Ten questions to ask if you're writing a scrutiny report #5: How do we structure the report?

An effective scrutiny report is not just written.  It needs to be planned.  How do we plan the document?

 

The simple answer is: top down.  Your aim must be to make the report as easy to use and read as possible.  That’s not just a matter of writing well; it’s also a question of how you assemble and display the information and ideas in the report. 

 

Planning is essential.  And the output of good planning is – well, a plan.  We’ll call it an outline.  

Your readers are unlikely to read your report from start to finish.  It makes little sense, therefore, to create a report that proceeds from an introduction to a conclusion and set of recommendations.  Better to create a structure that the reader can navigate, so that they can pick out the bits that interest them. 

Assemble your structure around your recommendations.  You are producing the report to recommend; put the recommendations at the heart of your structure (or rather, towards the top), rather than tacking them on at the end. 

Your report will be made up of sections.  Create the sections around your recommendations.  Allocate one or more recommendations to a section, then find the ideas that you need to support those recommendations.

Write everything in sentences.  The key planning question is: “What do we want to say?”  We can only say anything by uttering a sentence.  Your outline should consist of sentences – ideas – that logically support your recommendations. Summarise all the recommendations in a single message sentence and place that at the head of the outline.

What you are building is a pyramid.  At the head of the pyramid is your main idea: your message, the single most important idea in the report.  At the next level down are your recommendations, generating the main sections of the report.  Supporting those recommendations are key points that you have derived from your investigations.  Once you know what key points to make, you can marshal the evidence that will support them.

It's hard to find a good visual example of such a pyramid on the web.  Here's one, with thanks to Hyunwoo Park.  You'll find it here. As you can see, it's written in American rather than UK English. 

The person who is most often associated with this method of planning is Barbara Minto.  Her book The Pyramid Principle has been a source of inspiration to me for years.  You can find a potted version of her ideas here.

To find the key points that support a recommendation, try this simple process.

Imagine speaking your key point to the reader.  What question will it provoke in their mind?

The question should be one of three.

• “Why?”
• “How?”
• “Which ones?”

You must have at least two answers to the question.  Try to have no more than about six.  Write your answers to that question as minor points.

Number your key points.  These numbers could become the numbers of the sections and sub-sections in your report.

Once you have the core structure in place, you can begin to fill it out with other kinds of material: case studies, stories, illustrations.  Detailed statistical information should be consigned to appendices. 

Create an introduction by telling the story of how the report came to be written.  Here's a good structure for an introduction .

Construct a story about how the need for the document arose.

Situation

 “Once upon a time…”  What is the first thing you can say about the matter that you and your reader will agree is true?  The starting point is completely uncontroversial.

Problem

What happened to complicate the situation?  Perhaps something went wrong.  Maybe improvements are necessary.  Often the problem is that the reader is ignorant of something.

Question

What question does the problem trigger in the reader’s mind?

Response

The answer to that question should be your message of your report.

Put all this work together and you create an outline.  Here's an outline of a typical scrutiny report.  (It's entirely fictional.)

Download Outline

Use the outline to generate your first draft.  The draft expands the outline by adding:

■    text;

■    illustrations;

■    case studies;

■    page numbers;

■    headings; and

■    appendices.

Use the outline itself as the summary of the report.  Readers can then use the summary to find their way around the report.

When complete, the draft should look like this.

■    Title page

■    Summary [your outline, inserted unchanged and complete]

■    Contents page

■    Introduction [SPQR, with other elements as necessary: scope, methodology, background issues]

■    Section 1

- and so on, through to Section x.

Hot tip

Give your report a summary!

Even if you ignore all the advice in this section, don’t ignore this tip.  A summary is essential to help the reader understand and use your report.  A good summary is the report in miniature.  Don’t confuse the summary with the introduction, which should tell the story of how the report came to be written.

In the next posting, I'll deal with the question: 'How do we argue and explain?'

If you like what you see here, you might like to contact me to discuss working with you.  I am currently working with one of the scrutiny team of a major local assembly in the UK.  I run training courses, and coach individual writers.  I can even give you some feedback on the reports your team is producing, if you want nothing more.  Go to my website to take a look at a sample training programme.