I'm in the middle of a three-day editing sprint for my next Service Design book, and I've noticed an interesting pattern in the evolution of my texts.

As I'm cutting a lot of side stories and unneeded elements from the Service Design Principles I've written, I notice that there is a similar pattern in the evolution of these stories.

I often start with just a title and a bit of context to be sure to remember the key idea. Then as I write the first shitty draft, the word count explodes. Then the game is all about cutting out the unnecessary stuff up until the last step.

Here the goal is to add some life, fun and quirkiness to the text.