Category Archives: chapter

writing thesis chapters? beware ‘blocky’ writing

Posted on October 24, 2016 by

It’s very common to read academic texts, particularly thesis chapters, which present themselves to the reader as a series of blocks of stuff. Each big block of stuff may well be divided up into smaller sub-headed blocks. This is not … Continue reading →

Posted in backward mapping, blocky writing, chapter, outline by sentences, planning, planning a paper | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

book update – on the importance of chapter structure

Posted on May 7, 2015 by

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about my current book project with Barbara. We are still in the throes of revising the text, turning our incredibly messy first draft into something more readable. But we are up to … Continue reading →

Posted in Barbara Kamler, book writing, chapter, co-writing, revision | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

what’s the answer to “would you like to write for this book/journal”?

Posted on May 15, 2014 by

I was recently asked by an early career researcher whether it was better to say yes to an invitation to write a chapter for a book, or to say no and write a refereed journal article instead. It wasn’t just … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, chapter, journal, journal provenance, time | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

chapter flow /using headings to help

Posted on February 6, 2014 by

This is the third in a series of posts on getting flow in the thesis. The first was on using the introduction and the second on using the conclusion. This post is about using headings. There are two aspects of … Continue reading →

Posted in chapter, flow, headings | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

connecting chapters/chapter conclusions

Posted on January 27, 2014 by

This post is the second of four which address the question of how you achieve flow across a thesis text. The previous post (here) offered a three-part approach to beginning to write a chapter. The three moves, link, focus and … Continue reading →

Posted in chapter, conclusion, crunching, flow | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

connecting chapters/chapter introductions

Posted on January 16, 2014 by

Writing a thesis, or indeed an academic book, means constructing an extended argument. One common problem in writing a very long text is that it’s not hard in 80,000 to 100,000 words for the reader to get lost in between … Continue reading →

Posted in argument, chapter, coherence, flow, overview, thesis | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

two big hassles in editing a book, and what you can do about them

Posted on December 9, 2013 by

My first post last week suggested that there were three good reasons to consider editing a book. This post focuses on the necessities of book editing. I’m writing about two big problems, not because I think that they should be … Continue reading →

Posted in authors, chapter, editing, emotional labour | Tagged , , | 2 Comments