Make moves, not templates

You can follow a writing formula perfectly and still watch your reader miss the point. That's the tell that you used a structure designed for grading — "always open with a thesis," "every paragraph needs a topic sentence," "go from general to specific" — instead of one designed for communicating. Real readers don't scan for your structure; they scan for relevance.

How it works

A genre is a set of moves oriented toward a goal, and everything in it should serve that goal. Walk into a Starbucks and the barista's greeting varies, but the moves are the same; imagine her opening with "Welcome to Starbucks — what's your favourite colour?" and you feel the wrongness instantly, because the language doesn't serve the goal. Writing works the same way: effective prose does something, making moves like steps in a dance — one party moves, the other moves, in coordination. So before you write, ask two questions: what am I trying to do here, and what does my reader want to do? Then choose the moves that get you both there — warm up a wary reader, answer a resistant one's objection, tell it as a story rather than an argument — instead of pouring the content into a template.

The martini glass

The clearest school template is the martini glass: open wide with background and definitions, narrow to a thesis, then widen back out to generalities in the conclusion. It's great for the teacher — grading dozens of papers, they can apply a rubric and check whether you followed the shape — and bad for a reader, because it imposes an arbitrary form top-down when the shape should emerge bottom-up from the needs of this reader, writer, and text. A film analysis might open on a specific scene; a news story opens on the incident in the lede. The martini glass ignores all of that: it's a form built for being graded, not for being read.

Why it matters

Templates promise safety and deliver stiffness: follow one faithfully and you sound inflexible, robotic, inhuman — and you still aren't guaranteed to land, because the template never asked what your reader needed. Choosing moves keeps you responsive to the actual person reading, which is where clarity and impact come from. You know your material and you know your reader; a template only gets in the way of writing to that person.

Try it

1. Before drafting, write down the goal — what you want to happen, and what the reader wants to do.
2. List the moves that get you both there for this reader, and drop any template step that serves grading, not the goal.
3. If a section exists only because "the formula says so," cut it or replace it with a move that does real work.

Common pitfalls

Throwing out structure entirely and calling the mess "voice." Rejecting templates doesn't mean rejecting order — it means letting the reader's needs, not a rubric, decide the order. And beware genre-blindness: some reader expectations (the barista's opening) are load-bearing, and breaking those isn't bold, just disorienting.

Templates are for dummies. You already know your stuff, and you know your reader — so write to that person.

WILLIAM · WRITING IS A TWO-PLAYER GAME · 2025

A template is written for a grader. A move is written for a reader.

Drawn from

• William, Writing is a Two-Player Game (here's how to win) (Writer Science, 2025).
• William, How Modern Schools Make Terrible Writers (Deliberately) (Writer Science, 2026) — the martini glass, and form imposed top-down.
• Related: Writing is a two-player game, Write for the venue and its reader, Know your reader, not just your audience.