HOW TO WRITE NARRATIVE SUMMARY (that’s actually interesting)

HOW TO WRITE NARRATIVE SUMMARY (that’s actually interesting) | theory, tips, & examples

Рет қаралды 8,922

Күн бұрын

Google Doc: docs.google.com/document/d/1e...
RELATED VIDEOS
→Why Telling is Actually Good: • The Most Common Writin...
→How to Write a Scene: • HOW TO WRITE A SCENE |...
→Psychic Distance: • Psychic Distance | How...
→The Ultimate Guide to POV: • The Ultimate Guide to ...
→Specificity: • Specificity and Concre...
0:00 - intro
0:26 - scene vs summary
1:52 - when to use summary
3:50 - psychic distance/how to write thoughts
7:33 - use voice tone and emotion
8:06 - keep the psychic distance close
9:22 - be specific
10:09 - be generous with information
10:49 - access emotions and opinions
11:43 - conflict, goals, tension
12:24 - understand the relationship to time
13:38 - use showing and telling
14:37 - use dialogue
15:07 - unpack ideas set up in scene
16:00 - use sentence structure as pacing
16:30 - example #1
20:37 - example #2
22:11 - example #3
→All my published work: linktr.ee/shaelinbishop
→If you want to support my channel, you can tip me on ko-fi! ko-fi.com/shaelinbishop
MY SHORT STORIES:
☾Tabula Rasa - The Temz Review: www.thetemzreview.com/fiction...
☾How to Slaughter - The Common: www.thecommononline.org/how-t...
☾After Hours - Vagabond City Lit: vagabondcitylit.com/2022/04/1...
☾Daughter of a King - Vagabond City Lit: vagabondcitylit.com/2022/03/2...
☾Cherry and Jane in the Garden of Eden - The Puritan: ex-puritan.ca/cherry-and-jane...
☾Zugzwang - Plenitude: plenitudemagazine.ca/zugzwang/
☾Elise Holding a Deer Mouse, 1829 - CAROUSEL: carouselmagazine.ca/c45-bishop/
☾I Will Never Tell You This - The Puritan: ex-puritan.ca/never-tell-you-...
☾Solarium - Minola Review: www.minolareview.com/shaelin-b...
☾Barefoot - The Fiddlehead [print only]: thefiddlehead.ca/issue/282
☾Wishbone - PRISM international [print only]: prismmagazine.ca/2020/04/19/pr...
☾Wishbone - video reading: vimeo.com/420052282
☾Hold Me Under Till I See the Light - The New Quarterly: tnq.ca/story/hold-me-under-ti...
☾Beautiful Animal - Room: roommagazine.com/issues/twine
☾How You'll Feel After the War - PRISM international: prismmagazine.ca/2021/10/20/pr...
FAQS
→How old are you? - 26
→How long have you been writing? - Since I was 8
→Where do you live? - I keep that private for safety reasons, but I grew up in Vancouver.
→Where did you go to university and what did you study? - I keep my university information private, but I majored in writing with a concentration in fiction.
→What are your pronouns? - They/them or she/her
→Where can I read your books? - None of my books are published yet, but you can read my published short fiction in my linktree (linked above!)
→So when will your book be published? - I don’t know! I’m in the revision process right now, but I can’t predict exactly when I’ll have a book published. But I’m working on it!
→Do you plan to traditionally publish or self publish? - Traditionally publish
→Will you read my book/story/chapter/mentor me? - Unfortunately I cannot accommodate these requests because editing/critiquing is a labour intensive task that I can’t afford to do for free alongside my job, my own writing, and running this platform. If you would like to hire me for paid editing work, contact me privately on twitter or instagram.
MORE WRITING TIPS: • Writing Tips
WRITING VLOGS: • Writing Vlogs
WRITING CHATS & DISCUSSIONS: • Writing & Authortube D...
BOOK REVIEWS: • Recent Reads
Check out more writing and publishing videos from me over @Reedsy!: / @reedsy
OUTRO MUSIC: "l u v t e a [acoustic]" by Autumn Keys
SOCIAL
Twitter: / shaelinbishop
Instagram: / shaelinbishop
Goodreads: / shaelin-bishop

Пікірлер: 48

@olivianoelani4363 10 ай бұрын

i’m a huge underwriter, and i struggle the most with writing narrative. i feel like my first drafts always lack a lot of substance because my narrative is so thin and boring. i appreciate it so much anytime you talk about narrative!

@morganunraveled 10 ай бұрын

it sucks to always feel that the way we naturally write is wrong! I think this is actually a super valid and valuable writing process, almost blending the processes of discovery writing and plotting. your ‘underwritten’ first draft could almost be considered a detailed outline of action/dialogue and plot beats that you can then flesh out and add in the narrative and description etc! I’m sure many great books are written this way and I’m super inspired by your process!

@elizabethcoylewrites 10 ай бұрын

Why are your videos always so good??! Every time im struggling in my novel, i think "wow i hope shaelin posts about this soon" and then you do?? Thank you for always reading my stressed out writer's mind

@c1975stark 10 ай бұрын

I need this video so much!! I tend to avoid time skipping and summary because it feels like cheating or I’m not showing everything or like it’s lazy writing not to make everything a scene with dialogue. I took the show vs tell advice way too far. I think I remember you saying you used to do this as an amateur too. I can’t wait to use this advice and improve. 🖤🖤

@nocturnus009 10 ай бұрын

I’m reminded of that oblique strategy card, “Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element.” Also last night I was reading about 3 tracks in dialogue (Melodic, Harmonic & Keywords) in The Anatomy of Story. All of this plays so well in the point Betty Edwards asks her followers, to look for the intertextual connections & crossover clues.

@Lolz4249 10 ай бұрын

This came at the perfect time in my story. Tysm!!

@ChBrahm 10 ай бұрын

A good book -in my opinion- to get a feel for what narrative summarys should be is One Hundred Years of Solitude by GG Márquez A good chunk of the book is told in narrative summary with only charcter building scenes being actually active scenes You´d think action segments would get to be whole scenes but no. There´s a moment when the narrator tells us that Colonel Aureliano Buendia fought and lost 35 wars and its just that. A single line that doesn´t get much more detail than that. But then you get another scene in which a pool of blood gets an entire scene for itself describing how it flowed from the home of the guy who just died to his mother´s house. Describing every turn and twist it took to get there

@KrisMF 10 ай бұрын

I loveeee narrative summary so much, omg this video was MADE for me. my current project has a retrospective narration which I think lends itself more easily into into summarizing events/ passages of time vs. making everything into a scene. I used to struggle with summary but after practicing it for the last year, I’ve come around to it and really enjoy it! thank you for these tips!!! somehow you always articulate the craft thoughts rolling around in my head and make it so easy to understand!

@Lara_Ameen 10 ай бұрын

Wow! Your excerpts of HONEY VINEGAR are amazing! This video is super useful! Thank you so much! I just finished the third draft of my PhD dissertation novel (Adult contemporary/urban fantasy) and now I’m waiting for beta reader/CP feedback. I have some narrative summary in Chapter 1. I can see how it’s effective and not too infodumpy. I’ll probably re-watch this video. Thank you again! Love this! 💜

@GuineaPigEveryday 10 ай бұрын

Thank you! I was thinking exactly about this just a few hours before you made this. I’ve been very insecure about the chunks of narration i have inbetween actual scenes becuz im unsure if i’m actually carrying the story forward or just kind of rambling about character, plot, that doesn’t actually move the story but instead conveys information. Narrative summary is exactly the sort of thing that usually goes there, inbetween scenes, and thats hard to master

@lexuschambe5787 10 ай бұрын

This video was so helpful!! I'm actually struggling right now with incorporating summary into a short story I'm writing, and your point about keeping conflict and tension in summary really helped!

@goonwithoutme 10 ай бұрын

I've watched (and benefited from) many of your videos, but found this one particularly excellent, hence me dropping my first comment! Thanks for all you do and share in this space.

@SamanthaRoberts42 10 ай бұрын

THIS IS SO GOOD AND NECESSARY AND INCREDIBLE

@ioanam.2374 10 ай бұрын

I am always so grateful to you for these resources!

@woodenspoon6222 10 ай бұрын

This video couldn't have come at a better time, thanks so much :)

@mariliis8 10 ай бұрын

Thanks for this :) lined up exactly with what I’m currently working on.

@Exayevie 9 ай бұрын

I love it when you talk about psychic distance! That was the video that originally got me hooked on your channel! I’m a bit of an odd duck because I loooooove writing with a very distant, objective psychic take. So unsurprisingly, a well-written narrative summary passage can actually be more intriguing to me that the middle of a scene. Naturally, I had to try rewriting the Penelope passage a third time, as distantly as possible: “Penelope stood at the open fridge, considering. After a while she shut it abruptly and leafed through the stack of takeout and delivery flyers on the nearby counter. Once. Twice. Half way through a third time she stopped and looked up abruptly. She felt her pockets for her cell phone and they were empty. She retraced her steps to the front door and tested the lock.”

@manaavey3676 3 ай бұрын

I write in free indirect narration and I am only just now learning it has a name! Thank you 😁

@paulmagnuson1021 10 ай бұрын

This was heaven-sent. Thank you!

@VideoGameRoom32 10 ай бұрын

These are very helpful tips. It's always good to improve your writing. As years go by, you should always get better at something.

@nootanwait2358 10 ай бұрын

Thank you for your videos. I've learned a lot

@lindseywritesstuff 10 ай бұрын

I'm obsessed with the first example

@ShaelinWrites 10 ай бұрын

The entire book is sooooo good

@mageprometheus 10 ай бұрын

Thanks. Another great note in my 2nd brain.

@aidenignition 10 ай бұрын

Avoid narrative summary is what broke my book. The first part of the book was dramatized and I needed to like skip time forward, but I didn't trust myself to convey the things that were happening off scene, so I was trying to show EVERYTHING, and my book's pacing is so off.

@jackhaggerty1066 10 ай бұрын

Yes, Narrative Summary condenses periods of time when the plot slows. Think of setting-up-home scenes in romcom movies. The Jewish Quarterly (August 2023) has a belated review of Laurie Colwin's *A Big Storm Knocked It Over* (1993/ 2021 reissue). Laurie Colwin excelled at domestic details: Upper East Side apartments & delicious food - she wrote for Bon Appetit magazine. Melvyn Bragg said novels excel in 'ramblings' - noticing a wild flower on a country road, visiting an elderly friend who lives up a hill. Bragg's 1971 novel *The Nerve* is set in Hampstead, London, but the protagonist rambles in his memory to his childhood in Cumberland. Narrative Summary calls for textured prose + a sure sense of place. Even in these quiet moments *dramatize dramatize* as Henry James said.

@jackhaggerty1066 10 ай бұрын

These quiet periods in novels, which coincide with Narrative Summary, is a time for wit, jokes, hilarity, Christmas cracker moments. Dickens did them supremely well but you will also find them in Jane Austen, Flaubert, Proust, Colette and in post-war writers. Post 1945 : Mollie Keane, Muriel Spark, Barbara Pym, Penelope Fitzgerald, Penelope Mortimer, Alice Thomas Ellis, Elizabeth Jane Howard. John Braine chided me for not having read EJ Howard's novel *After Julius*. Iris Murdoch moved from domestic detail to big ideas.

@wordcharm2649 10 ай бұрын

Can you combine free indirect with direct? So you keep the dialogue tags. "She said, she thought" (sparingly) but don't use italics to single out her internal thoughts and let the thoughts seamlessly blend in with the narrator?

@ShaelinWrites 10 ай бұрын

It depends on what you want - to create a pure free indirect throughout you'd want to avoid that, but the POV style of your book can have whatever parameters you want depending on the effect you want and the role of POV in the narrative. And sometimes even in a very close POV, you need to occasionally use a filter for clarity or stylistic reasons.

@PQ_497 10 ай бұрын

Can you please make a video on the three act structure in middle grade books? Where the story is just about friendships, popularity, image school etc. I'm finding it hard to spot the acts/beats. Thank you very much! ❤

@ShaelinWrites 10 ай бұрын

Unfortunately I don't write or read middle grade so I don't think I'd be able to speak to that, sorry!

@NambiEthendraThatha 10 ай бұрын

I love your videos a lot. I learn quite a bit, but you seriously have to start using a mic. PLEASE! I want to be able to listen to your carefully but also effortlessly😭

@EvoluteCreator 8 ай бұрын

for real!!! i love their videos so much tho

@666nemeesis 10 ай бұрын

what about salman rushdie he writes mostly in narrative style?

@anisha7232 10 ай бұрын

can you make a video on personal essay?

@ShaelinWrites 10 ай бұрын

Probably not just because I don't really have any experience writing them, sorry!

@maddestdog449 10 ай бұрын

Frothing for any crumbs of Honey Vinegar!!

@immagns 10 ай бұрын

i got nothing to comment but i wanna drop some engagement so imma write xdd

@AdamFishkin 10 ай бұрын

Hmm. Never heard that definition of a summary before. Duly noted.

@temranitalk 10 ай бұрын

Please use a good microphone

@Exayevie 9 ай бұрын

Please use a good attitude

@johnnyutahz3823 10 ай бұрын

Your book seems really cool why not put it out yourself so us , your fans can enjoy it? Isn't that what its all about anyway? can charge way less than like 30 bucks for a book! lol, I don't have a job...

@Exayevie 9 ай бұрын

Mooch

@johnnyutahz3823 9 ай бұрын

Tons of artists post their books on amazon self-published I was just wondering why does one need to adhere to outdated traditions?@@Exayevie