What is a summary of your favorite books in just one sentence. This post details the process and provides book description examples from famous authors. Is reading a book summary better than reading the whole book. The danger of describing the theme in your pitch instead of the actual plot is that. Here are a couple of examples which im going to steal from my book. Star warsone sentence summary advanced fiction writing. In stripping a canonical novel to its component parts, the texts are injected with a certain absurdity upon realizing just how many famous literary characters are truly insane. A onesentence summary clinic advanced fiction writing. The sales team has maybe 30 seconds per book when they present books to buyers for the bookstores. If you can describe the pain of the reader you can engage them in. About 25 words that capture your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book. One sentence guides to 16 great books huffpost life. One of my favorite stories is for jt mccormicks book, i got there.
A boy who is the last survivor of his village teams up with a shipwrecked girl to survive and start building a new. All 66 books of the bible in easy, onesentence summaries. The iliad homer during siege of troy, the arrogant, yet powerful, achilles refuses to fight over a stolen woman, changes his mind after friend is killed. This list of book summaries shares the key ideas from some of the best books of alltime. Its one sentence that defines the story question for your novel.
The start of a query, book proposal, or anytime someone asks you. I have tried to summarize each book on this page in just three sentences, which i think is a fun way to distill the main ideas of the book. It is a brief summary of the characters who drive your story, especially the protagonist and the antagonist, and the events that occur in the story. Now combine your summaries of the parts into a coherent whole, creating a condensed version of the texts main ideas in your own. Lets discuss the onesentence summary, also known as a logline, a hook, or a onesentence pitch. Summaries are not only limited to condensing books and full articles because you could also apply summary writing when it comes to summarizing main points. This sentence describes my story better, but its too long. Each division develops one of the stages needed to make the whole main point. Rowling a boy wizard begins training and must battle for his life with the dark lord who murdered his parents. Your editor will use your onesentence summary again when the sales conference rolls around and she needs to get the sales team excited about your novel. This is one of the most important parts of the writing process.
Writing reveals the story because you have to write to figure out what youre. Popular books summarized in 3 sentences or less this page shares a full list of book summaries i have compiled during my reading and research. Heres a few classic novels all summed up in a very long sentence a piece. A onesentence summary takes your complex book with multiple. One must be careful of books, and what is inside them. The one sentence pitch is the core of all the summarizing youre going to do. Definition and examples of a written summary of text. In fact, the word bible comes from the latin and greek words for book biblia and biblos, respectively. That means if you want to know the bible better, youll need to get acquainted with the 66 documents it comprises. In the meantime, you can feign familiarity with centuries of great literature by semimemorizing these one sentence guides. For my best advice, check out my guide to writing a novel now. As an example of how to do this, lets look at a story that i think were all familiar with. How to write a one sentence pitch nathan bransford. Summaries typically come in a paragraph but it does not limit to a paragraph since it would depend on the length of the text that is being condensed.
Here is my one sentence story summary for my book, the last book. How to write a book description that sells with examples. Here are some example onesentence summaries to get you started. Thats enough time for your onesentence summary plus a bit more. You can also combine some of the answers into one longer sentence.