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OK. I’d recommend against believing unpopular conclusions without knowing much about the relevant arguments. I think there’s an important general concept there, to not trust an intellectual when he says something that the majority of other intellectuals think is wrong. Even if you know way more about and quite like some of his other conclusions. Even if he’s me.

Do you believe that if environmental changes would solve a problem, then that demonstrates the problem was caused by environmental factors, not ideas?

FYI you’re over-complicating this.

I’m not sure what you mean by environmental factors. I’m thinking it’s something like the physical context, like, the physical environment you’re in? The environment that a pro chef performs really well in is a proper commercial kitchen. They’ll perform worse outside of that environment or if some of those environmental factors are changed (like preparing food in a desert, or if the power goes out in their kitchen). Is that what you mean by environmental factors? Am I still overcomplicating things?

Yes the kitchen is an example of the environment.

Okay cool. So, problem: professional chef is making bad or no food when normally they make good food really quickly. But they’re in a desert with none of the tools or facilities they’re used to cooking with. When we put them in a kitchen, they make good food really quickly again. Does that demonstrate that the problem was caused by the desert, or the lack of a kitchen? Uhh. I don’t think so no. I can’t really explain how though.

OK. So you’re claiming an asymmetry. I asked two similar questions and you said yes to one and no to the other. What makes them different to merit different answers?

Here are some more paraphrases. They’re from Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. Some have times. It’s feeling more natural and easy to do them quickly and with typing.

Malfoy didn’t reappear in classes until late on Thursday morning, when the Slytherins and Gryffindors were halfway through double Potions. He swaggered into the dungeon, his right arm covered in bandages and bound up in a sling, acting, in Harry’s opinion, as though he were the heroic survivor of some dreadful battle.

Malfoy didn’t show up for some classes until he reappeared with his arm in a sling and a heroic attitude.

49.16


Harry and Ron scowled at each other; Snape wouldn’t have said “settle down” if they’d walked in late, he’d have given them detention. But Malfoy had always been able to get away with anything in Snape’s classes; Snape was head of Slytherin House, and generally favored his own students above all others.

Harry and Ron noticed that Malfoy was getting treatment from Snape that they wouldn’t get.

39.79


They were making a new potion today, a Shrinking Solution. Malfoy set up his cauldron right next to Harry and Ron, so that they were preparing their ingredients on the same table.

Malfoy set up right next to Harry and Ron.

19.16


Harry took Malfoy’s shrivelfig as Ron began trying to repair the damage to the roots he now had to use. Harry skinned the shrivelfig as fast as he could and flung it back across the table at Malfoy without speaking. Malfoy was smirking more broadly than ever.

Harry skinned the shrivelfig quickly and gave it to Malfoy.

32.77


Professor Lupin wasn’t there when they arrived at his first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. They all sat down, took out their books, quills, and parchment, and were talking when he finally entered the room. Lupin smiled vaguely and placed his tatty old briefcase on the teacher’s desk. He was as shabby as ever but looked healthier than he had on the train, as though he had had a few square meals.

The professor was late for the class. He looked healthier than before.

42.17


A few curious looks were exchanged as the class put away their books. They had never had a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts before, unless you counted the memorable class last year when their old teacher had brought a cageful of pixies to class and set them loose.

The students looked around at each other at the mention of a practical Defense against the dark arts lesson.

1:00


Puzzled but interested, the class got to its feet and followed Professor Lupin out of the classroom. He led them along the deserted corridor and around a corner, where the first thing they saw was Peeves the Poltergeist, who was floating upside down in midair and stuffing the nearest keyhole with chewing gum.

The puzzled and curious class followed the professor down the corridor.


The staffroom, a long, paneled room full of old, mismatched chairs, was empty except for one teacher. Professor Snape was sitting in a low armchair, and he looked around as the class filed in. His eyes were glittering and there was a nasty sneer playing around his mouth. As Professor Lupin came in and made to close the door behind him, Snape said, “Leave it open, Lupin. I’d rather not witness this.”

The students filed into the staffroom. Snape was the only one in there and he made to leave.

2:34


He got to his feet and strode past the class, his black robes billowing behind him. At the doorway he turned on his heel and said, “Possibly no one’s warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear.”

Snape got to his feet to leave and said something mean to Lupin about Neville and Hermione.


“Now, then,” said Professor Lupin, beckoning the class toward the end of the room, where there was nothing but an old wardrobe where the teachers kept their spare robes. As Professor Lupin went to stand next to it, the wardrobe gave a sudden wobble, banging off the wall.

Lupin took the class to the end of room in which there was a wardrobe against the wall that gave a bang as he stood next to it.


Harry only wished he was as happy with some of his other classes. Worst of all was Potions. Snape was in a particularly vindictive mood these days, and no one was in any doubt why. The story of the boggart assuming Snape’s shape, and the way that Neville had dressed it in his grandmother’s clothes, had traveled through the school like wildfire. Snape didn’t seem to find it funny. His eyes flashed menacingly at the very mention of Professor Lupin’s name, and he was bullying Neville worse than ever.

Harry wished that he was enjoying his other classes as much as DATDA. Word had go to Snape of Neville’s boggart and Snape bullied Neville worse than ever.

1:14.58


Harry was also growing to dread the hours he spent in Professor Trelawney’s stifling tower room, deciphering lopsided shapes and symbols, trying to ignore the way Professor Trelawney’s enormous eyes filled with tears every time she looked at him. He couldn’t like Professor Trelawney, even though she was treated with respect bordering on reverence by many of the class. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had taken to haunting Professor Trelawney’s tower room at lunchtimes, and always returned with annoyingly superior looks on their faces, as though they knew things the others didn’t. They had also started using hushed voices whenever they spoke to Harry, as though he were on his deathbed.

Harry has a growing dislike for professor T and the time spent in their class.


Nobody really liked Care of Magical Creatures, which, after the action-packed first class, had become extremely dull. Hagrid seemed to have lost his confidence. They were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after flobberworms, which had to be some of the most boring creatures in existence.

Care of Magical Creatures had become dull after the accident. Hagrid lost confidence and they began studying boring creatures.


At the start of October, however, Harry had something else to occupy him, something so enjoyable it more than made up for his unsatisfactory classes. The Quidditch season was approaching, and Oliver Wood, Captain of the Gryffindor team, called a meeting one Thursday evening to discuss tactics for the new season.

Quidditch season was starting and it made up for all Harry’s bad classes.


Oliver Wood was a burly seventeen-year-old, now in his seventh and final year at Hogwarts. There was a quiet sort of desperation in his voice as he addressed his six fellow team members in the chilly locker rooms on the edge of the darkening Quidditch field.

Oliver Wood addressed the quidditch team in the locker room.

Oliver Wood addressed the quidditch team with quiet desperation in the cold locker room.

17 year old Oliver Wood addressed the quidditch team with a quiet desperation in the cold locker rooms on the edge of the field.


Full of determination, the team started training sessions, three evenings a week. The weather was getting colder and wetter, the nights darker, but no amount of mud, wind, or rain could tarnish Harry’s wonderful vision of finally winning the huge, silver Quidditch Cup.

Determined, the quidditch team began an intense training schedule.


Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room one evening after training, cold and stiff but pleased with the way practice had gone, to find the room buzzing excitedly.

One night when harry returned to the common room, it was buzzing excitedly.


Professor McGonagall opened the classroom door at that moment, which was perhaps lucky; Hermione and Ron were looking daggers at each other, and when they got into class, they seated themselves on either side of Harry and didn’t talk to each other for the whole class.

Professor McGonagall entered the room and Ron and Hermione stopped fighting.

Great. Do some more or, when you feel ready, try paraphrasing some longer sections.

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If this is too hard we don’t need to do it.

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Cool, thanks. I am going to try and write a reply though.

The two similar questions were:

I answered yes to the former, and no to the latter. I’m not sure what makes them different. And I can see that answering them differently requires explanation. In light of that I doubt my answer to both of them.

It seems like changing the environment or the idea could solve the problem. You could solve the chefs problem by changing their environment to a kitchen from a desert, but you could also solve the chefs problem by giving him the right ideas that work for how to be a chef in the desert. So it seems like the problem is perhaps due to an interaction of the ideas and the environment. Does that have something to do with the interactions you mentioned before?

Yes.

In general, there are multiple types of solutions that would work, so identifying a type of solution that works doesn’t tell you the cause.

If you’re sad because you’re bald, this could be solved with a wig, with living in a different culture that views hair differently, or with different ideas in your own head.

So applying this to topics like ADHD or depression, I think it’s incorrect to just focus on ideas. There’s often complex, multi-factor causation, and many solutions of many different types would work. Does that make sense? And if so you can you brainstorm a variety of potential solutions?

Cool!

Is it even meaningful for there to be a definite true cause (like baldness), or is it always due to an interaction?

The fact that multiple solutions work seems to imply that the problem is due to multiple things. It’s not just that the multiple solutions make it hard to tell exactly what the cause is, it’s that the cause is not due to one thing, but an interaction between things, and it’s the interaction that can be changed, in multiple ways, by changing any one of multiple things.

It makes sense that multiple solutions would work if the cause was not one thing but an interaction between multiple things. Making changes to any of those things, could change the nature of that interaction, and so change the problem.

Wouldn’t this mean that the cause isn’t exactly the baldness? Wouldn’t it mean the cause is the interaction of your baldness with a broader context?

A little bit repetitive maybe but does that make sense?

I think so: the fact that new ideas can help with problems associated with ADHD and related mental illness doesn’t mean that we can conclude that those problems are just caused by ideas. Problems are caused by interactions between at least two and sometimes multiple things, some of which may not be ideas, and so multiple solutions of multiple types are possible.

I’m not really sure what you mean. Do you mean ADHD related issues?

I meant brainstorming solutions for ADHD, depression, or something similar of your choice.

Here are more paraphrases of paragraphs from both Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban and 1984:

Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin won, though narrowly. According to Wood, this was good news for Gryffindor, who would take second place if they beat Ravenclaw too. He therefore increased the number of team practices to five a week. This meant that with Lupin’s anti-dementor classes, which in themselves were more draining than six Quidditch practices, Harry had just one night a week to do all his homework. Even so, he wasn’t showing the strain nearly as much as Hermione, whose immense workload finally seemed to be getting to her. Every night, without fail, Hermione was to be seen in a corner of the common room, several tables spread with books, Arithmancy charts, rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file upon file of extensive notes; she barely spoke to anybody and snapped when she was interrupted.

Harry’s time was almost all taken up with Quidditch practise and his anti-dementor class. He was handling it better than Hermione, who had a pile of work to do every night.


January faded imperceptibly into February, with no change in the bitterly cold weather. The match against Ravenclaw was drawing nearer and nearer, but Harry still hadn’t ordered a new broom. He was now asking Professor McGonagall for news of the Firebolt after every Transfiguration lesson, Ron standing hopefully at his shoulder, Hermione rushing past with her face averted.

The game approached and Harry still didn’t have a broom. He asked Prof McGonnagall about it after each class with her.


To make matters even worse, Harry’s anti-dementor lessons were not going nearly as well as he had hoped. Several sessions on, he was able to produce an indistinct, silvery shadow every time the boggart-dementor approached him, but his Patronus was too feeble to drive the dementor away. All it did was hover, like a semi-transparent cloud, draining Harry of energy as he fought to keep it there. Harry felt angry with himself, guilty about his secret desire to hear his parents’ voices again.

Harry’s anti-dementor class wasn’t going so well. He still couldn’t make the spell properly. He felt angry with himself.


He would have liked to have told Lupin about the conversation he’d overheard about Black in the Three Broomsticks, about Black betraying his mother and father, but it would have involved revealing that he’d gone to Hogsmeade without permission, and he knew Lupin wouldn’t be very impressed by that. So he finished his butterbeer, thanked Lupin, and left the History of Magic classroom.

Harry wanted to tell Lupin what he knew about Black and his parents, but it would incriminate him. So he finished his butterbeer and left.


After ten minutes or so, during which the Firebolt was passed around and admired from every angle, the crowd dispersed and Harry and Ron had a clear view of Hermione, the only person who hadn’t rushed over to them, bent over her work and carefully avoiding their eyes. Harry and Ron approached her table and at last, she looked up.

The crowd around them cleared and Harry and Ron looked over to Hermione who at last looked up at them.


Ron was enraged that Hermione had never taken Crookshanks’s attempts to eat Scabbers seriously, hadn’t bothered to keep a close enough watch on him, and was still trying to pretend that Crookshanks was innocent by suggesting that Ron look for Scabbers under all the boys’ beds. Hermione, meanwhile, maintained fiercely that Ron had no proof that Crookshanks had eaten Scabbers, that the ginger hairs might have been there since Christmas, and that Ron had been prejudiced against her cat ever since Crookshanks had landed on Ron’s head in the Magical Menagerie.

Ron was angry that Hermione hadn’t taken seriously the danger that Cruickshanks put Scabbers in. She denied that Cruickshanks had done anything wrong but the evidence was hard to explain.


It was better than he’d ever dreamed. The Firebolt turned with the lightest touch; it seemed to obey his thoughts rather than his grip; it sped across the field at such speed that the stadium turned into a green-and-gray blur; Harry turned it so sharply that Alicia Spinnet screamed, then he went into a perfectly controlled dive, brushing the grassy field with his toes before rising thirty, forty, fifty feet into the air again—

Harry’s broom was very fast and handled like an extra limb.


Harry went down to breakfast the next morning with the rest of the boys in his dormitory, all of whom seemed to think the Firebolt deserved a sort of guard of honor. As Harry entered the Great Hall, heads turned in the direction of the Firebolt, and there was a good deal of excited muttering. Harry saw, with enormous satisfaction, that the Slytherin team were all looking thunderstruck.

Harry went to the great hall with his broom and everyone was looking at him and the broom. The Slytherin team looked shocked.


At a quarter to eleven, the Gryffindor team set off for the locker rooms. The weather couldn’t have been more different from their match against Hufflepuff. It was a clear, cool day with a very light breeze; there would be no visibility problems this time, and Harry, though nervous, was starting to feel the excitement only a Quidditch match could bring. They could hear the rest of the school moving into the stadium beyond. Harry took off his black school robes, removed his wand from his pocket, and stuck it inside the T-shirt he was going to wear under his Quidditch robes. He only hoped he wouldn’t need it. He wondered suddenly whether Professor Lupin was in the crowd, watching.

The weather for the game was much better than during the previous hufflepuff game. Harry felt excited. He stuffed his wand in his shirt and hoped that he wouldn’t have to use it. He wondered if professor Lupin was in the crowd.


They walked out onto the field to tumultuous applause. The Ravenclaw team, dressed in blue, were already standing in the middle of the field. Their Seeker, Cho Chang, was the only girl on their team. She was shorter than Harry by about a head, and Harry couldn’t help noticing, nervous as he was, that she was extremely pretty. She smiled at Harry as the teams faced each other behind their captains, and he felt a slight lurch in the region of his stomach that he didn’t think had anything to do with nerves.

The crowd applauded as they walked out onto the field to meet the Ravenclaw team. Their seeker was a girl and harry noticed that she was pretty. She looked at him and his stomach lurched.


The Gryffindor party ended only when Professor McGonagall turned up in her tartan dressing gown and hair net at one in the morning, to insist that they all go to bed. Harry and Ron climbed the stairs to their dormitory, still discussing the match. At last, exhausted, Harry climbed into bed, twitched the hangings of his four-poster shut to block out a ray of moonlight, lay back, and felt himself almost instantly drifting off to sleep…

Their party finished at 1am and only because the teacher shut it down. Harry went to bed and fell straight to sleep.

Throughout the day, everywhere they went they saw signs of tighter security; Professor Flitwick could be seen teaching the front doors to recognize a large picture of Sirius Black; Filch was suddenly bustling up and down the corridors, boarding up everything from tiny cracks in the walls to mouse holes. Sir Cadogan had been fired. His portrait had been taken back to its lonely landing on the seventh floor, and the Fat Lady was back. She had been expertly restored, but was still extremely nervous, and had agreed to return to her job only on condition that she was given extra protection. A bunch of surly security trolls had been hired to guard her. They paced the corridor in a menacing group, talking in grunts and comparing the size of their clubs.

Security was being ramped up. Sir Cadogan’s painting had been fired and replaced with the Fat Lady, who’s painting was being guarded by armed trolls.


Harry couldn’t help noticing that the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor remained unguarded and unblocked. It seemed that Fred and George had been right in thinking that they—and now Harry, Ron, and Hermione—were the only ones who knew about the hidden passageway within it.

Harry noticed the one-eyed witch statue remained unguarded. He figured that he was one of the few that knew about it.


From 1984:

Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten. Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he sat up against the bedhead. Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls, and made the coffee. The smell that rose from the saucepan was so powerful and exciting that they shut the window lest anybody outside should notice it and become inquisitive. What was even better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given to it by the sugar, a thing Winston had almost forgotten after years of saccharine. With one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and jam in the other, Julia wandered about the room, glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing out the best way of repairing the gateleg table, plumping herself down in the ragged arm-chair to see if it was comfortable, and examining the absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement. She brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light. He took it out of her hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance of the glass.

The panic had subsided, and Winston sat up, feeling slightly ashamed. Julia got up to make coffee. She walked around the room observing things. She picked up the glass paperweight and they both looked at it.


The weather was baking hot. In the labyrinthine Ministry the windowless, air-conditioned rooms kept their normal temperature, but outside the pavements scorched one’s feet and the stench of the Tubes at the rush hours was a horror. The preparations for Hate Week were in full swing, and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked. Julia’s unit in the Fiction Department had been taken off the production of novels and was rushing out a series of atrocity pamphlets. Winston, in addition to his regular work, spent long periods every day in going through back files of ‘The Times’ and altering and embellishing news items which were to be quoted in speeches. Late at night, when crowds of rowdy proles roamed the streets, the town had a curiously febrile air. The rocket bombs crashed of-tener than ever, and sometimes in the far distance there were enormous explosions which no one could explain and about which there were wild rumours.

The weather was very hot. Preparations for Hate Week were underway, with everyone buzzing about and working overtime.


In the room over Mr Charrington’s shop, when they could get there, Julia and Winston lay side by side on a stripped bed under the open window, naked for the sake of coolness. The rat had never come back, but the bugs had multiplied hideously in the heat. It did not seem to matter. Dirty or clean, the room was paradise. As soon as they arrived they would sprinkle everything with pepper bought on the black market, tear off their clothes, and make love with sweating bodies, then fall asleep and wake to find that the bugs had rallied and were massing for the counter-attack.

Though the room above the shop was hot and the bed was bug infested, it was paradise.


Four, five, six—seven times they met during the month of June. Winston had dropped his habit of drinking gin at all hours. He seemed to have lost the need for it. He had grown fatter, his varicose ulcer had subsided, leaving only a brown stain on the skin above his ankle, his fits of coughing in the early morning had stopped. The process of life had ceased to be intolerable, he had no longer any impulse to make faces at the telescreen or shout curses at the top of his voice. Now that they had a secure hiding-place, almost a home, it did not even seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time. What mattered was that the room over the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk. Mr Charrington, thought Winston, was another extinct animal. He usually stopped to talk with Mr Charrington for a few minutes on his way upstairs. The old man seemed seldom or never to go out of doors, and on the other hand to have almost no customers. He led a ghostlike existence between the tiny, dark shop, and an even tinier back kitchen where he prepared his meals and which contained, among other things, an unbelievably ancient gramophone with an enormous horn. He seemed glad of the opportunity to talk. Wandering about among his worthless stock, with his long nose and thick spectacles and his bowed shoulders in the velvet jacket, he had always vaguely the air of being a collector rather than a tradesman. With a sort of faded enthusiasm he would finger this scrap of rubbish or that—a china bottle-stopper, the painted lid of a broken snuffbox, a pinchbeck locket containing a strand of some long-dead baby’s hair— never asking that Winston should buy it, merely that he should admire it. To talk to him was like listening to the tinkling of a worn-out musical-box. He had dragged out from the corners of his memory some more fragments of forgotten rhymes. There was one about four and twenty blackbirds, and another about a cow with a crumpled horn, and another about the death of poor Cock Robin. ‘It just occurred to me you might be interested,’ he would say with a deprecating little laugh whenever he produced a new fragment. But he could never recall more than a few lines of any one rhyme.

Winston’s health was improving and he didn’t feel the need to drink all the time. The fact that he had Julia and that the room above the junk shop existed made life tolerable. He thought about Mr. Charrington and his ghostlike existence. He seemed more a collector than a trader, with the shop receiving almost no customers. He would show Winston artefacts to simply admire them, and not to try and sell them. He would remember parts of rhymes and share what he could remember with Winston.

She smiled at him, not just looked.

Also, paraphrases can follow the text less. E.g.:

Harry’s quidditch team was playing Ravenclaw. Harry was distracted by a pretty girl, the opposing Seeker, Cho Chang.

If I was recounting the story to a friend, I might say it more like that.

Try paraphrasing a long section, like a full scene, so that you have to make more decisions about what to leave out and follow the text less.

PS The narrative, that men can’t help noticing how pretty (or not) women are, is misogynist. It’s particularly inappropriate here: they aren’t at a social event like a party and have something else important to be focused on. This book is teaching its young audience e.g. that it’s acceptable for men to judge the appearance of all their female coworkers and, by implication, that women should wear makeup at work and smile a lot (since they’re subject to the male gaze in basically all settings).

Spoiler warning: this post contains spoilers for 1984 by George Orwell.

Paraphrase of a scene. From Part II, Chapter X, pages approx 249-255

It begins with the sentence:

When he woke it was with the sensation of having slept for a long time, but a glance at the old-fashioned clock told him that it was only twenty-thirty.

and ends with

Winston had a glimpse of her face, upside down, yellow and contorted, with the eyes shut, and still with a smear of rouge on either cheek; and that was the last he saw of her.

(I think maybe the scene could be extended longer, but this seemed like an appropriately self-contained section to me and I could, for example, imagine an ad break occuring after the last sentence.)

Here are my two paraphrases. The first was the first one I did after one reading. It follows the text more. The second one focuses more on the main point of the scene which is that Winston and Julia have been caught.

Winston and Julia wake up in the room above Mr Charrington’s shop. They can hear the large lady singing while doing washing in the courtyard below, and they ponder her as a kind of symbol of the human spirit. They are disturbed by a cold voice from behind them that echoes them: “You are the dead”. The voice comes from a telescreen laying hidden behind the photograph on the wall. They have been watched all along. They are ordered to stand back to back with their hands above their heads. Men storm the room from the stairs and the window, and beat the wind out of Julia. The men collect her from the floor and carry her off. That was the last Winston saw of her.

With horror, Winston and Julia realise their time has come when a cold iron voice beats from behind the photograph on the wall. The photograph falls and the breaks on the floor, revealing a telescreen. They have never been alone in the room above Mr Charrington’s shop. They are ordered to stand back to back with their hands on their head and the room is stormed by armed men. They beat Julia and take her away. It’s the last Winston ever sees of her.

Actually, there were only a few more paragraphs left in the chapter they probably should’ve been included in the scene. I didn’t check that before starting those paraphrases, I assumed it went a lot longer and so thought I’d stop where I did.

What do you think of this version?

Winston and Julia are caught and arrested. They actually never fooled the government. There was always a telescreen behind a photograph in the room where they met.

I think yours is good. Mine seem more like condensed retellings of the scene. Yours seems more like a summary of what happened and a few important details. I think your version would work well if you were going to outline the whole book by scene. It gives you enough information to move on to the next scene and carry the plot. Mine wouldn’t be suited to that I don’t think.

I did some more paraphrases that are more summary-like.

Of the main scene in chapter 2 of It’s Not Luck by Eli Goldratt:

At Julie’s recommendation, Alex uses Jonah’s negotiating technique to successfully resolve a conflict between him and his daughter Sharon.


Paraphrase of the first scene in chapter 3 of the same which starts at the beginning of chapter 3 and ends with the sentence:

“Pete, think about it. Use Jonah’s techniques. It will come.” I wish I felt as confident as I sound.

Alex and Don take a tour of Pete’s printing company and Alex informs Pete of corporate’s plan to sell the company. They discuss ways to save the company and their jobs.


Paraphrase of the second scene in chapter 3 that starts with

“Until now, I hadn’t realized how devastating the board’s decision is,” Don says when we’re back in the car.

and finishes at the end of chapter 3:

Alex and Don discuss the conflict between the options of selling Pete’s company to increase profits, and keeping Pete’s company to maintain their asset base. Don uses Jonah’s technique to diagram the conflict and they begin to question their assumptions.