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A plot summary is not a recap. It should not cover every scene or every moment of a story. A summary is not meant to reproduce the experience of reading or watching the work. In fact, readers might be here because they didn't understand the original. Just repeating what they have already seen or read is unlikely to help them.
An article about a novel should include a concise plot summary which highlights the most important events and developments without attempting to follow every twist and turn of the story. A plot summary should be written in the narrative present tense. A summary for a full-length novel should be between 400 and 700 words.
For example, a summary of Citizen Kane should establish that much of the film is an extended flashback that is bookended by scenes in the film's present; the entire plot summary should still be written in narrative present tense. Summaries may depart from the fiction's chronological order if doing so enhances clarity or brevity.
Then it could be a guideline for writing plot summaries - not so much a MOS, but something with more bite than just an essay. --M ASEM 16:35, 8 July 2008 (UTC) Good call - describing character histories and the like is really just a different flavor of plot summary, and the same logic works.
A plot summary is a retelling, a summary, or an abridged or shortened précis of the events that occur within a work of fiction. The purpose of a plot summary is to help the reader understand the important events within a work of fiction, be they of the work as a whole or of an individual character.
For tagging articles that have overly long plot summaries. Template parameters [Edit template data] This template prefers inline formatting of parameters. Parameter Description Type Status Scope (e.g. section) 1 This parameter allows an editor to replace the default word "article" with another word, usually "section" or "paragraph" Content optional Plural? plural Set to 'yes' if the article ...
Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and sometimes specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: the narrative series of events, though this can vary based on culture.
The term plot can also serve as a verb, as part of the craft of writing, referring to the writer devising and ordering story events. (A related meaning is a character's planning of future actions in the story.) The term plot, however, in common usage (e.g., a "film plot") more often refers to a narrative summary, or story synopsis.