Discover & share your unique contribution

 
 

Your life contains a Story-Argument that exists nowhere else. In the ScholarShape Archives, find the tools to excavate, shape, and share your Story-Argument wherever it is needed. Through this process, you integrate your daily work with your over-arching life’s purpose, and you carve out your place in the scholarly enterprise.

 

A computer, tablet, and smartphone against a pale green backdrop, each displaying entrances to the ScholarShape Archives.

How it works

Enter the ScholarShape Archives via any internet-connected device. Once inside, wander through the resources as your curiosity leads, work through them chronologically, or use the P.R.I.S.M. metaphor to identify which will yield the most useful experience at that moment. Your Archives membership provides lifetime access to all current contents as well as those added in the future.


  • TL, DR: The ScholarShape Archives provide you a focused yet flexible structure in which to create scholarship in any genre, discipline, or context.

    To be a scholar is to live the struggle of creating new knowledge. This process requires distilling sprawling source materials and ever-proliferating rough drafts into cohesive units of meaning that can be sent out the door and published. It requires crafting prose that connects with target audiences, and working within genre constraints that can feel stifling or obscure. It requires trusting your own perceptions and reasoning, while remaining open to the possibility that you are wrong. Meanwhile, amidst all of these difficulties, a scholar who wishes to go the distance must also find ways to maintain motivation and a sense of purpose long-term.

    This knot of interrelated challenges can be alleviated by the Story-Argument* resources in the ScholarShape Archives. The Story-Argument resources are designed to help you (1) understand structures of meaning (Story-Argument) at a higher level of abstraction than genres and disciplines, as well as how those structures of meaning translate into particular contexts, so you can (2) discern discrete steps by which you can gradually, day by day, live the process of creating work that usefully conveys to others what your research means and why it matters.

    When we can view the constraints of academic genres and disciplines, and indeed the constraints of life itself, through the lens of Story-Argument, these constraints become generative writing prompts that guide us to create our most vital, original work.

    Story and Argument are the basis for our structures of meaning in ScholarShape because these two ancient modes of meaning-making are deeply, perennially human. When fused together into Story-Argument, they become our most powerful device not only for navigating our work, but for feeling that it is even worth it to try. Long before and long after the present incarnation of the scholarly enterprise centered on the modern research university — and soon, perhaps, on growing networks of in(ter)dependent scholars — Story-Argument is how humans process information into knowledge.

    In short, the ScholarShape Archives’ Story-Argument resources help you put structure around the inherent uncertainty and messiness of the scholarly process so that you can navigate knowledge creation purposefully even when you don’t know where you’re going—which, for many of us, is most of the time.

    *Learn more about Story-Argument in the free Scholar Magic e-course and ScholarShape Entries Substack.

  • TL, DR: The ScholarShape Archives contain many tools to help you create your scholarship with the support of the Story-Argument model. Use and reuse the tools however and whenever you like, across multiple projects.

    The ScholarShape Archives contain many Story-Argument design resources, in a variety of formats, that Margy Thomas, Ph.D., has been creating since 2013. New resources will continue to be added in the years to come. As of 2023, the contents include the following:

    • An account of the Story-Argument model’s emergence over ScholarShape’s first decade, culminating in the P.R.I.S.M. structure as a controlling metaphor for applying the model in daily life (2013-2023)

    • The first public experiments in what would become the Story-Argument model: the prompt sequences Deep Why; You Are Here; and AcWriMo 2k18 (created 2017-2018)

    • The first in-depth articulation of the Story-Argument model across genres and contexts: the Build Your Story-Argument (BYSA) modules, 17+ hours of illustrated videos with transcripts (created 2019 - 2020)

    • Tools for applying the Story-Argument model in developing and revising work in any genre: the Story-Argument Sequence and the DIY Developmental Edit (created 2020)

    • The Book Proposal Map, guiding you through using the Story-Argument model to plan and pitch a book project (created 2021)

    • The Scholar’s Cosmos Meditations, an audio resource leading you on a symbolic journey through an allegory of Story-Argument design to strengthen your intuitive understanding of the process (created 2021)

    • A Help Desk where you can reach ScholarShape’s Member Success Coordinator, Theodora the Cat, anytime with your questions and feedback.

    • Coming soon: Resources helping you integrate intuition-based bodies of knowledge and practice, such as tarot and astrology, into your Story-Argument design.

    And much, much more to be added in the years to come!

    Important Note: The ScholarShape Archives resources are not meant to be completed or mastered, per se, but rather to be explored, pondered, practiced, experimented on, skipped over, revisited, and grappled with, as needed. You may use some of the resources over and over, and others not at all. Within the bounds of the Terms of Service, you are free to use the ScholarShape Archives in whatever ways best support the cultivation of your own Story-Argument.

  • TL, DR: A literature Ph.D.-turned-developmental editor has been working to create and refine the materials since 2013, via multidisciplinary research and practice.

    Margy Thomas has been working to create the Archives contents since 2013, when she established ScholarShape upon completion of her Ph.D. in literature. But she often feels like she discovered ScholarShape, rather than inventing it.

    ScholarShape centers on the Story-Argument model, a conceptual framework that Margy pieced together little by little through many years as a developmental editor and writing consultant for scholars across disciplines. As importantly, Story-Argument emerged through study of a wide range of other fascinations: pedagogy; art and design; religion; theories of rhetoric, narrative, and genre; history of science; early childhood development; digital communication; entrepreneurship; mysticism; and more.

    Undergirding all of Margy’s work are spiritual and intuitive practices grounded in ancient wisdom traditions that, Margy believes, have much to offer the scholarly enterprise in the 21st century and beyond.

    Based in Durham, North Carolina, USA, Margy hopes to continue developing (or discovering) new Archives contents for years to come.

  • TL, DR: Lifetime access to all current and future ScholarShape Archives contents is U.S. $600.

    With one flat fee of U.S. $600, or three payments of U.S. $200, you become a ScholarShape Member and receive lifetime digital access to the ScholarShape Archives. As the Archives continue to expand with new resources in the coming years, the value of your investment grows.

    To taste ScholarShape’s approach before signing up for Archives membership, you are welcome to explore the ScholarShape Entries Substack and the Scholar Magic course. These free resources give you a practical starting point for experimenting with Story-Argument as a way of living and creating your body of work.

    Then, if you’d like to dig deeper and access all of the ScholarShape Archives resources created over the years, you can enroll as a ScholarShape Member. As a Member, you have lifetime digital access to all ScholarShape Archives contents, past, present, and future.

    To join as a Member, review and accept the Terms of Service. Then, you can make your payment using any of the options below. As soon as payment is processed (which may be a few minutes), you’ll receive an email inviting you to create your unique login and access the Archives from your device.

    Payment Details:

    You may pay via credit/debit card on the payment page. If you are using this payment method, you have the option of making one $600 payment or splitting the payment into three monthly installments of U.S. $200 at no extra cost to you. Payments in currencies other than USD will be automatically converted.

    Alternatively, if you’d prefer to mail a check, transfer bank funds, or set ScholarShape up as a vendor to receive funds via your institution, please contact us here.

    Refunds: After you’ve purchased access, you have 14 days to request a refund, no questions asked. Refunds are given via the same payment method that was used to make the purchase. Once the refund period has passed, refunds are not available.

    Questions? Feel free to submit them here!

  • Contact us here with any questions. Before doing so, you might check whether the answers you need are in one of these places:

    While we strive to respond promptly, queries may take 5-7 days to receive a reply. Thank you for your patience!


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