Summary and Vampires: Twilight

How to Write a Summary (Leslie Ormandy 2010 all rights reserved)

Writing a Vampire summary is actually quite easy since you will just be pulling the heart out of someone else’s work (story, poem, film, blog-post, etc) and telling your reader what happened in the piece of work you are summarizing. Note that a summary needs to provide the following information:

1. What book, story, poem, film, blog, song, or other, you are summarizing

2. Who wrote the piece you are summarizing

3. Only the facts of what is actually on the page. You do not get to make any judgments or inferences in a summary. You must be the impartial, emotionless, toneless reader.

Perhaps most important is that you NOT mistake a summary for an analysis. Provide a detailed summary ONLY when the instructor has particularly asked you to provide a summary.

For instance, if I were to summarize Twilight I would do it something like this:

Stephanie Meyer’s novel Twilight begins with Isabella Swan (Bella) moving from Phoenix, AR, to Forks, Washington to live with her father because her mother has remarried. She is seventeen and a junior in high-school when she moves to Forks. On her first day of high-school she meets, and is instantly attracted to Edward Cullen, who she later finds out is a vampire. She is instantly attracted to him, and it turns out he is also attracted to her. Edward, and the rest of the Cullens, are “vegetarians” because they drink only animal blood. After her first introduction to his vampire family Edward takes her to the family baseball game. While there, a group of three wandering vampires show up, and they think the Cullens have brought her as a “treat.” In order to protect her and her father, the Cullens take her back to Phoenix to hide her there. The tracker of the new group logically deduces where she has gone, and tricks her into meeting him alone in the ballet studio she attended when she was a child. Once there, he attacks her, biting her. Edward and the Cullen’s show up, rescue her (and such the vampire venom from her veins), and she returns to Forks to be with Edward. The novel ends with Edward taking her to her Junior Prom, and Jacob Black, whose Father knows the Cullens are vampires, warning the couple that they will be watching Edward.

Note that this summary takes up 242 words. The above is an extended summary which I could have shortened. See below:

In the novel Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, a seventeen year old Isabella (Bella) Swan moves to Forks, Washington, to live with her father after her mother remarried. Her first day of school she meets Edward Cullen, a vampire who can walk around in daylight, and they fall in love with each other. Edward introduces her to his family, and at the family baseball game a group of wandering vampires show up to join the game. One of them is a vampire hunter who wants to kill Bella. Bella flees to Phoenix with the Cullens before wandering off to meet the “hunter” alone in a ballet studio. The Cullens show up to save her, but not before she suffers some injuries. They return to Forks where a few weeks later, Edward takes her to her prom. The novel ends with her requesting to be made a vampire so she can stay with Edward forever. (153 words)

Note that in both versions I have made myself stick rigidly to what I consider the most important points. Are other points important as well? Of course, but with a strict chronological order, the other points must be left out. Not just squirted in willy-nilly.

Let’s see if I can get shorter.

In the novel Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, a seventeen year old Isabella (Bella) Swan moves to Forks, Washington, to live with her father. At school she meets Edward Cullen, a vampire boy. They fall in love, and after protecting her from a murderous vampire who wanted to kill her, he took her to her junior prom. She ends by begging him to make her a vampire. (66 words)

As you can see, I have left all sorts of details out of all three. What you need to remember is that usually the instructor has already read the text; chose your details with care, don't rewrite the whole plot, and stay within word count.