Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› jep-narrative-arc
jep-narrative-arc
GitHub为JEP文章构建叙事弧线，将文献综述转化为有论点的散文。涵盖钩子、张力、综合及结论等结构要素，确保以论点而非主题组织内容，并提供结构测试与检查清单以提升逻辑连贯性。
Trigger Scenarios
草稿呈文献综述式罗列
缺乏核心论点或悬念
无引人入胜的开篇与收尾
要点之间缺乏逻辑主线
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jep-narrative-arc -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "jep-narrative-arc",
"description": "Use when structuring a Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) article as a story\/argument for a general economist reader rather than a literature survey. Builds the essay's spine (hook → tension → synthesis → takeaways); it does not handle sentence-level voice or evidence presentation."
}
Narrative Arc for JEP (jep-narrative-arc)
When to trigger
- The draft is organized like a survey ("Section 2 reviews X, Section 3 reviews Y")
- A reader can't say what the argument is, only what topics are covered
- The piece has no hook and no payoff — it informs but does not move
- You have takeaways from the proposal but no through-line connecting them
The JEP arc
A JEP article is an essay with an argument, not a catalog. The reliable arc for a broad economist audience:
- Hook — a concrete puzzle, surprising fact, vivid example, or live debate that a non-specialist immediately feels. Open with the question, never with "the literature on X is large."
- Stakes / "why now" — why this matters and why now, in a paragraph anyone in the AEA can follow.
- Tension — the central disagreement, puzzle, or shift the article will resolve or illuminate. Synthesis is interesting only when there is something at issue.
- Synthesis — the body: organized by ideas and the argument's logic, not by paper or by author. Each section advances the through-line; evidence is recruited to the argument (see
jep-evidence-without-equations), competing views are weighed (seejep-balance-and-objectivity). - What we don't know — honest open questions; JEP readers trust an author who marks the edges of knowledge.
- Takeaways — the 3–5 memorable points (from the proposal) landed explicitly. The reader should be able to repeat them at a seminar.
- Brief close — the broader lesson and why it travels beyond the immediate setting.
Organize by argument, not by literature. "Three forces explain the puzzle" beats "Author A found…, Author B found…". The papers serve the argument; the argument does not serve the papers.
Structural tests
- The elevator test: can you state the through-line in one sentence? If not, there is no arc yet.
- The section-title test: do section titles name ideas ("Why the effect fades over time") rather than topics ("The empirical literature")? Idea-titles signal an argument.
- The deletion test: could a section be cut without breaking the argument? If yes, it's a survey appendage, not a load-bearing beam.
- The takeaway test: does each takeaway clearly emerge from a section? Orphan takeaways mean the body and the conclusion disagree.
Symposium-aware structuring
If the article is part of a symposium, its arc should occupy its assigned angle and gesture to the companion pieces rather than re-cover their ground — the symposium, not the single article, carries the full picture. Confirm scope with jep-editor-strategy.
Checklist
- Opens with a hook (puzzle/fact/example/debate), not "the literature on…"
- Central tension stated early — there is something at issue
- Body organized by ideas/argument, not by paper or author
- Through-line stateable in one sentence (elevator test)
- Section titles name ideas, not topics
- "What we don't know" section present
- 3–5 takeaways land explicitly and each traces to a section
- Close states the lesson that travels
Anti-patterns
- A literature-review skeleton ("Section 2: prior work") masquerading as an article
- No hook; opening with definitions or a history of the field
- Synthesis with no tension — a tour of findings that resolves nothing
- Burying the takeaways or never stating them
- Hiding all uncertainty to make the argument look cleaner (also a balance failure)
- In a symposium piece, re-covering a companion article's territory
Output format
【Through-line (one sentence)】[...]
【Hook】[puzzle / fact / example / debate]
【Tension】[what is at issue]
【Body sections (idea-titled)】1) … 2) … 3) …
【What we don't know】[...]
【Takeaways (3–5)】[...]
【Lesson that travels】[...]
【Next step】jep-accessibility-and-translation
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 13:35
