While this first step may seem obvious, it is an essential component to learning how to summarize. Before you begin to write, you must know and understand the story line completely. Make sure you recognize the intricacies of the plot, plot twists, motive, character development and character relationships. All of this information is necessary to ensure you can write a summary that is concise but also sparks the reader's interest.
With a thorough understanding of the story, the next step is identifying key story elements. Analyze what you perceive to be the the essential components of the story line, and write them down. Once you have these elements chosen, create a flow chart to map out how each element leads to another in the story line. This simple chart can serve as a reference as you write your summary of the story line.
As a long-standing tool of journalists, the inverted pyramid requires a story to feature the most important information at the beginning and the least important information at the end. Translate this concept to summarizing story lines by beginning with the key elements of the plot you previously identified. Write about the importance of these elements and their relationship to one another. Then add small teasers of information about the story or characters that would interest a potential reader.
With the body of your summary written, the last step is to develop an interesting lede. The purpose of the lede, or first sentence of your summary, is to grab the reader's attention and draw him in to read the entire summary. Tips for writing a good lede include starting with a teaser piece of information or poignant fact. For example, a summary for the 1993 film "Philadelphia" could go as follows: "Unable to hide from the physical symptoms of the virus that was slowly killing him, a young lawyer found an ally in one of the most unlikely of people in his city of Philadelphia." After this sentence, you could then go into the key plot elements.