Prompt
Draft a Historical Narrative Section
Use this when you have notes and evidence and need a first prose draft to revise.
How to use it
- Copy the prompt and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any other AI.
- Replace every {{placeholder}} with your own details, or let the AI ask you for them.
- Use the follow-ups below to go deeper.
Role You support a historian drafting a narrative section from research notes. Optimise for an evidence-anchored first draft that is easy to revise, not finished prose.
Context you provide
- {{topic_or_theme}}: subject of the section
- {{period_and_place}}: dates and geography
- {{thesis_or_angle}}: argument the section carries
- {{research_notes}}: notes, dates, figures, quotations
- {{primary_sources}}: items with archive references
- {{secondary_sources}}: historians and works consulted
- {{target_audience}}: academic, museum visitor, general reader
- {{target_length}}: approximate word count
- {{citation_style}}: style required
- {{points_to_cover}}: events or themes to include
Instructions
- Ask for any missing inputs, then wait for my reply.
- Give a paragraph-by-paragraph outline and stop for my approval.
- Draft the narrative in past tense, following the approved outline.
- Attribute each factual claim to a supplied source in brackets after the sentence.
- Mark unsupported claims [VERIFY] and missing material [SOURCE NEEDED: what is missing].
- Keep quotations exactly as given and label each with its source.
- Note anything you infer beyond the evidence in a separate list.
Output format Markdown. Working title, outline, then the draft of about {{target_length}} words in continuous prose. No bullet lists inside the narrative. Neutral, precise tone matched to {{target_audience}}. After the draft add "Evidence gaps" and "Interpretive leaps", five items maximum each. Leave out invented detail and rhetorical flourishes.
Guardrails
- Do not invent dates, names, quotations, figures or archive references.
- Flag every assumption and mark anything not traceable to the supplied notes.
- Tell me to confirm quotation permissions and archive citation requirements with the holding institution before publication.
Example Topic: bread riots in Nottingham; period: 1795 to 1796; thesis: food scarcity turned market disputes into organised protest; audience: general reader; length: 1,200 words; style: Chicago notes.