Q17 - The best way to write

[peg_city]

Can someone explain to me why E is right?

The stimulus is pretty straight forward but I'm just not getting it.

[bbirdwell]

Here's what the original says:

To write a good novel, first, think about the crime, then come up with the things you need to get there (circumstances and clues).

(A) starts off as a good match, but then goes into la-la land with the whole "most of us..." part.

(B) seems like a decent match at first. We might leave this one til later and then come back to it. When we do that, we'll see that (E) is a better match. (B) seems to actually be the opposite of what the original says. To be a better match, I think it'd have to say "decide which veggies you want, then prepare the soil accordingly." First, there's a decision to be made, and then circumstances created.

(C) is not even close.

(D) is not even close.

(E) is a good match! Make a decision (where you want the shot to do), then create the circumstances to get there (get in position). Just like the original, start with an idea of where you are going, then prepare the way.

Does that help?

[zee.brad]

For this question I use two core elements to do the POE
"best" "backward".
Using "best" I eliminate answer choice A B C
Answer choice D: try as many as strategies, definitely not "backward", eliminate
E: "great" - re-phrase of "best", "determine the position" then "execute", exactly the description of "backward". Then we have a winner here.

I don't know if this is the right way to do it or I just got this right out of luck...

[bbirdwell]

Sounds good to me. I'm a big fan of stripping these things down to the fewest essential words possible and then going from there. This can be especially effective on questions where we basically need to match -- many principle questions fall into this category.