Here you define the purpose of your writing. You state the subject, theme (more specific than a statement of your subject), what new (previously unpublished) information you will be providing, and the objective of your writing. The fields on this sheet are fine-grained because many writers make the mistake of not being specific enough in their intentions before they begin writing. Let's consider an example using a hypothetical article about Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The subject would be "Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale". The theme would be "Shakespeare was not the sole author of The Winter's Tale." What is new in your piece would be "textual analysis demonstrating that the writing style of certain passages is not congruent with Shakespeare's other plays". The objective would be "to provide evidence and demonstrate the validity of my theme".

Here you define your target readers so you can gauge your writing accordingly. The fields on this spreadsheet should be self-explanatory.

On this sheet, you collect the quotations you might use in your piece. Let's take a look at each field:

Here you will record ideas–but not quotations–that you want to incorporate in your piece. Note that the reference fields should be considered optional so that in addition to collecting the concepts of others, you can use this spreadsheet to also collect your original concepts. Once you understand the quotes spreadsheet, this sheet should be self-explanatory.