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The essay starts with a pan on the “big picture.” Panning on all three stories has allowed the writer to discover similarities among his blocks of evidence and to demonstrate that the examples he has chosen are representative of his generalization—his claim—that in all three flood stories men exist “solely to please the gods.”

The writer then constructs a series of tracks, summaries of each of the three stories that isolate some interesting parallels for readers to ponder. But at this point, rather than allowing his tracks to set up zooms, the writer returns again and again to versions of his original pan. In other words, a reflex move to 1-on-10 leads him to repeatedly match the evidence to his one governing claim.

To develop his central claim, the writer needs to devote much less space to repeating that claim, and more to actually looking at key pieces of evidence, zooming in on significant variations within the general pattern. In his second paragraph, for example, the writer allows the 1-on-10 pattern to rush his thinking and distract him from his evidence. He claims that the God of Genesis “had become unhappy with his creations so they were to be destroyed. Like a toy a child no longer has use for, humankind was to be wasted.”

This claim fits Enlil, the god in Gilgamesh who, as we are later told, decides to get rid of humans because they make too much noise. But it does not so easily fit the God of Genesis, about whom the writer has just told us that “the wickedness of man … grieved him to his heart.” If he did 10 on 1 on this passage, slowing down to think about the evidence, the writer would likely see that the difference between the two gods is significant. The grief that his evidence mentions suggests that God’s decision to flood the earth was possibly ethical rather than childishly selfish and rash. And the statement from Genesis that “every imagination of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” might lead him to see that humans were not simply victims of divine prerogative, but rather that they deserved punishment.

The writer doesn’t consider these other possible interpretations because his reliance on pans—the general pattern—has predisposed him to see his evidence only as another sign of the gods’ egotism, their desire to remain “happy” at any cost.

Revising the Draft Using 10 on 1 and Difference Within Similarity

How might the writer make better use of the evidence he has collected, using the principle of looking for difference within similarity?

Revision Strategy 1: Assume that the essay’s “answer”—its conclusion about the evidence—does not yet go far enough. Rather than having to throw out his thinking, the writer should consider, as is almost always the case in revision, that he hasn’t refined his initial idea enough. As an interpretation of the evidence, it leaves too much unaccounted for.

Revision Strategy 2: Find a “1” to use with 10 on 1—a piece of the evidence sufficiently revealing to be analyzed in more detail; then zoom in on it. In the case of the writer of “Flood Stories,” that 1 might be a single story, which he could examine in more detail. He could then test his claims about this story through comparison and contrast with the other stories. In the existing draft, the writer has not used comparison and contrast to refine his conclusion; he has just imposed the same conclusion on the other stories. Alternatively, the 1 might be the single most interesting feature that the three stories share.

Revision Strategy 3: To find the most revealing piece or feature of the evidence, keep asking, What can be said with some certainty about the evidence? This question will induce a writer to rehearse the facts to keep them fresh, so that his or her first impressions don’t “contaminate” or distort consideration of subsequent evidence.

If the writer were to apply these strategies, he might have a conversation with himself that sounded something like this:

“What can