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A plot summary is not a recap. It should not cover every scene or every moment of a story. A summary is not meant to reproduce the experience of reading or watching the work. In fact, readers might be here because they didn't understand the original. Just repeating what they have already seen or read is unlikely to help them.
A plot summary should be written in the narrative present tense. A summary for a full-length novel should be between 400 and 700 words. When a plot summary exceeds 700 words, look for things that can be trimmed without losing anything important. Very occasionally, there may be exceptional reasons that warrant a longer summary.
There are some where I couldn't see a plot at long, e.g. chicklit, and ones, e.g. some detective or science fiction, where it's difficult to lead the more important characters from the start to the end without include a lot of incidents - so the plot summary would be fairly long even if it omits sub-plots and 2nd-level characters.
For example, a summary of Citizen Kane should establish that much of the film is an extended flashback that is bookended by scenes in the film's present; the entire plot summary should still be written in narrative present tense. Summaries may depart from the fiction's chronological order if doing so enhances clarity or brevity.
In either case, the other chunks should have summaries of the full lead, so that multiple different leads do not evolve. The first method is simpler; the second is preferable for glossaries so long that they need more than three or four chunks, or list articles in glossary format but not in basic alphabetical order (bicycles by manufacturer ...
Plot summaries for feature films should be between 400 and 700 words. The summary should not exceed this range unless the film's structure is unconventional, such as with non-linear storylines, or unless the plot is too complicated to summarize in this range. Discuss with other editors to determine if a summary cannot be contained within the ...
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Single-sentence paragraphs can inhibit the flow of the text; by the same token, long paragraphs become hard to read. Between paragraphs—as between sections—there should be only a single blank line. First lines are not indented. Bullet points should not be used in the lead of an article. They may be used in the body to break up a mass of ...