A synopsis is a brief summary of a play, film, or book that outlines the plot. Writing synopses is an important critical thinking skill as it allows large amounts of information to be condensed into a shorter version while retaining the key details. Technical summaries provide an overview of longer documents for readers who need a high-level understanding. To write an effective summary, one must identify the most important points by underlining them, write the summary in their own words while maintaining the same organization and tone, and ensure it is 15-20% the length of the original.

2. What is a synopsis?
A brief summary or general survey of something.
An outline of the plot of a play, film, or book.

3. Why is a synopsis important?
The ability to summarize information is one of the
most important critical thinking skills you can
devel0p. Taking large amounts of information,
understanding what that information means, and
condensing it into a shorter version of the original
allows you to have important information on hand for
easy reference without having to memorize long
passages or complex statistics.

4. In technical writing, different audiences need varying
amounts or types of information. The technical
summary, or abstract, is written for those who need a
brief overview of a longer document for general
information or to make decisions. For whatever
purpose, writing summaries is a task that many think
is easy but, in actuality, can be quite challenging.

5. Process and Hints to Summary Writing
The biggest problem with summary writing is deciding what to
include and what to leave out.
 Read the piece to be summarized for understanding,
without editing. Make sure you understand the
content, including the major and minor sections, as
well as the overlying message being conveyed. Look
closely at the topic sentence and key words repeated
throughout.
 Read through the material and cross out useless
information while underlining what you believe to
be the most important points, even if those points
are words or phrases.

6. Process and Hints to Summary Writing (cont).
 Write your summary in your own words. Follow
both the organization of the original as well as its
tone, though you need to make sure your own point
of view is objective. Opinions should not appear in
your synopsis. Any words or phrases from the
original need to be properly documented and
punctuated.
 Your summary should be 15 to 20 percent of the
length of the document.
 Be sure to go back when you’ve finished your
summary and compare it to the original for
accuracy.

7. Assignment
Read the sample news article on your own
underlining only the key points.
Read the synopsis sample on the other side.
Evaluate
You will now begin your own synopsis assignment.