Playground 2
The Bullet Point Test: Policy Brief
Take any communication you’ve written and read each section in sequence. Between every major point, ask: does "and then" fit, or "because of that"? If "and then" fits everywhere, your communication has no spine. It’s a list. Each point could be removed without breaking anything else.
In this exercise, you apply that diagnostic to a real policy brief, then restructure it using the Story Spine. The brief is informative. Your job is to make it transporting.
Step 1: Run the Diagnostic
Read the policy brief below. Then use the checklist to diagnose it before restructuring.
Policy brief (original)
Urban heat islands in Phoenix, AZ cause an average of 300 excess heat-related deaths annually. Temperatures in low-income neighborhoods are 8–12°F higher than in affluent areas with tree cover. We recommend expanding the urban tree canopy by 25% in priority neighborhoods over 5 years, at a cost of $47M.
Bullet Point Test — check each criterion against the brief above
Step 2: Restructure It
Now rebuild the brief as a Story Spine. The audience is a city council deciding whether to fund urban tree canopy expansion. The facts are the same. The structure is what changes.
Look for your “One day” moment: the discovery that heat maps mirror historical disinvestment maps. That’s your inciting incident. It’s not just a temperature difference. It’s a pattern.
| Once upon a time... | |
| Every day... | |
| One day... | |
| Because of that... | |
| Because of that... | |
| Until finally... |
Get AI Feedback
Fill in your restructured spine above, then click to get feedback on causal chain, stakes, specificity, and resolution.
›Prefer to restructure any brief with your own Claude or ChatGPT?
You are a communication strategist specializing in climate policy narratives. I have a policy brief written in bullet-point format. I want to restructure it using narrative principles from the Pixar Story Spine. Here is the brief: [PASTE YOUR POLICY BRIEF HERE] Please help me restructure this into a Story Spine with these six beats: - Once upon a time... (the status quo) - Every day... (what made the status quo normal or stable) - One day... (the inciting incident or data discovery that disrupts the status quo) - Because of that... (first consequence — be specific, name real numbers or impacts) - Because of that... (second consequence — escalate the stakes or show transformation) - Until finally... (the resolution — what this audience needs to decide or feel) My target audience is: [DESCRIBE YOUR AUDIENCE] After giving me the Story Spine, apply the "because of that" test: read the beats in sequence and confirm each one connects causally to the next, not just chronologically. Flag any "and then" weak links.
Take It Further
Two files to keep using the Story Spine and causal chain frameworks outside this playground.
Paste into Claude Project Instructions to turn any Claude conversation into a Story Spine coach for climate communication.
story-spine-claude-skill.md
Worked Answer
Once you’ve written your version and got feedback, expand this to compare. Pay attention to where the hero metric (300 deaths, 8–12°F) lands in the causal chain, and how the “One day” beat reframes the data as a discovery rather than a statistic.