Article: If your thermostat is set to a high temperature, your gas bill is bound to be expensive. Try lowering your thermostat a few degrees to reduce your bill by 5-10%. For instance, turn the temperature from 70 °F (21 °C) to 68 °F (20 °C). Don’t keep the heat on in your home when it’s not necessary. Turn off the heat when you’re at work or gone on the weekends. The energy saved will reduce the cost of your gas bill. Some areas in your home need to be warmer than others. For example, it may be important to you to keep the main floor warm, while the basement can be a bit cooler. You can control the heat by installing radiator valves on every radiator in your home. These self-regulating valves allow you to control the temperature of each room by adjusting the amount of hot water goes to the radiator. Personal, or space, heaters use up a lot of energy. Plus, they are an inefficient way of warming up large areas. Avoid using them and instead look for more efficient ways to keep warm—like improving your home’s insulation. If you want to warm a small space only, a personal heater may be more effective than heating the whole home with a furnace. Choose a radiant heater, which are more energy-efficient than other models.
Question: What is a summary of what this article is about?
Lower the thermostat. Turn off the heat when you’re not home. Save energy with radiator valves. Reduce the use of personal heaters.
Article: Place 1 to 2 large chunks of wood for smoking into the firebox every hour or so. Set the wood next to the fire, so it smolders instead of burns quickly. Avoid using wood chips because these will burn off too quickly.  Use hardwoods, fruitwoods, or nutwoods to get the best flavored smoke for your food. You don't need to soak the wood since the moisture might cool off the coals in the firebox. Every hour, open the cooking chamber lid and use tongs to move the food. Turn the food so that pieces at the cooler side of the cooking chamber are moved nearer to the firebox. If you're smoking a single, large piece of meat, it's still important to rotate the meat so it smokes evenly. If you're worried that your food will dry out over a long smoking session, introduce moisture into the firebox. Set a metal rack over the coals in the firebox. Fill a disposable aluminum pan with water and set the pan on the rack. The smoke will become moist before it flows into the cooking chamber. Add moisture by spraying the food with apple juice, water, or beer. Fill a clean spray bottle with your liquid and spritz the food towards the end of the smoking session. Spritz the food when it starts to look dry. Spray the food every 15 minutes or so by the end of the smoking session.
Question: What is a summary of what this article is about?
Add a few wood chunks to the firebox. Rotate the food once an hour. Place a pan of water in the firebox. Spray the food to keep it moist.
Article: When planning your own touching story, it is helpful to think of other touching stories that you’ve read, reflecting on what you liked, what you didn’t like, and what you might have done differently.  Without copying them, you can choose specific elements of a variety of touching stories to help shape your own story.  Perhaps you’re drawn to stories that have a lot of dialogue and would like to incorporate that into your work. Or, you might not like long, drawn out setting descriptions and may choose to write shorter descriptions. You might find that you really enjoy reading touching stories in which love prevails over an external triumph.  That’s a wonderful reflection, as it gives you a potential starting point for your own touching story. One engaging feature of a touching story is that it is relatable and readers can imagine and feel what the characters are going through, so you want to evoke an emotion many people can relate to. The situation can be vary, as the emotion is what people connect with most. This helps ensure that the maximum number of readers will really get into your touching story. Be creative and don't do something too common; nobody wants to read yet another variation of a story they've read too many times already. Some examples include:  Loss of a loved one or pet Marriage-related situations A big move Finding love Forgiveness Going away to college Getting a new job Going on a journey of self discovery A kind gesture met by another kind gesture The most important characters are the protagonists ("hero") and the antagonist ("villain"). However, you will want to add some more minor characters, otherwise, the touching story will not be as interesting. When you are making up characters, write at least some backstory about each of them. Even if you don't put this in the story, it's good to keep in mind so your characters will always act "in character". Figure out what role each person has in the plot.  You might have a notebook specifically for character development, dedicating a page to each character in which you jot down notes about them.  You don’t have to use every character note that you write down.  It’s better to have too much than too little, as you can always cut or revise details later. This is where you can bring your characters to life.  Imagine your protagonist.  Is she from a small town? How did she end up in the big city? Where did she meet the love of her life who she’ll connect with later in the story? What’s her favorite band? Food? Author? Many new authors want to jump right in and write; however, it is better to do some planning beforehand. Making an outline or chart of characters, backstories, conflict, and settings helps ensure that the touching story is consistent and the plot makes sense.  This also allows you to fill in any gaps in your story and change points around as necessary.  Perhaps the most famous example of plotting a story is J.K. Rowling’s chart for the Harry Potter novels. Notice that she pays attention to details, planning out the action for each month of the story, as well as the plots and subplots.  Everything is managed and accounted for in her hand-written spreadsheet. You should refer to your character pages while plotting to maintain consistency. The setting of your touching story is vitally important, serving as more than a passive backdrop. Instead, characters interact with the setting in this type of story, and the setting can, at times, offer a sort of locomotion that propels the story along.  One way to relate to your audience, too, is through setting, making your story even more robust.  Think about where you want your story to take place.  Imagine the house, the store, the school, the city, the state, the country, and write down details of your location in your notebook. Also consider when this is taking place.  Determine what season and time your touching story is set. Does it happen to be during a holiday? Do you imagine this taking place in one location, such as a boat dock as they wave goodbye to one another? Or do you see your story spanning sunrise and sunset both, on a boat dock and at a high school football game? Point of view is also important in a touching story as you want your readers to sympathize with the characters.  Do you want to tell your touching story from the point of view of one character in particular so that readers become invested in them primarily, or perhaps as a third-person narrator so that readers are paying more equal attention to all of your characters?  A first-person point of view is useful because you can give your readers access to your protagonist's (or another character's) inner thoughts, their feelings, their reactions, and the story as they experience it. This interior perspective is useful because readers become invested in that character. However, make sure you only write from this character's perspective, presenting only information they would reasonably know. On the other hand, if you have a third-person narrator in your story, a narrator that is removed and tells the story to the readers, you are able to describe more characters, but with less emotional depth. You may also incorporate free indirect discourse, which allows readers partial access to a character’s thoughts while maintaining that third-person narrator One benefit of a third-person point of view is that you can choose to use an omniscient narrator, allowing you to explore the thoughts and feelings of multiple characters.
Question: What is a summary of what this article is about?
Read touching stories written by other authors. Make your story relatable. Develop the characters. Map out your touching story. Develop your setting. Choose your point of view.