Summaries

I think it was in one of the Alcatraz books by Brandon Sanderson. There is a comment about how any story sounds lame when it is summed up in a sentence or two. Try it, it's true. Before I read Lord of the Rings I was told it was a story about a short man who travels for three books to a volcano to destroy an evil ring, and then fails so someone bites his finger off. The end. Stupid right?
In high school we had summer reading we had to do, and there was the same 10 or so questions we had to answer for every book. The first section was to write a summary of the plot no more than 50 words. I would religiously count the words to make sure I was under, it was difficult. When I read the Hobbit I mentioned the ring but it was too long, and my brother advised me to take that part out because the ring really isn't that important in the Hobbit (just in it's sequels). So I did, and my teacher wrote on it and passed it back with the question: "What about the ring?" I was annoyed.
This week I have been working on writing a one page summary of my almost 200 page book. In some ways I think the 50 word summary would be easier. . . It has actually been kind of fascinating though. Out of over 60 named characters I have named only 7 characters in the summary. I have looked at several chapters and decided that nothing in the whole chapter needs to even be mentioned in the summary. Some of the more interesting scenes (in my opinion) are ignored.
So it seems to me that if you take a story down to:

• a page => you lose the emotion
• 50 words => you lose the flow
• a sentence => you lose everything. It just sounds dumb.

And that is not to say there are no reason for summaries... they just should be used with care.