Reader: write for yourself
Your private self, or your future self during development.
Structure: emergent, not reader-optimised
Connections can remain provisional. Several unresolved tensions may coexist.
Evidence: traceable by epistemic status
Facts, observations, references, and personal experience remain traceable by epistemic status.
Opening: begin where the inquiry becomes live
No special hook is required.
Ending: do not manufacture closure
End at a current position, an unresolved tension, or a pause point.
Main risks
Watch for these failures:
- public-reader pressure arrives too early
- elegant prose hides an unsupported bridge
- references become authority by proximity
- the essay expands into a private grand theory
- AI writes connective prose and silently creates the synthesis
AI role: question, do not write
Question, classify, challenge, map dependencies. Do not write the essay.