By now you have a one-page outline with a title and focus statement of your dissertation. You would have received useful feedback from your supervisor and implemented that into your short outline. You should also have titles for each chapter and a few topics listed in no particular order under each chapter title. Now you will transform your short outline into a long outline.
First, you need to write a topic and focus statement for each chapter and jot down the topics associated with each section under each chapter. You don’t need to be worried about organised structure. Just get your thoughts down on the page, then organise your topics under each section and write subsection headings.
You can work according to the outline for the development of paragraphs, but you are advised not to follow it for your whole dissertation as sometimes excess planning and organising becomes inefficient and arduous. At the time of writing, you may also realise that some topics, sections and subsections will be moved around. Therefore, too much planning will waste your time and quash the creative process.
In dissertation writing, each section generally contains four paragraphs: that support your focus statement for a chapter, that preview forthcoming highlights, that review previous points, and transitional paragraphs.
The next step is to determine the length of each chapter and therefore you must decide how you will introduce your topic. A topic may have several aspects that can be opted for framing introduction section. It depends on how you view your dissertation work.
Leave a Reply