1. Provide a summary. Discuss what happens in broad-strokes and remember to include only the most pertinent details. A good summary will account for plot, the action and the sequence of events in a narrative. A summary is not a retelling, so choose what details you need to include. This requires a clear understanding of the story as a whole. This will force the reader to ask, whose story is this? And then on, consider, what happens to who? Include the thirty-minute montage of navel-gazing, clipped dialogue, and pacing back-and-forth: the drama of strangers on the sidewalk outside Shakey's Morato. Gloss over five hours of helplessness that succeeded a bad review with this careless summary: "Though she slumped over the table--half her body on the hard wood--shut her eyes and rested in a comfortable position, she found no escape from an exhaustion so arid it emptied her mouth, it hollowed her heart. She finally beheld the terrible conviction, she even turned it over in her hands--a spiked ball, a heavy thing rattling, full of bones--she was wrong, wrong, wrong, and she was in the wrong place, doing all the wrong things."
2. Clarify the elements, beginning with setting, which will include more than the space. How long does the story take, how much time does it account for? Large tracts of time can disappear in a story. If the story engages particular historical events, then examine the details of the story, mindful of how actions, objects, names or tropes might have been significant within the culture and time period in which it was written. Take note of how the setting is described. Vocabulary (word choice) and syntax (sentence construction) contribute significantly to tone and mood. For example:
3. Note patterns, repetitive images, scenes, words. Patterns dramatize a progression of events and are often used to build both the rising action and the denouement. The trick is to to recognize one from the other. Repetitions--or the recurrence of an event, dialogue--are perhaps much more apparent in other media, including music and film. In music, patterns are easier to discern because all kinds of sound--every shrill, human noise we create--build upon silence: yelling, and so much of it, has crystallized in the air between them, diamonds anyone could've picked, pocketed, or else launched at each other. The same words tumble through the air, explode : respect, ingratitude, domestic pursuits, money, not enough money. Her tongue has grown thick and fat on these words, fed upon them as a python gorges itself on some paralyzed animal with hooves (this scene, this hour, when the leaves are gold and the light drips into the room, fat droplets dapple the tile floor, throwing her mother into shadow).
4. The perspective is always important, because the story primarily exists through the prism of one character, or from a limited perspective. Distrust the point-of-view, question it, and demand that it explain itself. I always ask: who is the audience? Who was supposed to read this story, and who understands how I decided to forgive you long ago but it still took me by surprise how I must continue forgiving you, over and over, how there is no space between us for this conversation. How very little exists here, between you and I, where I must tear even the air to find you. Only these words grow: hello, hello again, when are you coming home, how far away from home are you?
5. Finally, what is its project? Ask: What is it trying to do?
