A practical writing exercise

Shorten a scene without losing the turn

Compress a negotiation by at least one third while preserving five necessary information functions, then account for deletions and the unchanged turn.

Explore prose editing →

Your starting material

Use this complete original material for the demonstration. You can copy or download it before working through the steps.

Original source:
Union representative Mae stood beside the shop owner's desk and asked for a one-hour stoppage so the crew could fix the leaking steam pipe. The owner looked at the delivery schedule, then looked at the clock, and said the order had to leave by four. Mae had already explained that the wet floor was dangerous, but she explained it again. The owner said there was no money for lost work. Mae unrolled the maintenance sheet. It showed that the leak had already cost two hours of work that week. The owner read the total twice. Mae offered a supervised repair now if he paid the hour; the crew would resume afterward and load the completed stock first. He crossed out the last item on the dispatch list. 'One paid hour,' he said. Mae signed the sheet, knowing the delayed item would cost the crew its bonus.
Required information: (1) Mae seeks a paid repair stoppage; (2) owner resists because of a four o'clock dispatch; (3) a record proves existing lost time; (4) owner accepts one paid hour and drops a dispatch item; (5) crew loses that item's bonus. Keep the leak repaired before resumed work. Count English letter/number word runs with internal apostrophes and hyphens kept together; contractions and 'one-hour' are one word each.

Deliberately flawed example

Deliberately flawed compression: Mae asked for a break. The owner agreed. Everyone was pleased. It is much shorter, but the evidence, negotiation, and lost bonus have disappeared.

One possible revision

One possible revision — compressed scene:
Mae asked the shop owner for a paid hour to fix the leaking steam pipe. He tapped the four o'clock dispatch deadline. 'We can't lose work.' She unrolled the maintenance sheet: the leak had already cost two hours that week. He read the total twice. 'Repair now,' she said. 'We'll load the finished stock first.' He crossed out the last dispatch item. 'One paid hour.' Mae signed. The crew would lose its bonus on the delayed item, but the pipe would be fixed before work resumed.
Information audit: request—paid repair hour in sentence 1; resistance—four o'clock dispatch in sentence 2; evidence—maintenance sheet and two lost hours in sentence 4; concession—crossed dispatch item and 'One paid hour'; cost—crew's lost bonus. Leak repair still precedes resumed work.
Deletion record: removed repeated safety explanation; combined schedule and clock into one deadline cue; cut the desk position and opening role label; condensed the offered loading sequence into direct dialogue. Kept the double reading of the total because it shows evidence changing the owner's attention. Count record under the stated rule: source 146 words; revision 86 words; 60 words removed, a reduction of about 41.1%. The 96-word maximum is met. These counts describe length, not literary quality.

What changed and why

• Removed repeated arguments and combined deadline cues, cutting space spent on the same functions.
• Preserved the maintenance evidence, explicit paid-hour concession, and lost bonus, so compression retains both the reason for the turn and its cost.

A choice worth keeping

Keep 'He read the total twice.' It is a small pause where the evidence begins to work; deleting it would save words but flatten the chosen emphasis.

Try it with fresh material

Original transfer draft: 'Hall manager Dev asked the choir to finish rehearsal fifteen minutes early because the room needed a safety inspection before closing. Choir leader Una said the concert was tomorrow and the last section was still rough. Dev repeated that inspections were necessary. Una repeated that the concert mattered. Dev showed the notice: an uninspected room could not open for the concert at all. Una read the notice, asked for five final minutes, and offered to move the chairs herself afterward. Dev agreed to five minutes if she also locked the storage cupboard. Una accepted, although it meant missing her usual bus.' Preserve request, concert resistance, notice evidence, five-minute agreement with cupboard condition, and missed-bus cost.

Count the source, compress it by at least one third under a stated word rule, count the revision, and map the five functions to output evidence. Add a deletion list and one deliberate keep. Deliver both counts, revision, and audit.

Feedback for your attempt

• Does the inspection notice still cause the compromise? If it vanishes, restore the reason.
• Do the cupboard condition and bus cost survive? A shorter happy ending changes the bargain.
• If the target conflicts with clarity, try combining repeated functions before removing a necessary turn.

Check before moving on

• Count source and revision with the same settings.
• Keep a mapping from required information to actual output phrases.
• Re-read for cause and cost after every major cut.

Original negotiation, compression, and information audit authored by an AI agent. Designed editorial examples; shorter length is not presented as a universal quality gain. An independent AI agent completed the transfer exercise and archived its artifacts; no human reader testing is claimed. Material version: 2026-10-18.