How-to-Write-a-Better-Thesis

Starting, and Starting Again
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advice holds for the late-start model also. If you are having trouble with the introduction,
you most likely have not yet got the aim of the whole project right (yes, this
can happen even after you have completed all your experimental work!), and this
is the chapter where polish—the result of repeated revision—is the most important.
Put this chapter aside for the moment, and start with another. As mentioned above, a
good idea is to start with a factual chapter, such as one describing the study area, or
the rationale for selecting a research method, or the design of experiments or questionnaires.
These are chapters in which the rational side of writing will predominate,
and the creative side will not provide a stumbling block.
However, there is, in the late-start case, an argument for tackling the background
chapters first. They are often the hardest to write, particularly in the sciences; the
writing involves the chore of carefully reading a couple of hundred papers, and
you will need to make hundreds of judgments on their individual contributions and
shortcomings. But this means that the background should not be rushed or completed
at the last minute—it is also the material you are likely to return to and revise the
most often. What’s more, with a good draft of the background in hand, completing
the other chapters is likely to feel relatively straightforward.
Starting, and Starting Again
Some students seem to have a problem that is the opposite of Karen’s. They start an
introduction, or some other chapter, look at it, and then start writing it again. They
get caught in a seemingly endless cycle of trying to create a good draft, each time
thinking that they must get this right before they can do anything else.
Martin was one such student: he came to my office with three different starts. After
writing a few pages of an introduction, he told me that it wouldn’t work. I gave
him some advice about improving it, and he went away to write another. In this second
version he had saved one section from his problem statement, omitted some and
expanded others. It still didn’t work. This happened three times. With each rewrite,
he emphasized different points that suggested different areas of investigations. His
co-supervisor, like me, would get frustrated: it appeared to her that Martin didn’t
really know what he wanted to do with his own study. Was he good enough to finish
a thesis if he couldn’t start? As a defence, Martin said that he was trying to cover all
possibilities so that he wouldn’t get caught out further down the track. He wanted to
be certain that he would pass without any major hold-ups.
It is crucial at this point that you try to make yourself stick to something. This
is particularly true if you are undertaking a minor thesis: you have a limited word
count and a tight deadline to meet. I knew that Martin had read a great deal of literature,
and so I asked him to list the key areas he was interested in. Within a few minutes,
he had listed five topic areas. Next, I asked him to circle the ones that he was
particularly interested in. Now, he circled three areas. We then looked at how each
of these three topics related to what he had already written. We looked at the stated
aim in his most recent introduction and then quickly sketched out the structure for