The Draft's Second Shadow: On the Discipline of the Alternate Argument
Every piece of writing, especially the expository kind, is an argument. It’s a path you carve for a reader, leading them from a premise to a conclusion, from a question to an answer. We work hard on this path. We smooth its edges, reinforce its logic, and plant signposts of clarity along the way. We become so invested in this single line of thought that it begins to feel like the only line of thought. It becomes, for all intents and purposes, The Argument. But right next to it, often just a hair’s breadth away, lies its shadow: a perfectly coherent, equally valid, yet entirely different path. Most of the time, we ignore this shadow. The discipline I want to propose is the opposite: to actively seek it out and write it down.
I call this practice ‘writing the alternate argument.’ It’s not brainstorming or playing devil’s advocate in a casual sense. It’s a formal, forced exercise. Once you have a completed draft—the piece you believe is finished—your next task is to reopen the document and, on a fresh page, write a new version of the piece that argues for the opposing view, or at the very least, approaches the subject from a contradictory or orthogonal angle. If your essay champions meticulous planning, your alternate argument must make a compelling case for spontaneous improvisation. If your post argues for the virtues of a niche audience, the shadow draft must explore the raw power of the mainstream.
The benefit of this is not to create confusion or breed doubt, but to instill a profound sense of intellectual humility and rhetorical strength. By forcing yourself to build the other path, you accomplish two crucial things. First, you preemptively identify the weaknesses in your primary argument. You will stumble upon the counterpoints a skeptical reader might raise, the examples that don’t quite fit your thesis, the emotional appeals you overlooked. Your original draft will become stronger because you have personally tested its foundations against a simulated adversary.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the exercise liberates you from the brittle certainty that can make writing feel preachy or smug. When you know, intimately, the merits of the other side, your tone changes. Your conviction becomes more nuanced, your language more generous. You write not to defeat a straw man, but to engage in a dialogue you have already had with yourself. The reader senses this maturity. They trust a guide who has clearly surveyed the entire landscape, not just the one trail they’re being asked to walk.
This is not an exercise in creating balanced, ‘both sides’ journalism. The goal isn’t necessarily to publish the shadow draft. More often than not, you won’t. The goal is the act of writing it. It is the discipline of holding two contradictory ideas in your mind at once, and granting each the same craft and care. The final piece you publish will be your original argument, but it will be imbued with the ghost of its shadow—a subtle strength, a quiet confidence born not from ignoring other possibilities, but from having fully acknowledged and wrestled with them. The path you present will be all the more trustworthy for the paths you chose not to take.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: