How to Sell Your Grand Treatise on Everything

I wanted to title this post "How to Be a Convincing Crazy," but I figured that might put off my target audience. Don't go, Grand Treatise writer! Hear me out: This post is just a list of hallmarks of good, convincing, sane writing. Whether or not you're a bit nuts, you can use my advice to make your Grand Treatise on Everything (GTE) more appealing to your intended reader. In my line of work, I've received more than a few GTEs (and I'm still young!), so I'm not a horrible example of your target audience. Here I will tell you what you can do to prevent me from immediately tossing your GTE.

Disclaimer: This is not a response to any individual person or document. Any one GTE could be stricken from my data set and the advice would still hold. Here we go...

1. Don't spill the beans!
GTEs from crazies are a dime a dozen. GTEs that are accurate and provide true insight into the nature of the universe are, well, really, really rare. So the second your reader realizes you are writing a GTE, you're in trouble. Your reader knows that the chances that you're a crazy who's BSing his way through the essay are pretty darn good, and he or she will likely stop reading (or at least stop taking you seriously) right there. So don't start sounding too grand too early. Keep words and phrases like "revolution," "meaning of life," "secret of the universe," and "theory of everything" out of your opening paragraph. In fact, leave them out of the whole piece. Don't capitalize "truth." Try to be modest and specific in your impact claims. Talk about how the ideas in your paper could have an impact on a specific field or help people achieve a certain end. Instead of saying that your theory "will revolutionize physics," say it "could provide insight into outstanding problems in high-energy particle physics." Instead of saying your ideas will "let people see the true meaning of life and achieve what some would call Nirvana," say they'll "let people explore a method of thought that could help lower everyday stress." And for the love of God, don't mention Thomas Kuhn and paradigm shifts. If you keep your language modest and specific, your reader might think you're on to something. Everyone is interested in the meaning of life and a theory of everything; if you let the reader make the connection between what you're saying and these grand topics by himself, you will stand a better chance.

2. Support your claims
How did you think of your GTE? Was it a flash of inspiration? Did God personally talk to you? Was it through a lifetime of painstaking thought? I don't care. I don't want to hear it. Nothing is going to convince your reader that your ideas and theories are accurate except solid evidence and strong arguments. Your reader doesn't trust you, and unsupported claims like "everything is energy" get you no points. This step is where you should spend most of your time and energy as you write and revise your GTE. If you have no support for your claims and just feel you achieved your knowledge through revelation, think of how you can support your assertions. Build up arguments that are rational and as rigorous as possible. Don't talk down to your reader; it doesn't make you sound authoritative, it just makes you sound crazy. Yes, you can appeal to your reader's intuition, but...

3. Avoid arguments that amount to "Duh!"
Prominent advocates of creationism often use "duh!" arguments, but hey, they seem crazy. Don't use them. You know you're using a "duh!" argument if you start using phrases like "of course," "obviously," "clearly," "common sense tells us." Most really, really bad theories appeal to common sense and intuition. It's a sign of lack of rigor. If you're trying to disprove quantum physics (I wouldn't recommend it), saying, "Obviously a particle can't be spin up and spin down at the same time!" is a dead giveaway that you don't know what you're talking about. Appeals to common sense and intuition are a sign that you simply don't understand something well enough to argue it. Which brings me to...

4. Do your research
If you are challenging an established idea, you should be very familiar with all of the arguments for that idea. If you're challenging quantum mechanics (again, not recommended), you should know about Bell's Inequality and why violation of it demonstrates entanglement. Is there something you don't understand? Is there something that seems obviously wrong to you? Spend a nice, long time trying to find an explanation in the literature. It will serve you well.

5. Keep your language simple/Use English
Keep your voice active and your words short. Long, florid sentences are just annoying, and they make your thinking appear muddled. Plus, strained sentences are a great opportunity for using overblown language. Avoid the overblown language. And don't define too many new words. Sure, if you want to create your own term for the "space-time-mind-connectedness continuum" or whatever you've come up with, go ahead. Knock yourself out. But when you start defining tons of subtopics that are key to your theory, you sound awfully caught up in yourself. (Unlike this post, which isn't at all self-involved, I know. But hush.)

6. Watch you're grammer
Do you think I'm a moron? I would too, had I read this section heading. Sure, anyone can sub in a "you're" where there should be a "your" or misspell a word. These aren't actual signs of low intelligence. But when you make these sorts of simple errors, you come across really poorly. Curl up with your good friends Strunk and White and get to know their rules. A couple of little errors won't spell doom (I'm not proofreading the post, I'm sure it's got its fair share of crap), but it's better to be safe than sorry. Oh, and in these modern days you can end sentences with prepositions, start them with conjunctions, and split infinitives til the cows come home. Enjoy.

OK, GTE writer. That's all my advice for this evening. I'll update the post when I've thought of more. Oh, one last thing: A lot of people are really into GTEs. You can recognize them by their copy of The Secret or the latest Deepak Chopra. I'm not one of these people, so I haven't read any truly popular GTE books. By reading a few of these and seeing what methods they use, you can probably derive more techniques for successfully framing your theories and ideas.

Good luck, GTE writer. If you have it all figured out, I look forward to learning about life, the universe, and everything. If not, I eagerly await your best efforts. Godspeed.

Fun, personal posting will resume soon. You'll hear all about my hot dates and wild tropical adventures...if and when they ever happen.