Strategy #6:
Summarize Plots

Reading a plot summary instead of a work is a terrible idea. Constructing a plot summary to help you understand the way a work develops, on the other hand, is a great idea, especially if the work is one you don’t normally associate with a “plot.” What is the plot of Coleridge’s “Eolian Harp”? Of Darwin’s travel narratives? If you can answer that question for every work that an exam will cover, and you can use the summary to cue memories of more specific information about the language of a work (as in, “then the narrator thinks of the harp, and that’s where the reference to Marvell comes in”), it will do wonders for your memory of various works. Constructing a summary of everything before a test is, for most students, an impossible project. Constructing a summary of each work as you read it is a manageable and useful exercise.