Two ways to start
Two openings for the same piece.
A. In this text I am going to explain the process by which potholes are repaired, which has several stages.
B. A pothole is not repaired because somebody sees it. It is repaired because it has been measured.
Four questions.
1. What does opening A tell the reader that they did not already know?
2. What does opening B do in eighteen words?
3. In 250 words, what does an announcement paragraph cost you?
4. Opening B is two passive sentences. Is the agent missing?
The model · 247 words
How a pothole is repaired
A pothole is not repaired because somebody sees it. It is repaired because it has been measured.
Roads are inspected on a cycle — monthly for a main road, once a year for a residential street — and any defect found is recorded with a depth and a width. Anything reported by the public is added to the same list, but it is not acted on until it has been measured by an inspector, which is where the first delay happens.
Once measured, the defect is given a category, and the category sets the deadline. Some are made safe within twenty-four hours, some within twenty-eight days, and a great many fall below the threshold and are simply logged. A hole that is one millimetre too shallow is not a smaller problem than one that is not. It is a different administrative object.
Repairs are then batched. A crew is not sent out for a single defect if another is due on the same street within the month, because moving a crew costs far more than the material does. This is why a road is sometimes dug twice in a fortnight and sometimes not at all for a year.
The permanent repair is usually a second visit. The first is a temporary fill, made to stop the clock.
None of this is hidden. It is written down, and it explains almost everything about the surface you drive on — which is not the same as making it defensible.
Four questions about the model.
1. What is the subject of almost every sentence?
2. The model contains exactly one by-phrase. Why does it survive the news test?
3. Which sentence names the bottleneck?
4. What does the last clause — which is not the same as making it defensible — add?
Repair a weaker one
The five moves of the model: deny the obvious assumption and give the real mechanism · the stages, on one subject · the rule that decides everything · the bottleneck, named · what it explains, and where your own opinion begins.
Below, a second description with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
A book is not published when it is finished. [1]
The manuscript is accepted, and a slot is chosen twelve to eighteen months ahead. [2] From that date everything else is counted backwards: the edit, the cover, the proofs, the printing, the shipping.
[3] A book that misses its slot is not published a fortnight late; it is moved to the next window, which may be six months away, because the shops have already planned their tables.
The bottleneck is not the writing and it is not the printing. [4] There are three or four periods a year when a book of a given kind can be sold, and everything is arranged around them.
Before you write
One to four words per gap. These are the sentences you are about to need.
A form is not processed because it . It is processed because it has correctly. Applications in the order they are validated, not the order they arrive. Anything incomplete to the back of the queue, and the applicant only when somebody reaches it again. The bottleneck the processing. It is the checking.
Six sentences from drafts. Four are grammar or agents; two are about what a 250-word piece can afford.
1. In this piece I will describe the process of how potholes are repaired. — 250 words
2. The road is inspected by an inspector every month.
3. The defect will given a category.
4. Basically the council just leaves loads of them, which is a joke. — a description, not a complaint
5. The hole has measured by an inspector.
6. The crews are sent out by the council when several defects are due.
Write it
Task card · Writing · Alone · 17 minutes
Write a 250-word description of a process you understand — the one from Lesson 5, or a better one if it has occurred to you since.
Five moves, in order. Seventeen minutes writing, six checking.
- Open by denying what the reader assumes, then give the real mechanism. No announcement paragraph.
- Keep the subject on the thing. If it moves, tell the reader it is moving.
- You may use two by-phrases. Each must pass the news test.
- Name the bottleneck, and say first what people wrongly think it is.
- If you want to give an opinion, put it in the last sentence and make it visible as yours.
Task card · Checking · Pairs · 6 minutes
Swap. You are not marking. You are answering four questions in the margin.
Six minutes, four answers, written where the writer can see them.
- Underline the subject of every sentence. How many different ones are there? Write the number at the top.
- Circle every by-phrase and apply the news test out loud. Cross out any that fails.
- Find the bottleneck sentence. If there is not one, say so — that is the most useful thing you can write.
- Mark any missing auxiliary: will be, has been, is being. Do not correct it; mark it.
The number at the top matters most. A 250-word process description with three or four different subjects reads as one thing followed through. With eleven, the reader has been relocated eleven times, and no amount of correct grammar will fix that.
What the margins said
Two questions.
1. What was your subject count?
2. Did your piece name a bottleneck?
One thing, followed through
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. How should a 250-word process description open?
2. What does the subject count measure?
Next. The same process, spoken, to somebody who will stop you the moment they lose the thread — and a look back at the whole unit.