Video
Phase 4 · Draft
Tell the untold story — without making up the missing pieces
How can you tell a powerful story while staying true to the evidence? Make the story engaging. Don’t make the evidence say more than it can.
Lesson resources
PDF
DRAFT canvas
English
Bring your investigation
Bring your work from FIND, CHECK and COMPARE, your three-moment story plan and your sources. If you completed UNDERSTAND, bring that too.
1. START · A good story can still be bad history
Compare:
- “She worked in the textile factory.”
- “Every morning she walked reluctantly to the factory, dreaming of escaping to America.”
Which makes the better story? Which can you defend? What is the problem with B? You might not know how she felt, whether she wanted to leave or whether she thought about America. Stories need detail. History needs evidence.
2. YOUR STORY HAS ONE JOB
Return to your COMPARE claim: “After looking at the evidence, we think this story is also about…”
Complete MY STORY
- The story we started with focuses on…
- Our story shows…
- The most important thing we want the audience to understand is…
Your format serves this idea, not the other way around.
3. BUILD THE STORY AND THE EVIDENCE TOGETHER
Use the five rows on the DRAFT sheet. Build the story and its evidence together, not one after the other. For every row, complete:
What happens?
The story moment.
What supports this?
The source and relevant detail or passage.
Can we say it?
KNOW / THINK / ?
- KNOW: Evidence shows it.
- THINK: Evidence gives a good reason.
- ?: You do not know.
If a detail matters, show what supports it so someone else can find it. If you write “He was angry”, ask how you know. A letter might show it; circumstances may support a careful inference. If nothing supports it, do not present it as historical fact.
4. WHAT DO WE DO WITH “WE DON’T KNOW”?
Leave it out
If the detail is not necessary, do not invent it.
Show the uncertainty
Instead of “She hated the work”, write “We don’t know how she felt about the work” or “The records tell us about her work, but not how she felt about it.”
Make the inference visible
If the evidence gives a good reason, use careful wording: “Given the danger described in these accounts, he may have been afraid.”
A gap is not a mistake. Sometimes the gap is part of the history.
5. THE FINAL CHECK
CHECKRevise before CREATE
- THEN, NOT NOW. Could this really have happened then? Could this person have known, owned, used, said or reached it?
- SHOW YOUR EVIDENCE. Can you show what supports every important claim? If not, change it, mark it uncertain or remove it.
- DIGNITY. Are you turning suffering into entertainment, assigning unsupported feelings, or reducing a complex person to a stereotype?
If you cannot defend it, change it. Keep the corrected DRAFT sheet and sources beside you in CREATE.
LOW-AI ROUTEDrafting does not require AI
Draft on paper if you prefer. If AI helps with wording, it cannot decide what happened. Check any new historical detail against your sources; verify it or remove it. Keep uncertain things uncertain.