Craft Wednesday #11 Stories as Summaries

This blog needed a place for talking about writing. "Craft Wednesday" will be me talking about all things writing: how to write, why to write, and my own craft journey. I hope to learn and to share experiences with you.   

Stories as Summaries: Facts Pressed Down

     Last week I voiced the opinion that a story is a collection of highlights which show the best, brightest, and most beautiful moments of a course of events and changes.

     An equally valid view is seeing a story as a summary of necessary and interesting events.      However, while the phrase “highlight reel” conjures the idea of glittering, stand-alone moments not necessarily related to each other, a “summary” evokes a bare outline built with only the most essential data; “summary” carries a more clinical connotation than “highlights”.

     A summary gets straight to the point. It has no fluff and it needs no beauty. Summaries are often stark presentations of facts in a fixed order.

     How, then, do we find enjoyment in stories if they are only the bones of time-bound occurrence? 

     Stories are summaries elaborated upon. Like the bones in the valley that Ezekiel visited, stories are not truly stories unless they have life breathed into them by their creator. A creator understands that life is more than just an accurate list of wins and losses; a creator puts meaning into their creation when they select their viewpoint. (A multi-part discourse on the different types of Points of View should be posted in several blog posts at a later date.)

     Then stories are not exactly summaries in the strict factual sense. Yet their “highlight reels” are both interesting and arranged so as to make sense to a general audience. Therefore, stories contain the elements of the highlight reel, in its bright selection of details, and of the summary, in a mostly chronological order of relevant facts.

     Stories are a special form of communication, including the elements of cause and effect and of relevant expansions of selected images and events. As a practiced mixture of these and other potent elements, it is no wonder stories have the power to inform and inspire, to shape and persuade, and to warn and entertain.