How to Write an Abstract for a Book

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner, and today I want to talk with you about how to write an abstract for a book. Now whether you're writing the abstract for a book that you've written yourself, or writing one about a book that has already been written, an abstract is usually a pretty good summary of what happens within the contents of a book or a novel. So, first of all, when you're writing your summary, you want to make sure that you write down all points of the book, especially, of course, if it's your own. You want to make sure that you're going to be taking this as a sort of outline guide, but in, sort of paragraph form, so you can actually go back and look at it and say "Well, you know, what did my abstract say I was going to do next?" So that you have some sort of idea where you're going. If you're writing an abstract for a book that's already been published, you're going to want to contain lots of very detailed information within it. And you're going to want to be not....you're not going to want to be very...you should not be afraid, I guess I should say, of revealing what happens in the book, because it's going to be a summary of the book. Just like a summary of a play or a movie is going to tell what happens in the end, you should not be afraid of telling what happens at the end of an abstract for a book. So whenever you're writing an abstract for your own book, make sure that you synthesize all of your research and all the things that you need to compile in order to complete the book. And include that within your summary of either the plot of the book, or the chapters of the book and...in detailing all these things, so that you can actually send this out to publishers, you know, whenever they're looking to publish your book, and sort of get them interested in all the little aspects of it. And, those were some ideas for writing an abstract for a book."