Thesis Writing

This page compiles some basic information you need to write a successful thesis, undergraduate or graduate. Much of it is also relevant to paper writing more generally.

This is a beta version, a work in progress. I wrote it all in a day or two, and originally with our undergraduate thesis in mind. Your feedback will make it better. Please feel free to email me, etc.

Version 0.2 (Last substantial revision 2020.05.28)


Note

Before we begin, perhaps this goes without saying, but let me be clear: you need a computer for your thesis. Not a smartphone. Preferably not a tablet either, even a good one like an iPad or Surface. Computers are far more powerful and feature rich at every step of the way. This is one reason that we have computers available in 208. Not everyone can afford a computer, of course, so please make use of the machines in the lab ― but do not, under any circumstances, remove them from 208 without express permission from one of the JACS faculty.


Document Links


Research Topic to Research Question

Finding the right research topic is often quite hard. There are some processual steps you can take to make it a bit easier, and some warning signs so you can understand when you might be on the wrong track. Most of all, you need to realize that a "topic" is just step 1...


Topic to Question

Step 1: Think about a topic or topics you are passionate about within the fields (literature, visual/film studies, and history), time period (modern and contemporary), and geographical boundaries (East Asia) of our program.

Step 2: What sources exist? Are there good secondary sources? What primary sources can you actually acquire? Is that enough? Too much?

Step 3: What analytical (not descriptive) question(s) can you ask about your topic and sources? Do you care? Are you excited? Are you passionate about answering that question?

Narrowing down from a topic ("I'm interested in...") to a question ("My research asks how/why/what the significance of..."), an idea of the meaning and significance of your research, and/or an argument is critical for a successful project.

And don't discount the affective element in step 3. You're going to be stuck with your question for a whole academic year. You don't want to embark on a project you don't care about.


Descriptive vs. Analytical

What is an analytical question? How is it different from a descriptive question?

In general, descriptive questions are factual questions with clear-cut answers. In contrast, analytical questions ask how, why, and who cares. They force you to think about the significance of things.

This paragraph from Harvard's thesis guide sums up the difference quite nicely:

Here’s a trick: “fact-finding” questions tend to start with the interrogative words “what,” “who,” and “where.” Analytical questions tend to start with the interrogative words “how” or “why.” Think about it. Another great trick is to recognize that an analytical question creates a good discussion (at the dinner table in the dining hall, with your roommates, in the classroom — anywhere). A fact-finding question does not, because once you’ve discovered the answer to a fact-finding question, the discussion is over. Analytical questions have many possible “right” answers. This multiplicity of possible answers leads to discussion and debate (even better!) when people favor (as they tend to do) one of those answers over another. A good analytical question is exactly the same as a good question for discussion.

For reference, here is a list comparing the characteristics of descriptive and analytical questions.


Finding Sources

What kinds of sources do you need? Where do they come from? How can you tell if they're any good (for academic writing)?

This section will attempt some quick and dirty answers to these questions.


Types of Sources

What kind of sources do you need? Basically, you need both primary and secondary sources.

Primary sources are generally, though not always, the main objects of analysis in academic research. They vary somewhat by discipline.

  • In history, they are firsthand and/or contemporary accounts of historical events or phenomena, including archival documents, newspaper and magazine articles, government reports and legal documents, diaries and letters, music, artwork and photographs, pamphlets and other ephemera, etc.

  • In literature and visual studies, they are the films, novels, poems, art, etc., that you study.

Secondary sources are interpretations and analyses based on primary sources. For our purposes, this roughly means scholarly books and articles. We use secondary sources in two main ways.

  • First, they help us understand the state and content of our chosen fields, to survey the big issues and questions and debates that make up our academic disciplines.

  • Second, they help frame our questions about and analyses of primary sources, and help us place our work in the context and conversations that animate our respective fields, etc.

In some cases, you may also use tertiary sources to gather background information, but in principle they should be the first (and never the last) step in your research and you should not cite them directly. Tertiary sources include dictionaries (everything from the Oxford English Dictionary to Urban Dictionary), encyclopedias (i.e. Wikipedia), and other basic reference books and sites.


Where are They?

Primary sources differ from field to field, and so does how you find them.

  • For literature and visual studies, primary sources are probably going to be works that you encounter either directly or through reading about them in academic literature, and that speak to questions or issues about which you are passionate.

  • For professional historians, the Holy Grail is archival material. But this is often unrealistic for a senior thesis. Instead, you should first consider materials in the public archive that pertain to the events or phenomena you want to study. In practice, this generally means contemporary printed materials such as books or pamphlets or newspaper and magazine articles, contemporary fine or performing artworks, etc.

The processes for finding secondary sources are quite similar across disciplines.

First, before you do anything else, go back over the syllabi from your time in JACS. We assigned those works for a reason. Many were specifically chosen to provide an overview of the field and its major issues and authors. Take advantage of what you already have and know.

Books

We have a library. It has books. Those books are sometimes not available due to a force majeure such as a global pandemic. Still, it is useful to know how to find books.

In addition to keyword searches of the catalog, consider checking the stacks (shelves, i.e. the physical library) a bit once you know where the books on your subject are. You know this based on the call number, the classification number on the spine of the book. Example:

  • Doak, Kevin M. 2007. A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People. Leiden: Brill.
    In the search results, the subjects (件名) are listed as:

    • Nationalism -- Japan -- History

    • Japan -- History -- 1868-
      So you now know where (some) books on modern Japanese history (and nationalism) are most likely to be in any of the campus libraries. Now you can go into the stacks and look for books around the same call number. You might be pleasantly surprised; I often am.

Also, please remember that you can use ILL (interlibrary loan) to get books not held by the Nagoya University library system!

On the library OPAC page, click InterLibrary Loan Request in the left menu.

Articles

Articles for the humanities are best searched using one of the following databases:

You should also familiarize yourself with the library's databases:

Additionally, we have access to some useful newspaper archives:

  • Japan Times

  • Asahi (Japanese, on-campus only or VPN -- which is a whole other thing, addressed in part below)

  • Yomiuri (Japanese, on-campus only)

Finally, if you're having trouble finding or obtaining sources, please tell us. We can usually help.


Additionally, some "don'ts." (More on this below)

  • Don't use articles from non-scholarly sources or newspapers and major, reputable magazines (without checking with your professor first). That's not just Wikipedia. Ask yourself whether you've seen that source or one like it cited in anything you've read for class -- except maybe as a primary source. If you have any doubt, talk to your professor.

  • Don't cite MA theses and undergraduate papers on the internet. Just don't.


Off-Campus Access

Being on campus seems like it's likely to be an infrequent part of our lives for a while yet. So you'll definitely need to use off-campus access.

Let's use an example from one of my classes. I assigned the following reading for one of my classes:

  • Tsutsui, William M. “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan.” Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 294–311. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985713.

A DOI is basically a persistent URL for academic papers. The article is also available through JSTOR, as we'll discuss more below.

If you're on campus, the DOI and JSTOR link will open the article because Nagoya has access to Environmental History as an e-journal.

If you're off campus, you have two easy choices:

  1. Off-campus access link (superior)

  2. Electronic journals link (inferior, but still critical to understand because you sometimes need it to use #1 properly)

and a more involved choice:

VPN

  • The English-language VPN setup and use manual is here. Windows setup starts on page 5. Mac setup starts on page 14.

    • Note: Windows users have to use Internet Explorer (lol) to get the VPN started, but once you're logged in you can use any browser you'd like.

    • As explained in the manual, for both Windows and MacOS, you'll have to install F5Access (Windows / MacOS).

  • Also, 1) you have to use your Meidai email, 2) in my experience (ymmv), the reply from the system sometimes takes seconds, and sometimes hours. Once you're logged in, it works great, but it can be a pain to get started.

Feel free to DM me on Slack about getting set up with the VPN if you're struggling.

Off-campus access ("EZ Proxy") is more reliable because it forces you to login with CAS. So let's go with this as the number one choice. However, you may have to use the two in concert. Here's why. When you click the EZ Proxy link, you will be presented with a long list of possible resources. If, as we do here, you know in advance that the article you're looking for is on JSTOR, for example, just click JSTOR and you'll be logged in to JSTOR with all the permissions of on-campus access.

The resulting URL will look something like this: https://www-jstor-org.ejgw.nul.nagoya-u.ac.jp/ ..........

Then you just search your article title, etc., as usual. In this case, Tsutsui's article is: https://www-jstor-org.ejgw.nul.nagoya-u.ac.jp/stable/3985713


This assumes that you know your source is available on JSTOR, though.

What if it isn't? Or you don't know?


In that case, the Electronic journals link can give you that info -- and sometimes you'll be able to access the source directly from there.

Let's address the second point first: if you're already logged in to the Nagoya system (CAS), you should be able to get directly to the source from electronic journals. If not, you're probably out of luck. That's why I'm calling this the less preferable method.

OK, back to the first point, i.e., getting the info you need to use EZ Proxy. When you search for the journal Environmental History, you'll get a screen like this.

At this point, you have two choices.

1. Check the citation and input the info:

  • Tsutsui, William M. “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan.” Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 294–311.

So you'd input: 2003 / 8 / 2 / 294

This is the inferior option of trying to go directly to the article. Sometimes it works, sometimes the bear eats you.

2. So your second, and better choice is: "Ah ha! It's on JSTOR! And Oxford and ProQuest! And all of those are available through EZ Proxy."


Yeah, But...?

How do you know your sources are any good? Since most sources are either articles or books (or individual book chapters in a multi-author edited volume), we'll just cover those two here, but the general guidelines apply to other sources as well.

Books held by our library or any other university library in Japan, as well as books form major university publishers are generally a safe bet. Familiarize yourself with the prominent authors and publishers in your field to improve your judgment, though, so you don't waste time reading garbage. For instance, in the field of modern Japanese history, the top university presses include California, Cambridge, Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, and Hawaii (why all the Cs and Hs?) Other important publishers include Brill and Routledge. What about your field? Pay attention to this, starting with the readings your professors assign.

You should also consider using one of the databases above to find book reviews before taking the plunge. Reading the reviews first can save a lot of time, and also helps you to organize your thoughts when reading since you'll already have some idea what to expect in terms of content, quality, and the issues addressed. That said, book reviews are fickle things because they are the (educated and informed, no doubt) opinions of individual readers. Haters gonna hate. So reviews are not gospel, just a tool. (My own book is either a "triumph" or a frustratingly narrow slog depending on which review you read...)

In the end, your own judgment is important. Again, think back to what you've read previously. Do this new book's arguments make sense given what you already know from the readings we've curated for you over the past several year? If not, consider talking to your supervisor to work through the differences.

Articles are a bit different.

For an initial evaluation of an article, consider:

  • Is it peer reviewed? If not, toss it. No blogs, no MA theses posted online, etc.

But how do you know if it's peer reviewed?

  1. If you're using an academic database (Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc.) to find your articles, you're pretty safe.

  2. The guide here is not Nagoya-specific, but it is helpful in evaluating whether an article has gone through peer review. The first page of this guide is also useful for a more basic understanding of the different kinds of periodicals out there (scholarly, popular, trade).

Here are some other things to think about:

  • Does it have an abstract? If so, read it. What do you think? Does it look like it might be worth your time?

  • Have we assigned the author before? Have you read something from the same journal for class? If yes to either or both, that's a positive sign.

  • Is it a good and/or important journal? If you don't know the major journals in your field, familiarize yourself. Ask a professor, check the citation reports (Google, WoS), etc. Is the article cited? If so, how often? By whom? This is usually easiest to check in Google Scholar, which includes a rough estimate of citations in your search results. (But don't confuse citations for relevance ― just because something is cited frequently doesn't mean it is the best article for your topic...)

  • Who's the author? Check their faculty webpage to learn about their research, etc. Check to see if they have a Google Scholar page, and if they do, whether they are widely cited in their own field. If so, is it the article (or book) you're interested in? If not, is that partly because it's too new to be cited a lot?

If you're still interested in the article, skim and scan as appropriate. If it looks useful, go for a deeper dive.

Finally, it's often said that chapters in edited volumes (not single-authored monographs) tend to be of lower quality than peer-reviewed articles. Meh. This was probably once the case, and it's true that the editing and review processes for edited volumes have historically often been less strict. But a lot of dreck makes it through peer review, too, and a lot of great work finds its way into edited volumes. I'd say, shelve any prejudice on this one and evaluate the work on its merits. If you're not sure about a particular piece, run it by a professor.

Major Newspapers/Magazines

After endless frustration with the library's user-unfriendly interface, I realized I needed to compile a list of major, (mostly English-language) world newspapers and magazines. For some publications, there are multiple access options. In such cases, I have chosen the one with the most comprehensive access. Some overlap with information elsewhere on the page. Don't @ me; I'm aware.

So, without further ado:


Taking Useful Notes

Taking good notes is very personal. Everyone has their own system, something they're comfortable with. Some people prefer a pen and their favorite Moleskine. Others only take notes in Evernote or OneNote. Many people mix digital and analog. Some take notes in full sentences, others in an idiosyncratic code of their own making. All that is fine.

But.

First, this is a project on an unprecedented scale for most of you, and you need to make sure that the notes you took in October still make sense and are findable and usable in June.

Second, there are a few generalizations that can be made about note taking.

While sometimes you'll use a source for just a single quote or fact, etc., notes on your major sources should capture more or less the following:

  • main point / argument and significance

  • details relevant to your work specifically

  • your own reactions and connections with other notes

  • page numbers, etc., for all references ― especially direct quotes

This means more than just highlighting passages, whether in a PDF or hard copy. It means synthesizing information, expressing it in your own terms, and internalizing it within your larger project.

We've practiced the précis form in many of my classes. What I'm suggesting now is a more personalized version of the same, one that is more directly linked to a single paper, your thesis.

Good note taking requires keeping your eye on the big picture ― two, in fact:

  1. The big picture for the author, i.e., the purpose, context, and argument of the piece

  2. The big picture for you, i.e., how a particular work fits into your research

This means being an active and engaged reader always trying to extract as much information as efficiently as possible. Don't get bogged down. Don't get lost in the word salad. Before you start reading, skim and scan, etc., to get an idea of what you're up against and why you should care. Formulate questions or assumptions to guide your reading. Keep those in mind as you proceed. Revisit them when you're done. Make sure the relevant info is in your notes.

Take a look at this pros-cons comparison from the University of Sussex to evaluate which style of note taking is best for you. And remember that (1) it doesn't have to be the same for everything you do, and (2) there are many digital note-taking tools out there, too, for you to explore.

Third, and last, I mentioned at the outset of this section some people take notes in sentences, some in symbols and abbreviations and code, and some in a combination. I'm one of those who mixes up how I take notes. I often use symbols and abbreviations for chronology, facts and figures, and other factual (descriptive) notes. For analytical notes, I try to write in more or less full sentences and paragraphs when I'm taking notes that are essentially analytical, i.e., for my lit review, argument, etc.

In other words:

  • Descriptive: symbols, abbreviations, etc., are great for taking compact and efficient notes ― especially for data that's easily simplified and easily rewritten into sentences and paragraphs if necessary later on

  • Analytical: full sentences are best for developing ideas and putting them in dialogue with your sources

This helps me develop my ideas early on. It also means that when I go to write a draft, I already have a whole bunch of material in full sentences and paragraphs that can be cut and pasted into the draft without too much editing or rewriting.

Especially if you're a visual learner or artistically inclined, consider adding sketchnotes to your repertoire. Personally, I recommend combining a structured approach like the Cornell method with sketchnotes, but ymmv because note taking is personal. So you should feel comfortable experimenting until you find the approach that works best for you.


Citations and Citation Managers

You Need a Citation Manager

Note: As of fall 2020, we no longer recommend Mendeley for graduate students, and it's not preferred for undergraduates either. I'm leaving Mendeley info up because we're not banning it outright, but we strongly suggest Zotero.

Citation managers are software applications that do the heavy lifting of recording your references (books, articles, etc.) and automatically producing perfectly formatted citations and source lists in your papers -- and producing them over and over, as many times as you need!

This brief introduction will only touch on two, Zotero and Mendeley. Zotero is free and open source. Mendeley is proprietary software for which Nagoya has an institutional license. However, the institutional version appears to be available only on campus, which, uh, yeah.

Both have the same basic purpose and functions:

  • Purpose: To automate (as much as possible) the process of importing, managing, and using references for in-line citations, footnotes, and lists of sources.

  • Functions:

    1. Gather citation information automatically from the internet (can also be entered and/or edited manually, since the automatic import isn't perfect)

    2. Insert and/or update citations in any format (MLA, Chicago, etc.) automatically with a few keystrokes and/or clicks

    3. Insert and/or update a source list at the end of your paper

    4. Manage imported PDF articles, etc., and/or your notes, if you want

Both applications support Microsoft Word. Zotero also supports free options (Google Documents and LibreOffice), if you don't want to spend the money on Microsoft Office, use Zotero.

Note: As of October 2020, there is a more detailed guide here.

In addition to our in-class work learning to install and use these citation managers, you might want to try one of these video tutorial series on YouTube:

Also consider:

To decide which is best for you, consider checking out this pros-cons video from Portland State University, or this more detailed video (including setup instructions) from Laurier University's library. There is also this helpful comparison chart from York University.

Shared Libraries

In addition to your personal library of citations that you build up over your time at Nagoya, you can create or join a shared library in both Zotero and Mendeley. Since you will often be citing many of the same sources as your classmates, this can be very useful. You can share not only the citation information (what one person adds, everyone can use!) but also notes.

FYI, if you're strapped for cash and still want to use Office, remember that we have full access to Office 365 Education. Zotero integration is slow, but works. It's about the same as for Google Documents, for example, because they're both online platforms.

Thesis Structure

An undergraduate thesis is the capstone of your four years at Nagoya. It should allow you to both synthesize and apply much of what you've learned during your time in JACS ― ideally both skills and content, but at least the former. It is also a much larger and more daunting project than most of you have probably taken on thus far, at least on the surface. That is why one of the most important aspects of your thesis writing process will be planning out the structure of the completed thesis and then dividing it up into manageable parts.

As you'll see from the template, the structure of most undergraduate theses looks something like this:

  • Frontmatter

  • Introduction

  • Chapter 1

  • Chapter 2

  • Conclusion

  • Backmatter

We expect all of these sections together to total somewhere around 10,000-15,000 words. As I have said many times over the course of these last years, I would rather read a good short paper than a bad long paper. At the same time it is difficult to imagine anyone completing a passable thesis that comes in under 10,000 words, and conversely it's a bit hard to see how anything over about 15,000 is not going to have too much filler and nonsense.

The bigger point is that this is a bigger project than you're used to. So, the first thing we need to do is break it down and start attacking it piece by piece.

Frontmatter and backmatter, for those who don't know, are your table of contents, acknowledgements, and other items that come before the body of the text (frontmatter) and any appendices, glossaries, indices, etc. that go after the conclusion (backmatter). We will not cover those sections here.

Introduction

Though it is sometimes a real struggle, research and writing hones some very practical skills and offers tremendous intellectual growth and satisfaction. The process of writing an academic paper is one way to enter into conversation with some of the best minds in the world about topics you care deeply about. That process begins with reading, with understanding the conversation itself. That's true both on a factual level and for the animating issues and concerns that drive the conversation and make it stimulating and relevant. Struggling with these issues, discovering new facts, engaging with new and challenging ideas: all of these aspects of academic life can be tremendously rewarding, even joyful. (And yes, they can be... less joyful, too.)

Research is for You, Writing is for Everyone Else

Why? Well, because it's maybe the single most important piece of advice I can give you about how to rethink your writing in order to be successful. "How so?" I hear you say. The trials, tribulations, and joys of writing―beginning with research and reading―are for you and you alone. You learn. You grow. You have an epiphany. You pick up new skills. But you don't read your writing. That's the rest of us. Research and writing should never be a soliloquy, a lonely and omphaloscopic solipsism. It should be about communicating what you've learned and what you believe based on that. That means the target is not you, it's us.

This is probably obvious, but it has profound implications:

Academic writing is the opposite of a magic trick or a great whodunnit, in which there's a "big reveal" at the end. Sure, that's much more compelling as narrative structure, but in academic writing the big reveal comes first.

So: Pull the Rabbit out of the Hat First

Think about this for a minute.

  • First, it goes against all the habits we have as consumers of media, whether entertainment or academic. We want to enjoy the foreshadowing, the buildup, the tension, and then the great and cathartic dénouement. There's a reason we have the hashtag #spoileralert. In good, clear, expository academic writing―not deliberately obfuscatory, pretentious, jargon-laden nonsense―we strive for spoilers.

  • Second, in most cases that means that a good piece of writing doesn't follow the path that you took as a researcher and author. Your best idea, your clearest thought, your cleverest argument are almost never the first thing you wrote.

  • Third, edit. Then edit again. Rinse and repeat. But also don't succumb to the temptation to write alone. Remember, it's a conversation, dammit. Don't talk to yourself. Talk to us. So use your professors and peers to get feedback. They can be readers in a way you can't about your own writing, where you're still stuck at least partly being the author, too. And if the ultimate target of writing is the reader, to invest your precious blood, sweat, and tears on producing something with no reader perspective is a total waste. It's dumb. Can you imagine developing a new instant ramen, investing millions of dollars in R&D and marketing without doing a taste test? Of course not. Let someone taste test your paper. A smart reader will be able to tell you it's a bit too salty, or if it needs a bit of spice.

Here's another way to think about that. Instead of leaving your cogent argument or great idea where it first came to you (the middle of a paragraph on page 7), you have to do what we variously call "signposting" or "frontloading." In other words, you need to create a map to guide your readers. In fact, you need to create a map that forces your readers to engage with the work the way you want them to, not the way they want to. Giving them clear expectations for what's coming (signposts) at the very beginning (frontloading) is a good start.

This mapping is a kind of metacommentary, i.e. a statement like "in other words," "what I mean is" that comments on your writing itself. In the introduction, that often takes a form such as: "My research is about... I argue that.... It is significant because... In the first section, I... Next... Finally..." (see the section on your first draft below for an example).

One obvious implication is that the introduction to a paper―whether it's a seminar paper or a thesis―has to do a lot of work. It is the roadmap, and should contain within it everything a reader needs to know about your work in condensed form, i.e. the topline/bottomline takeaways.

In the intro, then, at the very least, you must:

  • Present your argument

  • Place it within the context of the conversations you're engaging in (lit review)

  • Provide paper section or thesis chapter summaries

For this reason, the intro is often completed last. It's almost impossible to really finish the introduction without having written everything else. For this reason, most authors come back to write or rewrite the intro at the very end. This is what I meant about writing and reading happening in different orders: the thing good readers go to first and most thoroughly (after a quick skim/scan of the whole thing) is the part that gets written last.

And guess what? You can repeat this exact same structure for each chapter and each subsection of each chapter to produce a very clear, readable piece of expository writing, which is what a thesis ought to be. In other words, each chapter and each section can have the same structure as the overall thesis:

  • Introduction

  • Body

  • Conclusion

This is the tried-and-true "Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em. Tell ’em. Then tell ’em what ya told ’em" structure of the five-paragraph essay, etc. It's not flashy, but it works.


Chapters

It is probably most helpful to think of each chapter as a longish seminar paper. You've written seminar papers before, and you know how to do that. The major difference is that the two are somehow directly related, and that you have to explain that link and weave it into a singular narrative in the introduction. That still means that the two chapters can in most cases be written as standalones. Let the introduction do the heavy lifting.


Conclusion

Conclusions are optional. If you feel like you want or need to provide a summary of your research at the end, by all means go ahead. But you really should have already done so in the introduction.


Template

I have created optional Word and Pages templates for JACS MA thesis submission. They are also linked from my Class Information page and the JACS website. The advantage of the templates is that they are preformatted with all of the sections you might need in the proper order, including an autogenerated, autoformatted table of contents and list of figures, etc. The template is meant as a tool and a set of guidelines, not an ultimatum. Use it wisely.


Scheduling

Big Picture

Both grad students and undergraduate follow roughly this schedule every year:

  • May 15-20ish: submit your title for approval

  • June 25ish: submit your thesis

  • early July: oral defense


Undergraduate Senior Seminar

The undergraduate joint seminar, especially in fall semester, is designed to (among other things) provide some scheduling structure to the thesis writing process. Over the course of the term, you will:

  • develop a topic, then a question

  • turn that into a proposal, which will be revised numerous times

  • create a draft table of contents

  • write an initial abstract

  • compile an annotated bibliography-style list of sources with relevant notes

  • transform the annotated bibliography into a lit review

Basically, though, this is the prewriting stage. It also represents the bare minimum you need to do in fall term in order to complete your thesis by the late June submission date.

That is why we require you to submit a proposed schedule for spring term at the end of the fall semester.


Feedback and Editing: Early and Often

This section applies to both undergraduate and graduate students.

When planning your schedule, take into account that most sections will require several rounds of feedback and revision before they are ready to be part of your final draft and then to be presented at your oral defense. You need to give your supervisor at least one week to read and return your drafts, so that means that you should be writing early and often, and submitting drafts for feedback regularly.

You should also plan to complete your thesis about 10 days (or more) before the deadline for submission. So if the due date is June 20, plan on being done June 10. You won't be. There's always something. Do you need to do more revision? Do you need to fix your citations? formatting? tables and images? Give yourself the cushion to actually do this.


Writing (and Staying Organized)

This section outlines some basic principles and steps for the thesis writing process.


Small, Manageable Chunks

Writing 15,000 words can be overwhelming. So don't. Instead, write in small, manageable chunks of a few hundred words, then a few hundred more. Break down the thesis into its component pieces, and take care of them one at a time.

Also, remember that writing is generally not a linear process. In general, don't try to write all the elements of your thesis in the order they should be read in. It's almost impossible, and usually undesirable, to start with the first paragraph and just write straight through. Successful academic authors often write in small, manageable chunks and then cut and paste them into the right order to make a cohesive and cogent argument.

As I pointed out above, the big reveal comes first in a thesis. Pull the rabbit out of the hat, show it to us, explain how the trick is done, then stuff Mr. Cottontail back in and do the trick. Tell us it was Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with a wrench, then explain how you figured that out and why we should care. Because this is generally the opposite of both how we are used to writing and telling stories, and also tends not to be the order in which we actually find or determine things in our research, it means that you can't just write everything down linearly.

So, write each chapter separately and compile them into a single file only late in the game.

Consider even writing each subsection separately. This is especially helpful if you're having a bit of writer's block or feeling overwhelmed. Remember, small, manageable chunks.


Prewriting

Lipson (2005) defines prewriting as "the basic work of organizing your materials, writing informally about them, and preparing to write a first draft, based on these notes and writings." It can also include brainstorming and other exercises and activities you might do before sitting down to write your first draft of a chapter, the introduction, etc. In other words, prewriting is most of the stuff we've discussed so far. It is also a stage of writing that doesn't just come around once. You'll probably return to prewriting each time you take on a new chapter at least.

The number one goal here is getting and staying organized. Organized prewriting is necessary but not sufficient to organized writing.

Organization 1: Prewriting

Try these four steps to organize your materials in the prewriting stage.

  1. Categorize: How will you split your thesis and its individual chapters into categories/sections?

  2. Order: What order should you present those sections in?

  3. Triage: Which research data goes into which category?

  4. Rightsize: Missing anything? Conversely, any chaff that can be discarded?


First Draft

The following two quotes about first drafts are from the same Harvard guide mentioned above.

Remember that there’s nothing really at stake in the rough draft. It’s just a narrative of your notes — a gathering place for your ideas, loosely structured in essay form.

In writing the rough draft you should, in consultation with your tutor, formulate an argument, introduce that argument, describe how your evidence supports that argument, and explain the broader implications of that argument.

There's a clear tension between these two statements. I think it's fair to say that they appear incompatible. On the one hand, a first draft is just your notes fleshed out a bit. On the other, it should express, support, and explain the importance of your argument.

How can it be both?

Especially if you've been taking notes that include full sentences and are attentive to issues of analysis, by this point you probably have a substantial portion of your first chapter and intro drafts already written! What you need to do now is arrange those notes and fill in the gaps, etc., and also arrange them within the context of your argument as it is developing.

What does that mean in practice?

Ideally, you should have at least have the following four elements. You might not be there yet, and that's (usually) OK, too. That's what drafts are for.

  1. a clearly stated research question, even if it's somewhat different from the question you started with

  2. a tentative answer to that question, i.e. your argument or thesis statement

  3. a statement about the significance or implications of your research

  4. evidence arranged to support your argument

4 is the body of the draft. Each paragraph should contain a single major idea, which should, if possible, be clearly stated in the first sentence. You'll have to do this eventually, so why not start early and save yourself the heartaches and headaches later?

1-3 together form the backbone of an abstract. Here's an example, the abstract for an article I published in 2019:

(1) This article explores the early history of nutrition science and nutritional activism in Japan, 1920–40, focusing on the role of the Imperial Government Institute for Nutrition (IGIN). (2) I argue that the IGIN, the world’s first government-sponsored nutrition institute, was a manifestation and key instrument of Japan’s state-led program of national nutrition as civilization and national defense. (3) The IGIN’s successes in science and dietary reform were viewed as a triumph, an indication that Japan had surpassed the West in the most fundamentally modern and rational of pursuits, science—and specifically nutrition science, a critical technology of nation building.

In retrospect, I feel like I should have more explicitly used metacommentary in sentence 3 to explain the significance of this work more clearly.


Feedback and Subsequent Drafts

You have to edit. Then edit some more. Then rinse and repeat.

And you have to remember that writing is not meant to be done alone. If you've forgotten that already, go back to the top and start over.

Getting feedback at each stage (or pretty close) will help make this process more efficient and ultimately more successful. Whatever you do, don't hold on to your drafts because they're "not good enough yet." The whole point is to get help making them good enough. Making use of the resources available to you ― in this case, your peers and professors ― is key to success. Suck it up and turn it in.

Side note: On the issue of getting help, consider making an appointment with the Writing Center, or at least having a trusted peer provide some additional feedback, etc. In fact, having a circle of friends who can read and honestly, fairly, constructively critique each other's work is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your writing. Also, especially if you're a non-native speaker, you might want to try the Word plugin (currently Windows only) from grammarly.com. If you're using Google Documents, there's a Chrome extension, too. Grammarly requires signup.


Organization 2: Drafts

For your sake and ours, stay organized.

For instance, use a filename structure that clearly indicates:

  • your name, thesis section (chapter 2? introduction?), and version number and/or date

  • Example: Hopson thesis - ch1 - 01 = first draft of chapter 1

Don't be afraid to Save As... and assign a new filename to each draft. You can always go back and delete old drafts later. Plus, keeping old drafts allows you to be bolder in the new ones―you have nothing to lose, after all...

Aso, use the Track Changes feature so we know what has been edited and how:

    • Word: Review > Track Changes (Ctrl+Shift+E / ⌘+Shift+E)

    • LibreOffice: Edit > Changes > Record

    • Pages: Edit > Track Changes

Following these guidelines will help you as a writer, and will also allow us to give faster, better feedback.


Plagiarism

There is no reason we should have to rehash this at this point in your career, but just to cover our bases, have another look at the JACS Statement on Academic Honesty.