Beginnings come towards the end

 

On this module we are going to look into the craft of writing, or in Sword’s terminology, the artisanal domain of writing.

Introductions to chapters within your thesis are important to get right. They are short (around 850 words in a 10,000 word paper) and they are there to set the the scene for the following discussion. In order to orientate your reader, you need to foreground here the relevant literature and the purpose that this chapter serves in your thesis, as well as what you are going to argue / find in the chapter itself.

All this needs to be done in just 4 or 5 paragraphs. An introduction is a work of art. You will draft and redraft the opening sections of your chapters many times to get this right, and before submission to your supervisor, this is the part - alongside the conclusions - you should work on last, simply because you often don’t know what you are really saying until you have written those middle sections.

If you are in the middle of drafting your thesis, and have chapters that come before this one already drafted, then the first rule is to not look back. Do not be tempted to sum up what happened in the last chapter. You did that in the previous chapters’ conclusions section and then you opened out leading into this chapter.  The introduction to the new chapter should be about what is to come in that chapter.

In Patrick Dunleavy’s book ‘Authoring a PhD’, he recommends that introductions have the following components:

  • A high impact start element (what is the purpose of the chapter);

  • Framing text which moves from the start to some discursive material commenting on the chapters substantive themes (literature for example);

  • A set of signposts about how the chapter will proceed (first this, then this…). Usually this is revised at the end to reflect what you actually wrote.

When making a rough start, you can start with what this chapter is about - relevance to your original contribution - and where this discussion sits within the relevant literature already out there (your research). 

You will revise this many many times, so don’t get too worried about it at this stage. But getting into good habits now will ease your writing journey.

Today I will…

  • Write for a minimum of 2 hours on my PhD and if I am at that stage, focus on writing as sharp and introduction as I can.

  • Schedule a social writing session for this week;

  • Schedule a session away from my favoured writing spot;

  • If you would like step-by-step and paragraph by paragraph writing advice, I would recommend P. Dunleavy ‘How to Author a PhD’. It has many useful suggestions about writing your PhD, and to me is still the best book on the market, even though not everything will be relevant to your discipline.