Thesis writing tips from someone who is currently writing their thesis
As I was working on the first chapter of my thesis I realized there's some things to keep in mind in order to make things easier. I am far from having the whole thesis writing experience, but I felt like doing this post now that this first experience is fresh in my mind. There will be other thesis-related posts, for now if you want to check out my thesis work experiece you can read my daily entries on here. The posts in which I have included these entries are all tagged as #thesis diary if you are interested.
When reading articles and sources use different colours to highlight important informations. If you find parts of the text you know you will want to quote in your thesis use a specific colour and tab them. The more precise and accurate you are the easier it will be during the writing process.
Also annotating ideas and thoughts on the margins will help during the writing process, because you will be able to link your own ideas to specific sources that helped you to get there.
Have a separate file with all the footnotes you'll have to include. If you have everything written down, and just have to add the specific pages last minute you will save a lot of time. This way you'll also make sure to have all the footnotes written in the same style (this is a lifesaver, believe me).
In the same way have a separate file with the bibliography you'll have to include at the very end of your thesis. Writing it piece by piece as you add sources to your work will make sure you don't forget any source, and it will make the task less overwhelming.
If when reading articles and sources you write down notes, for the love of god write near each piece of information the exact page you found it on. If you don't you will waste so much time to find it when you'll need it. You can keep your notes in the format you like best, but having the number of pages near everything will save you so much time and work.
The more organized you are when collecting your sources the less time you'll waste when writing. So keep your notes clean, write down even those informations that seem useless at first, make sure to know exactly where you found each article, and so on, you'll thank your past self later.
I found having a notebook fully dedicated to my thesis very useful, to navigate in it quickcly I used big clear headers, tab notes, and an index. This will all become very helpful once you have gathered a lot of informations. The research process is messy, try do everything in your power to make it as organized and as clear as you can. (I am going to create a post dedicated to my thesis notebook, so keep an eye out for that if you are interested).
When you add things to part of the text you had wrote already make sure right way that the footnotes are still accurate. The more you pay attention to it right away the less confusing it will be later. If for example in a footnote you referred to the previous, and add a new one in the middle, things could get confusing so try to keep an eye out for these things as you do them.
Having a rough plan of the structure of your thesis can be helpful to know how to refer to certain elements in the text. I'll use my own thesis as an example, I am writing about some witchcraft accusations. Knowing where in the text there is going to be the first proper exposition of the facts is helpful to know how much context I have to give when writing about people or facts in other parts of the thesis.
Do you have interesting and useful informations that don't fit perfectly with the main body of your text? Footnotes are your bestfriends, you can add insight, comments, further explanations, without breaking the flow of the text.
Make sure each chapter starts with an introduction of what you are about to discuss, and end it with a small summary of what you said. This will make your writing look much more intentional, and ties in everything nicely together. Once you are sure of the order of the chapters you should also tie the chapters together, by hinting to the next one in the conclusion of each one.
I feel like these are all the potentally useful thing I have realized during my work so far. There's surely much more to be said, and as I learn more, I will make sure to share the useful informations I get. As mentioned I am currently working on a thesis notebook post! Till then I hope this was somewhat useful, thank you for reading!
