Made for Authors
Build a Research Gap and Source Ledger
Also useful for: people in Creative, people in Writers
Build a working ledger that connects every research gap to its manuscript location, risk, evidence, next action, and stopping point.
Create a free account to save your progress and use this Playbook.
Use this when
Use this when your draft contains unsupported claims, incomplete citations, source conflicts, interview leads, fact-check notes, or material that may require permission. You can also use it when research keeps expanding without a clear effect on the manuscript.
You'll need
- Project context
- Claims and gaps
- Source inventory
- Research constraints
- Risk posture
You'll get
- One ledger row for every known research issue, a risk-based priority for each row, and a concrete next action for every active item
- You can identify what must be verified before drafting continues, what can wait, and what you will stop researching.
By the end of this playbook
You will have:
- One ledger row for every known research issue, a risk-based priority for each row, and a concrete next action for every active item
- You can identify what must be verified before drafting continues, what can wait, and what you will stop researching.
Sample
This is sample data, not your prompt. Pro unlocks this higher-stakes Playbook. On Free Playbooks you can still copy the assembled prompt into any AI.
Sample input
Your project is a narrative nonfiction book about independent neighborhood newspapers. Your Chapter 3 draft claims local advertising revenue fell by half after 2008, but your source covers only one state. You have circulation tables, two editor interviews, an untranscribed recorded interview, and a quotation from a 1997 newsletter. You have six research hours a week and ten weeks until your full draft is due. Your risk posture is Credibility first.
Sample assembled prompt
Your ledger marks the national revenue... Your next action is to find... Your done condition is either one... Your stop rule limits the search... Your newsletter quotation receives a separate...