Prerequisites
Narrative craft, comparative close reading, and reflective practice.
A creative inquiry needs an articulated question, documented choices, and an account of what comparison can reveal. Holding selected features constant helps interpretation, but a pair of drafts is not a controlled causal study of all readers.
Worked example
To explore withheld motive, keep events and sequence constant while revising access to thought. An annotation log can connect textual changes with proposed effects without claiming that every reader responds alike.
Model and Assumptions
Fictional project: draft A uses chronological order and internal focalization; draft B reverses chronology and uses external focalization. Five workshop readers prefer B. The writer concludes that reversed chronology universally increases suspense.
Further inquiry
Design a three-draft inquiry into suspense, voice, or temporal distance. State what stays constant, document revisions, and outline an ethical reader-response method with limits on the claims it could support.
Review criteria
- Frame a craft question that the drafts can actually investigate.
- Include a plan for counterexamples and reflexive analysis.
- Separate situated artistic inquiry from population-level causal claims.