Abstract summary help

[Starstreams]

I don’t understand how to start out an abstract? I’m suppose to summarize, or write an abstract of a research project I did on an authors life but I’m having trouble knowing how to stat it out?
I don’t know if I need to be detailed at first or make it more like a thesis. Can anyone provide any tips on how to approach this?
I keep going in circle with this; my paper was 10 pages on Stephen King's life with over 15 paragraphs of topic sentences. I have no idea how to make this abstract, and my teacher did not hand out any sheets with intrusions. All her sheet said is that we are summarizing our self in one paragraph or up to one page or more.

[Starstreams]

Is it ok to stat a personal opinion in an Abstract?

[Anglika]

Take it step by step. The way I was taught was to take three sentences at a time and summarize them into one. Continue the process till you have reduced the abstract to the length you require.

The first and last paragraph of an essay/article most often contain the kernel of an author's thesis.

[Starstreams]

I finished the Essay, but this is just an abstract.
The teacher said it can be one paragraph or as long as one page or more. The problem is that; This is an essay on events in King’s life. Being that they are events, they are all verbs or actions that happened in his life. How do you summarize events? I understand that the Abstract should catch the readers attention, but how do you explain all these things that happened in his life as a summary?
I can summarize the results or outcomes, but how do you summarize actions?

[Anglika]

In an abstract you don't have to list everything. For example : re King's childhood/education:

"King's upbringing was small-town, with schooling at local elementary and high schools. From there he entered xxxx college."

You need the bare bones of your essay, not the meat.

[Casiopea]

In addition, ask yourself what's the purpose in writing an abstract? When I'm looking for information among the millions of papers in the thousands of journals available today, I don't have time to read each and every paper. The absract, which can be a single sentence, tells the reader what's in the 100 pages or so that follow. That's what an abstract does, and that's why it's important.

Before I even start writing a paper, I've already got my abstract in my head. It's a three line, maybe four or five line paragraph explaining the gist of my paper: who or what I am writing about, why I am writing about it, and whether my ideas agree or disagrees with past and present views on the same subject and why. That's it.

Abstracts pretty much write themselves, once you fill in the 6Ws: who, what, when, where, how, and why. ^Get those down and you've got yourself an abstract.

All the best.

[Starstreams]

Thanks
I know what your saying Casiopea,
What makes it hard is; Many of the theory’s for how King’s life effects his writng are philosophical and I don’t necessarily have one set-in stone answer. I believe there are a few Sigmund Freud theories at work so it’s hard to really take a solid side on just one issue. It’s not really an agree or disagree thing, its more an analysis of how the life of an author effects his writing.. This is difficult, I’ll try to go off what you said, it doses help but still, I’m kind of skeptical as to whether or not I’m leaving too much out to catch the reader’s eye.