What is in a plot summary?

There's also no reason why a plot summary has to cover the events of the story in the order they appear (though it is often useful). The point of a summary is not to reproduce the experience—it's to explain the story. If the original is non-linear or experimental in its structure, the article should state that fact in prose, not through regurgitation of the plot.

1 In fact, for a confusing story, we should assume that some of our readers will look the story up because they didn't understand it. Just repeating what they saw isn't going to help them! Do not attempt to recreate the emotional impact of the work through the plot summary.

Wikipedia is not a substitute for the original. Edit How are plot summaries used on Wikipedia? A plot summary is generally used to provide a concise description of the work in question and to allow the reader to understand discussion related to that plot.

The most common organization of a plot section is generally a self-contained section (designated by == Plot == or sometimes == Synopsis ==). By convention, story plots are written in the narrative present, that is, in the present tense, matching the way that the story is experienced. At any particular point of the story, as it unfolds, there is a now, and hence a past and a future, so whether some event mentioned in the story is past, present, or, future changes as the story progresses; the entire description is presented as if the story's now is a continuous present.

Provide a comprehensive plot summary. As key characters are introduced in the plot of a film or play with a known cast, list the actors' names in parentheses after them, Character (Actor), where applicable. If it makes the plot easier to explain, events can be reordered, for instance, backstory revealed later in a novel can be put first, or a non-chronological structure made chronological.

See, for example, Pulp Fiction. This section may contain commentary on the work, as in Candide, though this is not required and great care must be taken to avoid original research. For example, to describe an alleged deficiency in a plot as a "gaping plot hole" expresses an opinion that cannot be included in Wikipedia as if it were an established fact; it requires attribution to a source.

In general, commentary is better suited to a Themes or Reception section. Michelangelo is said to have created David by "taking a block of marble and cutting away everything that was not David." Writing a plot summary is a similar process—you take a long work, and you cut out as much as possible.

The question is, what do you cut? The basic structure of many narrative plots includes a lengthy middle section during which characters repeatedly get in and out of trouble on their way to the climactic encounter. Although such events are exciting to watch, cutting less important ones can make the plot summary tighter and easier to understand.

Necessary detail must be maintained. A summary of Odyssey as "Odysseus, returning home from the Trojan War, has many adventures which he uses his wits to escape until he reunites with his wife and kills the men who were trying to take over his kingdom" would omit almost all of the important passages and confuse the readers. Even though they may know how the Odyssey ends, it's hard to say that they understand the work well enough to appreciate its context and impact.

However, the Odyssey contains various scenes where people recount myths to each other, and other such scenes of little importance to the main plot. If most of these get left out, or mainly consist of a sentence or two, that is not a problem, and helps keep the focus on the main story. In works less vital to the foundations of academia and the founding of the Western literary tradition, even more detail could safely be left out as unimportant, including entire lengthy subplots.

The three basic elements of a story are plot, character and theme. Anything that is not necessary for a reader's understanding of these three elements, or is not widely recognized as an integral or iconic part of the work's notability, should not be included. There is no universal set length for a plot summary, though it should not be too excessively long.

3 Well-written plot summaries describe the major events in the work, linking them together with fairly brief descriptions of less important scenes. While longer descriptions may appear to provide more data to the reader, a more concise summary may in fact be more informative as it highlights the most important elements. By focusing the reader's attention on the larger structures of a plot, without drowning it in trivial detail, a shorter summary can often help the reader to understand a work much better than an overlong one.

Excessively detailed plot summaries may also infringe on copyright and fair-use concerns. See Wikipedia:Plot-only description of fictional works#Copyright for more. For especially large or complex fictional works, certain elements may be split off into sub-articles per WP:SS.

Such related articles should be clearly cross-linked so readers can maintain their understanding of the full context and impact of the work.