Beyond Plot Summary: Plot summary is a skill most of us learned in high school, but it is not a skill that is employed very often in academic writing at the college level and beyond.

Plot Summary--Materials and Audience: The place of plot summary in academic writing is a little nebulous. It is contingent upon one’s audience and materials. First, with academic writing, one generally assumes a reader who is a specialist in a certain field. If I’m writing to Shakespeare scholars, I don’t need to summarize the plot of Macbeth because all my readers have read it and know what happens. At the same time, if I’m talking about Macbeth to an audience of psychologists interested in PTSD, then it may be necessary to sketch out some of the basic elements of the plot of the play. Or, if I’m writing to Shakespeareans about Macbeth and I want to bring up some similarities with Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, I should probably describe and summarize some of the text (not the whole text, but only the parts that are relevant to my discussion of Macbeth). So, think carefully about your audience and your materials. If your audience is familiar with your materials, you shouldn’t do any plot summary. If your audience is not familiar with your materials, then some plot summary may be necessary.

Orientation: In academic writing, instead of plot summary, we tend to look for orientation. In ancient cultures, the rising sun - orientem is Latin for “rising sun” - was used to help with directions. The rising sun would let you know where you were and which direction you were going. Likewise, orientation in academic writing are the little bits and pieces of information - not a full plot summary but just some quick statements - that help your reader figure out where you are in a text and what’s going on.

Orientation as Happy Medium; Orientation is about finding the happy medium between too much plot summary and no plot summary at all. Orientation is about giving just enough plot summary for your reader to recall where he or she is in a text, event, idea, etc.

Orientation in the Intro and the Body: The two places where you usually need some orientation are (1) at the beginning of a paper and (2) at the beginning of body paragraphs. In other words, you usually need a little bit of orienting information about a text, person, author, event, idea, or tradition near the beginning of a paper as you frame your topic and argument. And you’ll often need some little bits of orientation as you work your way through that argument, moving from one piece of evidence to another.

Orientation to Text and Evidence: In other words, provide orientation on two levels--text and evidence. First, provide orientation when you are introducing your text (the thing being interpreted): what is it? Be sure to provide the journalistic information to your reader--who? what? where? when? Second, provide orientation when introducing evidence: offer the bits of background or framing information that situates the key evidence you're going to pull out for in-depth analysis.

Writing to an Educated Reader: In general, you can assume you are writing for an “educated audience.” That means that they are familiar with the knowledge given in high school, but – like the rest of us – they have forgotten a lot of the details. Thus, they need to be reminded of the details of any text, event, or idea,

Your Reader Knows About Your Text (Usually): In other words, you can imagine a reader who knows about your text, has read it, and remembers the broad strokes of it. Picture a reader who knows about things but doesn’t know things.

More Orientation for Unknown Texts: If you're working with a text that isn't accessible or familiar to your reader, you'll need to provide more orientation, more description of what something is. Museum scholars don't need a description of the Louvre - they know what it is, so they just need orientation to the parts you're going to talk about. But those scholars would need more thorough description of a new #BlackLivesMatter pop-up museum that none of them has visited or knows about. 

Imagine a Non-Specialist Reader: One way to think about your reader is to imagine that it’s one of your professors, not the professor for whom you’re writing the paper, but one of your professors in another field. In other words, your reader is educated, intelligent, and familiar with general knowledge, but probably not the specific material that you’re writing about.

Orientation as Reminder: When providing orientation, think of it as “reminding” (as opposed to “telling”) your reader about your text. Your audience has read your text, but they need to be given some basic information when you begin your essay and as you proceed through it.

Orientation for Transition: For example, if you are writing a close reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you can’t jump straight from evidence and analysis of Hamlet’s first soliloquy to evidence and analysis of Hamlet’s second soliloquy. You’d half to mention that the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears in-between these two passages. You don’t need to tell your reader everything about the ghost - that it appears to Hamlet’s friends, that it then speaks to Hamlet, that it reveals that Hamlet’s father was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle, as Hamlet suspected. Your reader has read Hamlet and knows what happens, so you don’t have to summarize the plot, but you should bring your reader up to speed with some quick orientation such as, “After Hamlet’s visit from the Ghost, the young prince has his second soliloquy.”