Seth’s post today is nominally about using the power of a grid–course, dish–to get a complete grocery list for a complex dinner party.
He’s used this metaphor before, and I had the same reaction to it then: *This* is the highest value that editors/reviewers add.
. . . the biggest contribution editing makes to proposal writing is actually this: Creating the grid and, by doing so, highlighting the empty boxes.
Technical experts often don’t see their field in simple chunks: Their framework is implicit, not explicit. They see all the glorious detail. They’ve been so into it for so long that the detail doesn’t overwhelm them, and they take the relationships for granted: so much so that they can have trouble articulating them. That’s where a less-informed reader can help, by identifying the major elements, as it were.
The whole post is worth a few minutes of your time. The tool, used with discipline, is worth its weight.