“Main points of plan”

In these notes, we can see Rand approaching the project at different levels of abstraction, writing out the theme and ideas of the novel in a more condensed way than in her initial notes of 1935–1936, when she first covered this material. Here she lays out a mix of broad philosophical ideas and specifics about how those ideas would be conveyed.

As Rand summed up later, she had to ask herself, “What abstraction do I want to convey—and what concretes will convey it?” This was a process that she continued throughout her planning and writing, with her focus always on telling a good story that integrated the abstract ideas with concrete characters and events.