Well you are not going to like this advice and you probably won't follow it. I sure didn't and I have my doctorate.
I wished I had followed this advice that so many well meaning people gave me. But I am not that type of person. To me, the only way is the hard way.
The key to academic writing is really dependent on using an outline. Academic writing is a formula. It is completely different from creative writing. Using outlines is not fun, and at first you may think it is a waste of time. But it truly isn't. Most paragraphs in your document will have the exact same structure such as:
- Transition from previous paragraph
- One and only one "point" that you are demonstrating. Trying to do too much in one paragraph is a common mistake.
- The information that supports the "point" of the paragraph
- An application of how this "point" is related to your overall hypothesis
- Transition to the next paragraph
The other common mistake is to start writing complete sentences. In academic writing, I found that writing complete sentences was one of the last things I ended up doing in my papers.
Take each part of this formula and for each individual paragraph, just write a word or two. Just enough for you to document your thought process. Do this for most of the paragraphs. Make sure that your flow through the paragraphs amply supports your hypothesis. This is the skeleton of your paper.
Then, once you are happy with the flow, go back and turn these words into more detailed phrases. Don't worry about grammar. You are just expanding on what you wrote. Do this for all the paragraphs. Now your skeleton has muscles and is starting to take form that is recognizable.
Once everything looks complete, then and only then do you take these phrases and turn them into grammatically correct full sentences.
You don't polish a piece of furniture while you are building it. The same applies to academic writing.
One of my many problems in academic writing was that I tended to start at page 1 and then continue through the document. Not. A. Good. Idea.
I found that once I understood academic writing that I wrote my papers from the middle out. The first and last paragraph/section/chapter were usually the last things that I wrote.
Way different from creative writing that I was more used to.
Key points of academic writing
- Rubric -- A document that tells how the faculty will be making your life miserable.
-- Learn it
-- Live it
-- Love it
- Style guide. Many schools require academic writing to follow a style. For my doctorate it was the APA. Your school may have a different one. Follow it. Beware that often schools, like mine, used a standard style.... but modified it. Yikes, that's not a standard then. Accept it and find out if there are any modifications that your school uses in regards to writing style manuals.
- You are not writing a mystery story. There should not be any big surprises.
- Follow the old military adage of
--- Tell them what you are going to tell them
--- Tell them
--- Tell them what you just told them.
- You are making an academic argument (you will learn about those). How you make this argument can be more important than the argument itself. coughcoughmystupiddissertationcoughcough
- Know the difference between a reader that is ignorant as opposed to stupid. In academic writing you are assuming that your reader is smart but ignorant about your topic. Assume nothing, explain everything.
- You will know when you are successful in academic writing when someone reads your paper and remarks "Well, duh, that just makes sense".
- Win the war. The overall goal of your studies is to get the hell out of that school, with your degree and never think of them again. Keep that in mind. Don't fight the school and don't fight the faculty.
Cooperate and graduate.
Take great pleasure that after you graduate they will still be stuck there.
By the way, according the United Nations International Committee on Making Student's Lives Miserable (UNICMSLM)
It is a matter of international law that anyone reviewing your paper MUST, under penalty of death, make changes. Just accept this.
Also accept that many of these changes will be stupid. It sucks.
There is a huge difference between a writer and an author.
A writer writes stuff where an author incorporates stupid changes made by other people. Academia prepares you to be an author.
Goal: Get your paper approved and get a good grade. Nothing else matters especially such things as facts and things.
I like to think of it as dogs walking past a tree. Everyone just has to leave their mark. They are not contributing anything, but just making sure that everyone knows they exist. It can get frustrating, but it is part of academia.
After a few papers, if you break the code on the formula, you will be able to knock out primo academic BS in your sleep.
