How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation

BECOMING AN AUTHOR ◆ 17
supervisors or advisers and in terms of your own priorities. But
the craft skills of authoring are an important aspect of your
role, critical for your success in progressing and finishing the
thesis. It is an area where you can make solid and cumulative
progress that will stand you in good stead throughout a professional
career. The most fundamental aspect of authoring is to
manage readers’ expectations successfully, ensuring that they
see the text as coherent, well paced and organized, and delivering
upon your promises in a credible way. And for new PhD
students, a critical step in beginning to manage readers’ expectations
is to define clearly the intended overall thrust of their
thesis – its central research question.