Formats›An outside, in five lines

An outside, in five lines

A reusable format for checking whether anything in your work could have told you that you were wrong. Take it, fill it, use it again — once per outside, and once more when you think you have one and do not.

Download outside-format.md The file you fill in. Plain text — open it in any editor, or hand it to an agent.

What this is for

An outside is something that owes you nothing and can refuse you in a way you did not author. That is the whole definition, and almost everything people offer as evidence fails it.

A text cannot refuse you. It was written before your work existed, about a different situation, by somebody answering a different question, and it cannot be surprised by what you made because it cannot meet what you made. Whatever you take from it, you took — it was not given and it cannot be withheld. If a quotation does not support you, another one will; if a study cuts against you, its limitations can be noted; if the literature is silent, the silence becomes a gap you are filling. A source that cannot refuse you is not evidence. It is a mirror at a flattering angle.

The same failure arrives in friendlier forms. Somebody who wants you to feel good. A colleague who has watched the thing grow and now fills in its unbuilt parts as generously as you do. A reaction you prompted with an explanation. Each of these can say no in principle and none of them did, and the reason is usually that you removed the conditions under which they could.

What this format asks for is not more evidence. It is one sentence. The test that distinguishes a real outside from a comfortable one is small and it is brutal: can you point to something in your notes that you did not expect and did not want? If everything you wrote down supports the thing you had already decided to make, you did not consult anyone. You consulted yourself, out loud, with a witness.

A personal position

A claim of mine, and not one of the rules above. Delete this block and the format still works: a source that cannot refuse you is not evidence. A text is already somebody's interpretation of something they encountered, so when you read it you produce a second interpretation — yours, of theirs. Two layers of reading, and no encounter anywhere in the chain that belongs to you. It cannot be surprised by what you made, because it cannot meet what you made. Where the claim stops: a published study can ground a claim about the world — that a category is crowded, that a kind of work is contracted in a particular way — and those citations are worth keeping and keeping accurate. What it cannot ground is a claim about your design. Nobody has tested your object; nobody has written about the thing you made last Tuesday. ⚠️ I have not written the line saying what would show me wrong, and the other claims on this site carry one. That is a gap rather than a style.

The format

THE OUTSIDE         what you took the work to, and what it owes you

IT COULD REFUSE     what it was actually capable of saying no to
THE SENTENCE        one thing in your notes you did not expect and did
                    not want, in the words it arrived in
WHAT I DID NOT SAY  the explanation you were holding and withheld

NOT THIS            anything that cannot be surprised by what you made

An outside above, a disqualification below, and three lines between. THE SENTENCE is the format. The other four are how you tell whether you are entitled to write one.

What each line is asking

THE OUTSIDE. What you took the work to, and what it owes you — which should be nothing. Four kinds are usually within reach. A person who can talk back, which is the cheapest outside there is: she answers your question about your situation, now, and can refuse it while you are standing there. A stranger meeting the object cold, given no explanation and with no stake in your feeling good. The material, which cannot be talked round: a build that will not stand, a sensor that will not read, a sound that carries three metres instead of ten. Your own encounter, honestly reported — something you watched or sat inside, and the moment it contradicted the obvious answer. First-hand and modest beats second-hand and grand.

IT COULD REFUSE. What it was actually capable of saying no to. Not what it might have said — what it had the standing and the opportunity to reject. A person asked a question that contains its answer had no opportunity. A stranger handed the object with a paragraph of framing had none either. This line is where most entries die, and they die honestly: the outside was real and you had already closed the route by which it could have refused you.

THE SENTENCE. One thing from your notes that you did not expect and did not want, in the words it arrived in. Verbatim matters here more than anywhere: a paraphrase is your voice with somebody else's name on it, and by the third reading you will not remember which half was theirs. The wanting is the sharper half of the test. Plenty of unexpected things are welcome, and a welcome surprise is still something you would have selected for. The one that counts is the one that was inconvenient.

WHAT I DID NOT SAY. The explanation you were holding and withheld. There is always one — the sentence that would have made the object make sense, that begins the idea is that. Saying it converts the outside back into the inside instantly and invisibly, because from that moment the person is responding to your account rather than to your thing. Write down what you did not say. It is the discipline this whole format rests on and it is the one people break within the first minute.

NOT THIS. Anything that cannot be surprised by what you made. A text. A search whose terms already contained the conclusion. A friend who was told what to look for. A week of reading raises your confidence and does not raise your information, because nothing in the room can push back, and confidence that grows with nothing checking it is worth less rather than more.

A worked one

THE OUTSIDE         One person who has used a thing like mine for
                    years. Forty minutes. She owes me nothing, she is
                    not in my field, and she was not told what I
                    hoped to hear.

IT COULD REFUSE     She could say the premise was wrong, and at one
                    point she did. I asked open questions and she
                    twice answered a different question from the one
                    asked, which is the shape of an outside working.

THE SENTENCE        "I stopped using the good one because it was too
                    heavy to carry to the sink."

                    I did not want this. The whole object is built on
                    the assumption that the thing stays where it is
                    put, and nothing in six weeks of reading was going
                    to tell me that the deciding property was weight.

WHAT I DID NOT SAY  That it is meant to live on the counter. I had
                    the sentence ready twice. Saying it would have
                    moved her onto my design and off her own kitchen,
                    and the line above would not exist.

NOT THIS            Three papers on the same category, which agreed
                    with me, and a classmate who said it was
                    interesting. Neither could have told me about
                    the sink.

The sentence is unglamorous and it is half a remark she did not think was important. That is what these usually look like. It is also the only thing in the entry that could not have been produced at the desk.

How to use it

Write THE SENTENCE first if you have one, and fill in the rest around it. If you cannot write it, the honest output of this format is that you do not have an outside yet, which is a finding and not a failure.
Record verbatim, at the time. A paraphrase written up afterwards has already been metabolised into your own vocabulary, and the surplus — the part you could not have written yourself — is exactly what the metabolising removes.
Do not explain. Before, during, or in the pause where it would be polite to. The instant you explain, you have bent the outside back inside, and nothing afterwards can be counted.
Prefer one person listened to closely over twelve surveyed. You are not after a finding that generalises. You are after one noticing that could not have been invented at the desk.
Run it again on the same work later. An outside is not a stage that gets completed. It is a property a piece of work either has at this moment or does not.

Three ways it goes wrong

The question contains its answer. Would it be useful if it did X gets you a yes, and the yes is yours. The person confirmed what you brought in and both of you experienced it as research. The tell is that nothing in the notes is inconvenient.

The paraphrase replaces the words. You write down what she meant rather than what she said, and what she meant is a thing you constructed. Within a week the quotation is in circulation with her name attached and your vocabulary inside it.

The unwanted sentence gets explained away before it is written down. This happens in the same half-hour, silently: she says the inconvenient thing, you understand immediately why it does not apply to your case, and it never reaches the notes. The reasoning is often correct. Write the sentence down first and be right about it afterwards.

Prayas Abhinav. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — copy it, change it, build on it, including commercially. Say where it came from, and if you changed it.

Take a copy: outside-format.md. Yours to alter.