Dissertations: Where should you begin?
Last week, we spoke about the power of dividing and conquering when dealing with a large-scale writing project like a dissertation.
But after the dividing is done and you have decided on a provisional structure – intro, chapters, and conclusion – what next?
What should I do first?
You want to make sure you get the order of operations right, or you might end up having to start again, which is really demotivating!
MAKE SURE YOU'VE DONE THE PRELIMINARY WORK
I'm assuming you've already done your background reading, or most of it. If you haven't read and made notes on a good dozen academic sources you'll be using (books, articles, or reports), go and do that first.
Of course, you might find that you need to consult additional sources during writing, but the bulk should be there before the writing begins.
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER START WITH THE INTRODUCTION
Once you've written your dissertation, it will have a beginning, a middle, and an end, as do all texts that make any sense. But!
It's a mistake to think that the order a text is read in is the order it was written in: these are two fundamentally different things.
An introduction is the reader's starting point, not yours.
You can't introduce the reader to something you haven't yet created!
DECIDING ON YOUR CHAPTERS
Instead of the introduction, start with the main body. Here, it makes sense to write the chapters in order of their appearance, since each chapter will build on what you've already written.
The trick is deciding how to divide your content into chapters. This is a creative process: if you tell three people to write a dissertation on the exact same topic, each of them will divide their chapters differently. Your own arrangement will ultimately reflect the way you think – and we all think differently.
So if you're struggling to do this or are so panicked by the idea that you haven't even started, you're not alone. Here’s a method I've used for all four dissertations I've written:
NOTICE THE THREADS
Think of the books and articles you've been reading as a beautiful woven cloth:
Every scholarly work, even a short one, will definitely talk about different aspects of its topic. These aspects are the threads that come together to make the cloth. Notice that different books/articles use many of the same threads.
Example dissertation topic:
KITCHENS DESIGN AND GENDER ROLES IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Example threads you have come across in your reading:
History of the kitchen: from subterranean space intended for servants to a visible middle-class space.
Changing gender roles: changes in kitchen design accompanies changes in gender roles.
Open-plan kitchens: are they liberating, or do they put more pressure on women to keep the kitchen tidy?
Make each of these threads into a chapter:
Discuss what you've read, focusing especially on what scholars disagree on.
Say which views are more convincing and why.
That's it!
I hope this helps you begin.
If you need more help getting started, why not book a dissertation support session?