Like a synopsis, a paraphrase conveys the meaning of the original piece of literature and the relationships of its parts in your own words. A paraphrase, however, converts the original poetry to your own prose or the original prose to your own words in a passage about as long as the original.

As Jonathan Burns read through “The Lottery” preparing to write his analysis, he paid close attention to several of the characters that he planned to mention. To sharpen his understanding of Old Man Warner, he wrote a paraphrase of that character’s comments in paragraph 32.