made to highlight how unimaginative summaries can be at times.

No problems. It's a decent example, even if we don't focus on the actual prose. I'll just highlight Svrtnsse's point about choosing what information is important and building from that. The example you gave is so generic that it doesn't particularly focus on anything other than the basic facts. So you've asked about making summaries interesting, and the key here is to add something that maintains the reader's interest. Give it a focus that focuses that interest even if only for the duration of that summary.

One thing I've mentioned in other threads on other topics: Your prose can do double- and triple-duty. Your example's bare facts do nothing but give those bare facts, a dry delivery of basic activities. But by choosing the right verbs and including some specificity, you can make those summaries do other things in addition to being quick summaries of activity. Your summaries can be suggestive. They can build a tone and mood, foreshadow things, suggest states of mind, suggest historical facts about your characters, and so forth.

So given my one example, what might you say about whether the sister is present, the history between brother and sister, what the boy planned to do with his toys, even the age of the boy? What if the toy had been some other kind of toy; what would that suggest about the boy? If he's trudging, does that reveal something about his state of mind that skipping up the stairs wouldn't?

Svertnsse's point is key in deciding how you'll write those summaries. But even before deciding what is most important for any given summary, you have to first decide that every summary will be important.

But again, as I mentioned before, sometimes just delivering the bare facts is all that's needed. You've mentioned that "After a while, all the summaries of my character's actions and of the setting end up sounding similar." The trick, then, is to use different types of summaries, different lengths of summaries, and accomplish different (suggestive) things in your summaries. Mix it up.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Can I do an example of my own? Sure I can. This summary is really more of an info dump, but I think the same general principles apply. You pick the parts that matter for the moment and then focus on those. Here goes:

They'd had a good run. Growing up together – he'd been her sister's best friend and she'd been the annoying kid sister that eventually grew into a person in her own right. They'd grown close, she and Roy. Became good friends, confidants. He was the closest thing to a brother she had ever known.

He'd wanted more, and in the end she'd served him a frying pan to the face and walked away. That had been bad. If he'd been a normal human he probably wouldn't have survived. He'd been fine though. She'd checked his heartbeat before she left.

There's a fair bit of info here. The two paragraphs span somewhere in the range of fifteen to twenty years. There's enough information for the reader to get a sense of time and conflict and then a dramatic ending.

There's a lot more that happened to Roy and Toini (that's she in the example), but it's not important for the story. I can let the reader fill in the blanks as they wish, and hopefully most of them will have at least vaguely similar ideas.

 

[Penpilot]

"Johnny went upstairs, where he came into his room. He took out a toy from his room and exited into his sister's room, only to leave that room as well. Then he went back down the stairs."

With something like this there are things we can skip over and the reader will be able to fill in the blanks.

For something like this I could write the following.

Johnny climbed the stairs. Up in his room he grabbed his favorite teddy bear. His sister always loved that bear, so he placed it in her room before leaving the house.

Notice I never once say he exited one place, nor did I say he went back down stairs. It's all understood. This leaves room to add other important details if need. Part of this is knowing what the reader will fill in on their own and can be left out.

And as mentioned by others, another part is your POV and how it colors things. If you're really into the POV's head and let their emotions shine through, IMHO things will be more interesting.

Another example.

The dry version: I went to the beach the other day. I walked barefoot in the sand. It was nice, but when I came home, I missed Sue.

Version with more color and emotion: Stole away to the beach the other day, like me and Sue used to do before the kids came along. Sand mushed between my toes, and I couldn't help but smile. But when I stepped through the door back home, the echo of the door slamming followed by the long, loud silence... I missed her.

As for extending it into larger summaries, I'd ask how long are these summaries? If it's super long, I'd look into a way to just have the events play out for the reader. Why summarise when you can dramatise?

If that isn't possible, one of the things I like to do is have information drop out during the course of the characters doing something interesting or something that could be made interesting. Want to get out a summary of the battle of so-and-so? Have two characters discussing it while say having a sword fight or during a game of cards.

It's about creating motion in a scene. I've seen this in TV shows, for example the old TV series House. They would dole out boring info while having the characters walk. The walking adds energy to things and keeps the audience interested enough to sit through the boring stuff.

 

[Ragnar]

Some authors do a horrible job of summarizing. In a series, the further you get into a series, the more stuff they feel the need to summarize. It gets harder to resist skipping ahead, past all those words.

I try to always add something new to a summary. Some bit of useful information or fact.

 

[Chessie]

Honestly? If it doesn't add to the story, if it doesn't move the plot forward, then I would leave the summary out. Something like "Johny went upstairs, grabbed his toy, and came back out" doesn't add to the story. Now, if he went out and got a weapon from his room (or another item) that showed intention & story goal...that would be more relevant. Anything that doesn't add to the story slows it down and distracts readers.

Johny quietly slipped upstairs and dug through his sister's toy chest. She was such a klepto and his G.I. Joe had been missing for days. If anyone had it, it was her.

You want to show motive, action, stick to the plot. Summaries can be paragraphs or powerful sentences.