Guides

Learn the craft behind great writing.

Writing with cards is one of the oldest ways to turn scattered ideas into a finished piece. These guides show you how, step by step, on paper or in the app.

Students · Guide 1 How to write a research paper on index cards The whole method, in eight steps. Students · Guide 2 Turning eleven sources into an argument Sort by subject, not by source, and find a claim in each pile. Students · Guide 3 The one-idea test: when to split a card How to tell when one note is really two. Students · Guide 4 How to find your thesis after you've done the reading Test each candidate thesis against everything you found. Students · Guide 5 Answering the counterargument you'd rather ignore Write down the strongest objection, then answer, narrow or concede. Students · Guide 6 Try it in a different order: arrangement as revision Five orders worth trying, and why the old one is never lost. Students · Guide 7 Showing your work: documenting your writing process What a record of your work can say, and what it cannot. Instructors · Guide 8 Teaching the card method in one class session A fifty-minute plan, minute by minute. Instructors · Guide 9 Process-based assignment design without AI detection Ask for the trail as a deliverable. Instructors · Guide 10 A peer-review workflow using shared decks Review the ideas and their order, not just the draft. Instructors · Guide 11 Scaffolding a research paper across a semester Six checkpoints and one ten-minute conference. Graduate · Guide 12 Cards for a literature review A review is an argument about a field. Graduate · Guide 13 The Toulmin card method Claim, grounds and warrant, each one a card that can go missing. Graduate · Guide 14 Cards for a dissertation chapter Each section is a paper of its own. Graduate · Guide 15 Reading with a card system that survives a semester File by what it says, not when it was assigned. Graduate · Guide 16 The cutting room What you cut is the start of your next piece. Fiction · Guide 17 The scene card, and why a synopsis is not one A scene is a change, not an event. Fiction · Guide 18 What she wants and what she needs The distance between the two is the story. Fiction · Guide 19 Threads: the plot grid on a table Scenes down, threads across. Fiction · Guide 20 Who knows what, when Track every secret, including what the reader knows. Fiction · Guide 21 Bringing a Scrivener project in, and what it shows you What your existing draft already knows. Fiction · Guide 22 The revision pass on a finished draft Read the book back as its structure, then revise.

Worked examples

See a real piece come together

Ten finished pieces, each opened partway along the road. Three short steps take each one from scattered ideas to a finished draft. To learn the app itself, the tutorials inside it start from a practice project and check off each step as you do it.

To hand in · Essay Who tells the truth in Frankenstein Open the example → To submit · Research paper D-galactose in liver and kidney Open the example → To submit · Literary essay Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” Open the example → To publish · Essay Mill, “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion” Open the example → To publish · Narrative Darwin in the Galápagos, September–October 1835 Open the example →

Prefer paper first?

Print our index card template, cut along the lines, and try the method at your kitchen table.

US Letter PDF A4 PDF