Category Archives: Tiny Text

working up a first draft: a twelve step strategy

Posted on December 14, 2020 by pat thomson

If you are drafting, it is pretty easy to find a lot of advice about the benefits of free writing. Lots of people find that timed writing sprints help to generate content. Unstructured writing is useful to work out what … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, crappy first draft, drafting, notebook, Tiny Text, writing in chunks | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

plan to write – a controlling purpose

Posted on November 30, 2020 by pat thomson

At some point in the writing process, most writers develop a plan. Some writers may already have, before they plan, chunks of text or a crappy first draft that needs to be beaten into shape. Other writers begin with the … Continue reading →

Posted in argument, controlling purpose, the point, thesis, Tiny Text | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

planning a paper

Posted on November 18, 2019 by pat thomson

Last week I was in Norway running a three part workshop on planning a journal article. The workshop was based around a Tiny Text abstract.   As a planner myself, I use Tiny Texts for sorting out the contribution argument … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, argument, contribution, journal article, planning, planning a paper, Tiny Text | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

a planner’s approach to the first draft

Posted on September 16, 2019 by pat thomson

Writing a draft. Mmm. The word ‘writing’ suggests that all you have to do is sit down and type or scribble away. And lo and behold a text is born. But there are different pathways to writing a draft. Some … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, free-writing, looping, planning, planning a paper, poster, powerpoint, storyboard, storyboarding, Tiny Text, titles | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

patter is eight and celebrating with writing skeletons

Posted on July 8, 2019 by pat thomson

Happy birthday to me July is patter’s eight birthday and this is my 784thpost.  That’s a lot of words. At about a thousand per post, well, there’s about ten books worth buried in this blog. I’ve had a bit of … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, sentence skeleton, Tiny Text, warrant | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

tiny texts – small is powerful

Posted on February 11, 2019 by pat thomson

I work a lot with tiny texts. Abstracts. Storyboards. Story threads. Lines of argument. Tiny texts are my academic writing tool of choice. If I had to abandon all the other writing strategies I have in my repertoire, this is … Continue reading →

Posted in abstracts, academic writing, methods, methods chapter, research methods, thesis, Tiny Text | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

writing regularly – matching time and task.

Posted on August 6, 2018 by pat thomson

You’ve all heard the advice that it’s good to write regularly. Perhaps it was phrased this way – productive writers write a lot because they write regularly. You’ve been told that you can get a lot done if you just … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, time, Tiny Text, writing regularly | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

writing course day two

Posted on April 4, 2013 by pat thomson

We began today by looking at the abstract again – the Tiny Text – and then went on to think about titles. After some paired discussion of the potential titles and a bit of work on some volunteers’ abstracts and … Continue reading →

Posted in abstracts, introduction, Tiny Text, writing course | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

location – another metaphor for writing about your research

Posted on January 17, 2013 by pat thomson

There are a lot of geographical metaphors used in research talk. We routinely speak about fields of study, mapping the literatures, surveying the literatures. Location is another one of those borrowed-from-geography metaphors and it’s one I‘m particularly fond of. Locating … Continue reading →

Posted in abstracts, academic writing, journal, literature review, location, metaphor, Tiny Text | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments