How to Summarize Your Novel in 25 Words or Less

In Hollywood, movies are often summarized in one sentence. This is referred to as the logline, which is used to pitch movie scripts to potential directors and producers. In the world of novels it's also important to narrow down your plot to one sentence--or at least 25 words--when you're writing a query or pitching to an editor at a conference. Here are some tips for summarizing your novel into 25 words or less.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Pen or pencil and paper if not using a computer
• Your story or novel

1. Focus on the main plot of the book and the main characters. Ignore side plots and secondary characters. Limit yourself to one or two characters.

2. Write the main plot in one paragraph. This will give you a starting place to cut out extra sentences and words.

3. Start cutting. Delete anything extraneous--setting, descriptive words and the theme of your book aren't necessary to your concise summary.

4. Avoid using names. Names clutter things up. Simply designate your protagonist and antagonist as male and/or female.

5. Delete extra words. That, just and rather are words that can often be cut without detracting from the meaning of the sentence. If in doubt, take out the word--if the sentence makes sense without it, you don't need it.

Tips & Warnings

• It takes practice to summarize 350 to 400 pages into 25 words, but the effort is worth it. Once you've discovered the essence of your story, it's easier to write queries and synopses, and to self-edit your work.

[Alisiane]

on 9/12/2008 This is some good info. It's so hard when you've written an entire novel- hundreds and hundreds of pages - to then be asked to chop it down into a couple of lines. It's like asking you to choose which limb to remove from your child! :-)

Thanks for this!