Determining the Central Message and Details in a Story

You will learn how to find the central message of a story. The central message is the big lesson the story is teaching you. It is not just what happens. It is what the story wants you to learn from what happens.

To find the central message, you cannot just guess. You have to use details from the story as proof. In this lesson you will practice finding those details and explaining how they show the lesson.

A central message is the lesson or moral of a story. Many stories are written to teach a lesson, like being kind, working hard, or telling the truth. The characters usually learn this lesson by the end of the story.

Think about a story where a slow turtle wins a race against a fast rabbit because the rabbit stops to nap. The central message of that story is that being steady and not giving up can help you win, even if you are not the fastest.

Finding the central message is only half the job. You also need to find the details that support it. A detail supports the message if it helps show that the message is true.

Ask yourself three questions as you read. What did the character do? What happened because of it? What did the character learn? The answers to these questions are the details you use to explain the central message.

You may want to review Identifying Important Story Details first. That skill helps you spot the details you will need here.

Read this short story. An ant works hard all summer collecting food. A grasshopper plays music all summer instead. When winter comes, the ant has plenty of food, but the grasshopper has none and is cold and hungry.

What is the central message? It is that working hard now can help you later. Now find the details that prove it.

• Detail 1: The ant collects food every day in the summer.
• Detail 2: The grasshopper plays instead of working.
• Detail 3: In winter, the ant has food and the grasshopper does not.

Each detail is a step that leads to the lesson. If you took away Detail 3, you would not know that working hard actually paid off. That is why every detail matters.

The diagram below shows how three events from a story all point to one central message. Notice that no single event is the whole lesson by itself. It is all three events together that show the message clearly.

Central Message: The main lesson or moral a story is teaching.

Key Detail: An important fact or event from the story that helps explain the message.

Support: To use a detail as proof that shows a message is true.

Lesson: Something a character, or the reader, learns by the end of a story.

Explain: To tell how a detail connects to the central message.

Retell: To say the story's events again in order, using your own words.

Read a short story and stop at the end. Ask yourself, "What did the character learn?" Write or say that lesson in one sentence.

Next, go back through the story and find three details that show the lesson is true. Say out loud how each detail connects to the lesson. If you cannot connect a detail to the lesson, it may not be a key detail.

Try this with a fable or fairy tale you already know well. Fables almost always end with a clear lesson, which makes them a great place to practice.

Related lessons

• Finding Key Details and Messages