How To Write A Gist Of A Story . Gist is the general meaning or purpose of a text, either written or spoken. Most likely, you communicated the central idea of the film to your friend in a couple of minutes, or perhaps even in a single sentence. what is gist mean Yahoo Image Search Results Reading strategies from www.pinterest.com What you've done is communicate a gist. Discuss with students what they think “getting the gist” of something means. Before answering detailed comprehension questions on a short story, learners read it quickly for gist, and then match the text to a picture that summarises what happens in the story.