Scientific Writing — Stage 1: Find the Story

Overview

A research repo accumulates parallel and abandoned experiments. Before any outline or prose, establish ONE linear story: the thesis, the experiments that support it, and an explicit record of what was dropped. Output: docs/writing/<story-slug>/story.md in the consuming repo.

Do not write the story from your own assumptions. Map the repo, then converge with the user.

Method backbone — Steps 1–2

This stage is Steps 1–2 of the fifteen steps (detail: scientific-writing/fifteen-steps.md):

• Step 1 — main point. The thesis is one short declarative sentence (subject + verb) that scopes the phenomenon and gives focus. Every later paragraph must illuminate it. It need not become the final title.
• Step 2 — narrative arc. The arc answers what did we want to learn, why, what did we do, what do we know now, and follows the key transitions (question→answer, theory→evidence, data→interpretation). Prefer a two-part structure — the most memorable and publishable shape. Confirm which two-part scheme fits when you converge with the user (e.g. experiment 1 + experiment 2; simple model + complicated model; experiment + model to explain it; model + experiment to test it; observed pattern + model to explain it).

Process