How to write a master’s dissertation

A masters dissertation is the longest piece of writing most people have attempted, and the difficulty is rarely the writing itself. It is that four months is long enough to lose your way in and short enough that losing your way is expensive. Almost everything that helps comes down to deciding the shape early and protecting the time daily.

Write the skeleton first

A chapter list with a sentence under each heading is worth more in week one than five polished pages. It shows you where the argument is thin while there is still time to do something about it.

Write the sentence you want each chapter to prove, then read them in order. If the sequence does not convince you at that length, it will not convince anybody at twelve thousand words, and restructuring a list is a morningx27s work where restructuring a draft is a fortnightx27s.

Expect the skeleton to change. The point is not to be right in week one, it is to have something concrete to be wrong about.

Protect a small daily slot

Two focused hours every morning will finish a dissertation. Occasional twelve-hour days will not, and they cost you the days either side.

The arithmetic is plain enough: two hours a day, five days a week, for sixteen weeks is a hundred and sixty hours, which is more than most dissertations need. The catch is that it only works if the slot is genuinely protected and genuinely daily.

Start the session by reading the last paragraph you wrote rather than by opening your notes. It puts you back inside the argument in a minute or two instead of twenty.

Keep a record as you read

Every citation you note properly the first time is one you do not have to hunt down in the final week, when there is no slack left in the schedule.

Use a reference manager from the first paper rather than the fiftieth. Zotero is free and takes an afternoon to learn, and the afternoon is repaid the first time you change citation style without rewriting a bibliography by hand.

Note why a source mattered as well as what it said. In August you will remember that a paper was important and not what you wanted it for.

Show your supervisor imperfect work

Supervisors are far more useful on a rough chapter than on a polished one, because there is still something to be done about their comments. Sending work you are slightly embarrassed by is the faster route.

Agree a schedule of what you will send and when, early, and keep to it even when a chapter is not ready. A missed meeting in June is much harder to recover from than an unfinished draft.