Verbal Problem Hard category from GregMat+ website

Hello everyone,

Hope you’ll are preparing well for the exam. request you to help me wrap my head around the TC problem.

My direction of thinking is as below:

  1. Since sentence has comma which indicated both sentences support each other.

  2. The part of sentence after comma denotes a decision which the biographer took by rejecting the conventional ideas (eschewing a conventionally linear narrative) in favor of some other one (favor of a thematic exploration of formative experiences.)

  3. So, the right part of sentence tends to sound negative, so as per math strategy the left part should also be a negative word, but since there is a word hardly prior to the blank so the blank should contain a positive word, so that the combination of hardly + blank will result in a negative connotation.

I was able to deduce till this part, help me understand whether am I thinking in a write direction or not.
And also which word will fit the blank perfectly.

Why do you think that?

The reason is the person rejected a conventional narrative in favor of something other.

That’s not necessarily bad, and “conventional” doesn’t have to be good right? I would say the idea is neutral, there’s no connotation.