Two ways to start
Two openings for the same piece.
A. In my opinion, the place which shaped me the most is my home town, which has many memories for me.
B. The place that shaped me was not a place. It was a bus route.
Four questions.
1. What does opening A tell you about the writer’s town?
2. What does opening B do in fourteen words?
3. In my opinion — what does it add to a piece written in the first person about your own life?
4. In 270 words, what does an opening like A cost you?
The model · 267 words
Places That Shape Us
The place that shaped me was not a place. It was a bus route — specifically the front seat on the top deck of the 61, which I occupied for roughly nine hundred mornings between eleven and seventeen.
If you got on at my stop you had a fifty-fifty chance of that seat. If you got on one stop later you had none. This produced, without my noticing, a habit of leaving the house four minutes earlier than necessary, which I have kept ever since.
The route went through three different kinds of place in twenty-two minutes. It began in streets of small houses with cars parked in the front gardens. Then came a stretch of retail parks and a roundabout that had been redesigned twice and worked neither time. Then, quite suddenly, a hill with a view of the whole city, held for about eleven seconds, which the driver never slowed for and nobody except me ever looked at.
What it taught me was scale. Twice a day I could see where I lived in relation to everything else, and that everything else was very large and mostly unknown to me. Children who walk to school do not get this. They get something better — a neighbourhood — but they do not get the map.
I went back last year. The retail parks have gone, and the hill is hidden behind flats. The 61 no longer has a top deck; the route is served by a single-decker, which is sensible.
I would not have said, at fifteen, that I loved it. I would say it now.
Four questions about the model.
1. Where is the piece’s claim about what the place did?
2. What does the paragraph about the front seat actually establish?
3. Why does the piece concede that children who walk get "something better"?
4. The last paragraph is nineteen words. What is it doing?
Repair a weaker one
The five moves of the model: refuse the obvious answer and give the specific one · one mechanism the place had · what it looked like, in order · what it did to you, named plainly and conceded honestly · the return, and the distance.
Below, a second piece with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
The place that shaped me is a launderette, which is not the kind of sentence anybody wants to write. [1]
It was two streets from our flat and we used it for six years, always on a Sunday, because Sunday was when it was empty. [2] You could not leave, and there was nothing to do, so we talked — my mother and I — for ninety minutes a week, for six years.
[3] I know what she thought about almost everything, which very few people my age can say about their mothers, and I know it because a machine took ninety minutes and there was one chair.
The launderette is a phone repair shop now. [4] What it gave us was not the place. It was the ninety minutes, and the fact that neither of us could leave.
We have a washing machine now, and we speak on Sundays for about eleven minutes.
Before you write
Eight sentences of the kind you are about to write. Choose the article.
1. The place that shaped me was ___ launderette two streets away.
2. ___ launderette was empty on Sundays, which is why we went then.
3. What it taught me was ___ patience.
4. ___ patience of my mother is a separate subject.
5. ___ children who grow up in flats learn different things. (in general)
6. It was ___ first place I was allowed to go alone.
7. I broke ___ arm on the steps outside it.
8. We went every Sunday for six years, and ___ Sundays are what I remember.
Six sentences from drafts. Four are articles; two are about what a 270-word piece can afford.
1. In my opinion, I think that the place which shaped me is my home town. — 270 words
2. The people in my neighbourhood were very friendly. — people there in general
3. It was the launderette two streets from our flat. — first mention
4. What it gave me was the patience.
5. It was very nice place and I have many good memories. — a reflective piece
6. The my mother waited with me every week.
Write it
Task card · Writing · Alone · 17 minutes
Write "Places That Shape Us" — 270 words about a place that changed something in you that is still there.
Five moves, in order. Seventeen minutes writing, six checking.
- Open by refusing the obvious answer if you honestly can, then give the specific one. No announcement.
- Name one mechanism the place had — a timing, a distance, a rule, a chair. Something a reader could verify.
- Say what it did to you, and concede what somebody with a different childhood got instead.
- End with a return, real or imagined, and the distance between who you were and who is writing.
- Number the margin: 1, 2, 3 or 4 beside every the, for the first ten minutes only.
Task card · Checking · Pairs · 6 minutes
Swap. You are not marking. You are asking the question nobody ever asks.
Six minutes, four answers, written where the writer can see them.
- For every the without a route number: write "which one?" in the margin. Do not correct it.
- Find every generalisation. Does it carry a the it should not?
- Which move is missing or thin? Name it by number.
- Last: after reading this, could you point at the mechanism? If not, the piece describes a place and not what it did.
The mechanism is the test of the whole piece. A launderette that took ninety minutes and had one chair is a mechanism. A place that "has many memories" is not. Anybody can have memories; only some places make something happen.
What the margins said
Two questions.
1. How many "which one?" notes did you receive?
2. Did your piece have a mechanism a reader could point at?
The mechanism, and the numbering
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What makes a place-piece reflective rather than descriptive?
2. How long do you number the margin?
Next. The same place, spoken, to somebody who will draw it — and a look back at the whole unit.