Beliefs & Worldviews Notebook

“What public debates make you emotional?”

This notebook captures tensions, conflicts, and value clashes from politics, philosophy, religion, culture wars, and social debates. These are the raw materials for Theme—the philosophical argument your story makes.

Notebook Name: Raw – Beliefs – [Topic/Debate]

Ready to extract? After collecting your sources, use the Deepening Prompts to create structured ingredients for Writers Factory.

Source Checklist

Goal: Build one strong, dramatic debate to feed THEME, ideological characters, and world tensions.

Include (4–6 items):

• 2–3 best-case arguments for Side A (thesis).
• 2–3 best-case arguments for Side B (counter-thesis). Longform essays, talks, or papers—not hot takes.
• 1 Debate Breakdown document using your template (central question, best argument each side, emotional core, blind spots).
• 1 rant/confessional about why this debate hooks you.

Avoid:

• Mixing multiple unrelated debates in the same notebook.
• Straw-man pieces that only mock the other side.
• Entire books when 2–3 targeted essays would do.

Why This Notebook Matters

Every story worth telling has a theme—a central question it wrestles with. Themes don’t come from nowhere. They come from debates that already exist in the world.

When you study real disagreements—where smart people genuinely believe opposite things—you find:

• Thesis and counter-thesis (the structure of thematic argument)
• Stakes (why does this debate matter to real people?)
• Blind spots (what each side refuses to see)
• Character seeds (people who embody these positions)

Your story doesn’t need to answer the debate. It needs to dramatize it.

What to Collect

1. The Best Case for Each Side (Conflict)

Quantity: 2–4 articles, split between opposing views

Critical: Collect the strongest arguments from each side, not strawmen. If you only understand your own position, your theme will be propaganda, not art.

2. Speeches & Rhetoric (Depth)

Quantity: 1–2 full speeches or major statements

Why Full Speeches? Rhetoric in context is different from soundbites. You learn how arguments build, how emotions are invoked, how opposition is addressed (or dodged).

3. Your Rant (Sparks)

Quantity: 1 document

Write your own unfiltered response to this debate:

MY RANT: [Topic]

WHAT MAKES ME ANGRY:
[Let it out. What position infuriates you? Why?]

WHAT MAKES ME HOPEFUL:
[If anything. What vision do you want to be true?]

WHERE I'M UNCERTAIN:
[What don't you know? Where does your confidence waver?]

THE STRONGEST ARGUMENT AGAINST MY POSITION:
[Steel-man the opposition. What's their best point?]

WHY THIS DEBATE MATTERS TO ME:
[Personal stakes. Why can't you look away?]

Why Write This? Your emotional reaction is data. It reveals what you actually care about, which is the seed of authentic theme.

4. Debate Breakdown (Structure)

Quantity: 1 document

Analyze the debate’s structure:

DEBATE ANALYSIS: [Topic]

THE CENTRAL QUESTION:
[Phrase as a question: "Should X?" or "Is X better than Y?" or "Can X exist without Y?"]

SIDE A - THE THESIS:
Position: [One sentence summary]
Best argument: [The point hardest to dismiss]
Emotional core: [What feeling drives believers?]
Blind spot: [What do they refuse to see?]

SIDE B - THE COUNTER-THESIS:
Position: [One sentence summary]
Best argument: [The point hardest to dismiss]
Emotional core: [What feeling drives believers?]
Blind spot: [What do they refuse to see?]

THE TRAGIC STRUCTURE:
[How could BOTH sides be "right" in different ways?
This is where literature lives—not in answers, but in tragic tradeoffs.]

CHARACTER SEEDS:
[Who could embody Side A? Side B? Someone torn between them?]

Source-Hunting Strategies

For Political Debates

1. Formal debate archives — Intelligence Squared (US & UK), Oxford Union
2. Think tank repositories — Brookings (left-leaning), Heritage (right-leaning), Cato (libertarian)
3. Congressional records — C-SPAN, congress.gov for testimony
4. International comparison — How do other countries handle this issue?

For Cultural/Social Debates

1. Longform magazines — The Atlantic, New Yorker, Harper’s
2. Substack voices — Often more raw/personal than institutional media
3. Academic papers — Google Scholar for peer-reviewed takes
4. Historical context — How did previous generations see this issue?

For Philosophical/Religious Debates

1. Philosophy podcasts — Philosophize This!, Very Bad Wizards
2. Classic texts — Primary sources via Project Gutenberg
3. Debate archives — YouTube has formal debates between philosophers/theologians
4. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Comprehensive academic summaries

For Finding the “Other Side”

1. AllSides.com — Rates media bias, links left/right coverage of same stories
2. “Strongest case for X” — Search for opposing view’s best arguments
3. Subreddits — r/changemyview, r/neutralpolitics
4. Ask someone — Talk to a real person who disagrees with you

Organizing Your Sources (Optional)

You can use prefixes to organize your raw sources during collection:

Note: These organize your raw sources. The Deepening Prompts handle extracting structured ingredients—no special naming required for those outputs.

The Context Note (Recommended)

Create a Saved Note titled: WHY I CHOSE THIS DEBATE

[!IMPORTANT] Don’t Forget: After writing this note, select it and click “Convert to Source”. The AI cannot read your Saved Notes unless they are converted into Sources!

Template:

TOPIC/DEBATE: [What]

WHY THIS DEBATE WON'T LET ME GO:
[2–3 sentences on your emotional connection to this issue]

THE CENTRAL QUESTION (as a question):
[e.g., "Can security and liberty coexist?"]

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR:
- [ ] Thesis/counter-thesis structure (opposing valid arguments)
- [ ] Rhetorical patterns (how do people argue about this?)
- [ ] Emotional stakes (why does it matter so much?)
- [ ] Character seeds (who could embody these positions?)
- [ ] Historical context (how did we get here?)

HOW THIS CONNECTS TO MY STORY:
[If you have a book idea: how does this debate inform your theme?]
[If you don't: what theme might emerge from this tension?]

Example:

TOPIC/DEBATE: AI Safety vs. AI Acceleration

WHY THIS DEBATE WON'T LET ME GO:
I work in tech. I see both the utopian potential and the casual
recklessness. The people most worried and most excited are equally
smart, which terrifies me.

THE CENTRAL QUESTION:
"Should we slow down transformative AI development even if rivals won't?"

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR:
- [x] Thesis/counter-thesis structure
- [x] Emotional stakes (fear vs. hope)
- [x] Character seeds (the accelerationist, the doomer, the pragmatist)
- [ ] Historical context

HOW THIS CONNECTS TO MY STORY:
My novel has a scientist protagonist torn between racing to publish
and pausing to consider consequences. This debate gives me both sides
of her internal conflict.

Common Mistakes

Example Notebook Structure

Raw – Beliefs – Free Speech vs Safety/
├── [THESIS] - ACLU - Why Hate Speech is Protected.pdf
├── [COUNTER] - Current Affairs - Case for Limits.pdf
├── [SPEECH] - Nadine Strossen - Campus Free Speech.mp3
├── [DEBATE] - IQ2 - Is Free Speech Under Threat.pdf
├── [RANT] - My Take on Deplatforming.txt
├── Debate Breakdown - Speech vs Safety.txt
└── WHY I CHOSE THIS DEBATE (Saved Note)

What This Feeds Into

When you run the Deepening Prompts, this notebook produces:

← The Arena Next: The Speculation →