FEATURE ARTICLE: Summarization: An Unfairly Maligned Fiction-Writing Mode
If the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield had been a
fiction-writing mode, it would have been summarization. As illustrated by the old writing maxim
"Show-Don't Tell, "summarization gets
no respect.
Summarization is the fiction-writing mode whereby story
events are condensed. As described by
Evan Marshall in
The Marshall Plan for
Novel Writing, in summary mode "You tell the reader what happens rather
than show it . . . ." According to
Marshall, summary is the opposite of action. Action shows events in detail, blow by blow,
in real story time. Summary merely tells about an event.
For example, a gunfight might be portrayed either in the
action mode or in summarization.
ACTION.
As the sun reached its zenith, Cisco
strode onto the dust-filled street and faced Black Bart. Without warning, Bart reached for his
pistol. Cisco dived to the right as
Bart fired. Cisco rolled in the
dirt and drew his Peacemaker. He
fanned his hand back across the Colt's hammer in rapid succession, sending
three slugs into Bart's chest.
SUMMARIZATION.
At noon,
Cisco faced Black Bart and gunned him down in the street.
As outlined by Marshall,
summary mode has four primary uses:
To
connect one part of the story to another
To
report events whose details aren't important
To
telescope time
To
convey an emotional state over an extended period of time
According to Renni Browne and Dave King in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers:
"Narrative summary has its uses, the main one
being to vary the rhythm and texture of your writing."
"Narrative summary can also be useful when you
have a lot of repetitive action."
". . . some plot developments are simply not
important enough to justify scenes."
As with each of the other ten fiction-writing modes,
summarization has both advantages and disadvantages. Where action intimately involves the reader,
summarization distances the reader. Action
is exciting, while too much summary can be boring. But summarization offers a distinct advantage
over the action mode: brevity. As stated
by Peter Selgin in By Cunning & Craft,
". . . the main advantage of summary being that it (usually) takes less space."
For any particular passage of fiction, the challenge is to use
whichever mode is most appropriate. According
to Orson Scott Card in Character and
Viewpoint, "'showing' is so terribly time consuming" that it is to be used
only for dramatic scenes. The objective
is to get the right balance of telling versus showing, action versus
summarization.
"Show-Don't Tell" is misleading. It should be replaced with "Show when
appropriate; and tell when appropriate." As stated by Card, "Either could be right; either could be wrong. Factors like rhythm, pace, and tone come into
play . . . ."
The amount and placement of action and summarization will
vary, depending on the needs of the story and the style of the author.
One reason summarization is not better understood is the
terminology used to describe it. Besides
telling, summarization is often referred
to as summary, narration, or narrative
summary. Under the broadest
definition of narration, summarization could certainly be classified as a subset,
but so could the other fiction-writing modes. After all, according to Card, "How can you show anything in
fiction? Fiction always has a narrator. Instead of the audience seeing events
directly, they are unavoidably filtered through the perceptions of the
narrator." As a writing and
instructional tool, the narrow concept of summarization is more specific and,
therefore, more useful.
Summarization deserves more respect as a fiction-writing
mode. Without summarization, fiction
would be tedious and disjointed.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEBSITE? You may, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Author Mike Klaassen publishes "For Fiction Writers," a free monthly e-zine.
