If the rest of the course is too long to consult during a live project, use this page.
0. Find the occasion
Before deciding structure, answer: what happened, changed, contradicted, repeated, or became newly consequential enough to make this piece worth writing? Convert that occasion into one live question.
0A. Build the question ladder
For an analytical piece, ask what the reader must establish first and what question naturally follows if they accept it. Use those questions to test section order before drafting.
Before the idea becomes an essay
Answer these questions in order:
- What happened or what am I actually observing?
- What do I infer from it?
- What answer do I want to be true?
- What is the strongest alternative?
- What would change my mind?
- What is the smallest defensible claim?
- What are the conditions and boundaries?
Before the private thinking becomes public
Answer these questions in order:
- Who is the primary reader?
- What are they trying to understand or decide?
- What do they currently think?
- What makes that model unstable?
- Why does the instability matter to them?
- What should change after reading?
- What is the central claim?
- What is the smallest sufficient source set?
- What material must be excluded or reserved?
- What should feel most important at the end?
Before drafting
Prepare these in order:
- Governing action or question in one sentence.
- Seven-sentence causal or intellectual spine.
- Opening pressure.
- Reader contract or nut function.
- Evidence and scene map.
- Countercase and qualification.
- Ending function.
During drafting
Follow these rules while you draft:
- Write forward. Do not polish every paragraph as it appears.
- Let discovery happen, but mark any change to the central claim.
- Use concrete details where they perform work.
- Distinguish evidence from interpretation.
- Keep source provenance visible.
- Reserve attractive side ideas rather than forcing them in.
Revision order
Revise in this order:
truth → argument → reader value → structure → emphasis → evidence and source fidelity → prose → proof
Final questions
Ask these before you finish:
- Does an intelligent cold reader know what I mean without hidden context?
- Did the piece earn its strongest claim?
- Is the strongest countercase represented honestly?
- Does the reader remember the right qualification?
- Does every major section change the whole?
- Is any sentence more polished than the thought supporting it?
- Did AI create any fact, connection, example, or certainty that I did not independently accept?
- Does the ending come from the piece rather than sit on top of it?
- Does this still sound like the person who thought it?