There are a few ways to go about this, but I have found the best practice is to take notes on all of the important actionable advice that the reader has given, or if you are reading a fictional narrative, it is a good idea to highlight the most important actions that the characters in the book have taken. If it is a more story-driven part of the book, it would be a good idea to take as many notes as possible for those sections. One thing to keep in mind however, is that if you over-highlight or take too many notes you are just making more work for yourself down the road.
Try to differentiate the pertinent and impertinent information while taking notes. By writing small summaries for each chapter, it helps your brain to store the information that you just learned, as well as make your final project easier, by working as you go along. If you are reading a lot of information in a small amount of time, it is easy to forget sections towards the start of the book. By creating a summary for yourself as you read and take notes, it makes it easier to read those summaries when completing the final project.
This way, if there is a section that you need to change while fine-tuning your book summary, you can come back to a part that you have already summarized and made changes as required. This process also makes it easier to organize your thoughts later on; for instance, if you are reading your final summary and realize there is a section that should be expanded up or condensed, you can go back to the section summary and do so.
While this can go along with the step above of summarizing key points, you will want to make sure that in these sectional summaries that you bullet vital points that happened.
This will make sure that you are not just looking at a wall of text, as your brain is able to comprehend small, important parts of information much easier. While the key points will be different on each book you summarize, a good practice is to bullet the following:. Additionally, once you are fine-tuning the book summary as a whole, it would be a good idea to bullet the key points.
How you structure this is entirely up to you; by choosing to bullet key points section at a time, or towards the end of the summary may be beneficial to reaching your target audience.
At this point in your writing process, you can begin to write your full summary. If you have followed the sections listed above, then you will already know the important parts of each section and have these details in bullet points. From this point, it is just about adding all of the information together in a cohesive format that makes sense. Keep in mind that you will want to avoid rambling, and should give the most important information.
Remember, you are not writing a book, but summarizing one that has already been written. In this article on copywriting examples , I wanted to talk about how copywriter Claude Hopkins saved Schlitz from bankruptcy.
So, I ran a search in my Commonplace Book , found the book, Scientific Advertising , and featured the story in my article. Try to be as descriptive as possible to save time when exporting. When reading Drive by Dan H. Pink, I marked a popular highlight. But I also added a note, so when I summarized Drive , weeks, or even months later, I knew who Pink was quoting. To export your notes and highlights, go to Your Amazon Kindle page. Next, copy all your notes and highlights and paste them into a preferred word processor or note-taking app.
Next, rewrite each highlight in your own words. If a highlight lacks context, like the example I mentioned in Step 1. If you highlighted chapter headings, as suggested in Step 1.
I also suggest adding a divider to separate each block. If you commit to writing book summaries over time, you will soon have dozens, if not hundreds, of summaries that will require a sound organizational system. To do that, I recommend building a commonplace book in Notion. To learn more about how to do that, read this article. One of the best book summarization practices is called progressive summarization PS.
Coined by Tiago Forte, the idea is to summarize your notes, and then summarize that summary, then summarizing that summary, distilling the ideas into smaller and smaller layers each time. Layer 2, the first round of summarization, solves that problem, with a summary of the book, in your own words. Layer 3 is the second round of summarization. At layer 3, I highlight key takeaways that are not context-specific.
Remixing is a Layer 5 practice. I also knew I wanted to use the story to illustrate the idea of pausing, an idea I learned from The Little Book of Yes. I should mention progressive summarization is done best over time. But for a select few, you will return, again and again, over time, and improve on the summary you wrote, often with a greater understanding than when you first wrote it.
Writing a book summary requires time, energy, and effort. That much is a given. The summary should be a neutral description of the book. Focus on the facts of the story. Proofread to check for mistakes. Read the summary out loud to find grammatical errors or misplaced commas. Double check your word count. Share your work with a buddy.
If you ask a fellow student, you can exchange summaries to help each other out! Method 3. Find a quiet place to read without distractions. Pick a spot away from the TV. Read the book in small blocks. To keep yourself from getting overwhelmed, read in minute sessions.
If you really enjoy the book, you can read for an hour or two at a time. This will allow you to process the book slowly. Plan to take at least two weeks for shorter books and about a month for longer books.
Take a little time every day to read. If this is for a school assignment or book club, start reading as soon as the book is assigned.
Re-read important passages. Important passages should be easy to spot. Pay careful attention to the main characters. The main characters will be the ones whose actions, mistakes, and feelings tell you the key points of the book. Read especially carefully when they come up in the text. Did you know you can get expert answers for this article? Unlock expert answers by supporting wikiHow.
Jake Adams. Support wikiHow by unlocking this expert answer. Not Helpful 2 Helpful 8. Alexander Peterman, MA. Not Helpful 19 Helpful Try to make it a little more interesting. Not Helpful 11 Helpful Make sure that you are not repeating yourself and only choose the most important details from the book.
Not Helpful 22 Helpful You can start the summary with the author's name and the title of the book. For example, "Suzanne Collins' 'Hunger Games' is about Not Helpful 43 Helpful Usually you can find a short book summary on Amazon on the page of the specific book, or Wikipedia will also give a summary of books if you search for them. Not Helpful 26 Helpful Usually the top right corner of the page. If you're using a device not paper , you would have to use the right-align tool to help you.
How can I write the summary of a book if the chapters don't go in chronological order? Instead of trying to write a chapter-by-chapter summary, break the book down into major sections. Summarize these sections by explaining their relationship to the overall purpose of the book. Don't get caught up in trying to cover every detail or chapter of the book. Not Helpful 15 Helpful Figure out what you think the author is trying to say.
Is there a major theme in the book, or a moral or message of some kind? Use this to craft your thesis. It's tough to make a summary interesting! Be sure to include sentences covering what you felt was interesting about the book itself.
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