📚 Learnings on my Dissertation - How to Write a Top-notch Essay

I recently submitted the final dissertation for my Master's programme.

I’m gonna be honest. It was a long and dreadful experience. Dissertations and essays are always hard. I think no matter who you talk to the challenge is universal. Writing is a long and painful. Especially when it counts like a dissertation.

It’s similar to running in a way. You know it’s good for you but it’s tough to get started. After starting it’s a constant battle. Sometimes it's easier because you're in a flow. Other times you really have to dig deep to push yourself. You have to persevere and stay consistent from beginning to end. But once you're done.... it’s like being the champion of the world!

Same as running, good writing has the right technique as well. 2 years ago I wrote another dissertation. That was for my undergraduate studies. During my gap year and MSc I learnt a lot on the right technique of good writing. During this time I had to fundamentally change my approach to writing. I had to do a lot of research and self-reflection to understand what worked and what did not go so well. These learnings are collected in this blogpost, summarised in 9 points.

While this is my personal experience and opinion on what makes a 1st essay, I hope you’ll find them useful. I wish I had known this during my undergraduate when writing my first dissertation.

1. Read more 📚

read as much as you can
read scientific papers related to your field
read the most impactful papers outside your field
read for your own entertainment (fiction or non-fiction)

Why it matters

I believe reading is one of the most underrated actions you can take to improve your writing. I started to read on a daily basis two years ago and I'm confident that it contributed to better essays and dissertation later on.

Think about reading as food before running. You wouldn't try to run a marathon without eating anything for a week, would you? No, you need to consume nutritious food first and digest them to properly perform.

But what are the direct benefits of reading? I experienced three key impact how it can impact your writing.

Firstly, reading is a great (if not the best) source of ideas. The more content you expose yourself to, the more likely you will find the ideas you need. And the quality of your ideas will directly determine the quality of your writing.

Secondly, reading will enrich your vocabulary. I like to think of it as spices in cooking. While they don’t change the fundamental aspect of the food, spices bring subtleties to the main course. The best cooks as well as the best writers know how to season their work the best. The more you know about the spices and richer your vocabulary is, the better your writing will be.

And lastly, reading will help you structure your thoughts. There are many styles of writing, different people will tell a story in various ways. As you expose yourself to these structures, you will eventually find ones that fits you more. This means you will be able to tell a story the way you like it!

2. Procrastinate effectively 🕞

start as early as possible
break the workload into small and specific junks
schedule breaks where you go for walk or other less demanding activities (this can trigger some creative ideas)
be curious about your topic

Why it matters

I experienced two kind of procrastinations: non-productive and productive procrastination.

Let’s start with the first one. Non-productive procrastination is the “traditional” definition. Because what you're writing is not fun, it is hard and it matters quite a lot, you might find yourself quite intimidated by the tasks. So instead of starting, you end up browsing instagram or watch youtube videos. At least this is what I did.

Let's establish something now. This is a universal challenge. Everyone will have a phase where they avoid doing work now, delay the discomfort and wait until the stress kicks in to work. If you feel like you're the only one.... you're not. I am the same so that makes at least the two of us.

What worked for me here to tackle this issue was trying to start early and break down your workload into chunks. If you're at least somewhat interested in what you're writing... that helps too.

The other kind of procrastination - believe me or not - is actually productive. Adam Grant (an organisational psychologist) found that people who took short breaks during creative work actually came up with better ideas. Moderate amount of distraction can help making your ideas more creative and innovative. Emphasis on moderate.

This definitely helped me. For example, in the morning I spent time getting words down the paper. I wasn’t focusing on quality here. I wanted to get something on paper and start those gears in my brain turning. Then I went for an hour to walk. In many cases, I found that during the walk I found new phrases, new ideas or new ways of structuring what I would like to say. Like some kind of an epiphany.

An important note here that procrastination here did not involve binging netflix series. By going for a walk, a swim or a run, I was probably still thinking about my dissertation subconsciously. I just managed to take advantage of it.

This is the productive procrastination. It worked for me so maybe you can try? Let me know how it went!

3. Use figures 📊

use charts to explain numerical ideas
use flow diagrams to describe processes
use pictures to demonstrate an observation, machine
use figures and icons to deliver qualitative ideas (there are loads of free icons available on thenounproject.com)
use powerpoint to create your own charts (no need to worry about plagiarism and the readers will appreciate your efforts)

Why it matters

Wherever possible use visuals to deliver your ideas. A picture is worth a thousand words. Especially with complex ideas, delivering them visually makes it a lot easier for the reader to comprehend.

In scientific articles, figures have an even greater importance. When reading papers, many tend to skim through the introduction, the discussion and the figures to decide whether they’ve got what they’re looking for. Thus, figures have this role to tell a story even without the main text. Use them accordingly!

4. Be careful with time ⏱️

start as soon as possible
start to write small things (get the snow ball rolling)
make sure you have time for bibliography, design and other minor stuff
count with procrastination

Why it matters

Writing always takes longer than expected. With such a creative endeavour I had to realise: it's actually quite difficult to estimate how long it will actually take to finish a paper.

It was always an underestimation. Yes, of course, I roughly know how long reading and writing is gonna take. But there are so many minor things I didn’t account for, like procrastination, designing the figures or how long putting the bibliography would actually take. Unbelievable.

Honestly, as I’m writing this blogpost, believe me I thought I would finish earlier.

But getting back to the topic, whenever I finished an essay or any other work, I always wished I started earlier. So make sure you don’t make the same mistake.

5. Write in iterations ✍️

draft in bulletpoints
edit your ideas in bullet-point format
write your first draft (it’s gonna be bad I know)
rewrite and rewrite and rewrite
at some point just submit

Why it matters

I used to think writing was a linear process. You sit down, you start to write and you finish everything from introduction to conclusion keeping the original order.

I had to realise that writing is more like painting in this sense. When a painter sits down, their first thing is not to paint every little detail from the top left corner. No, first they sketch to get a high-level image. Only then they start to paint the subtle details.

I would suggest following the same principle in writing. It can be tempting to sit down and start to type the introduction word by word. Or the contrary, it can be quite frightening. Either way, start with bullet points. Build the skeleton before putting the meat on it.

Once you have the first bullet point structure, it is time for the first draft. Writing the first draft is one of the most difficult aspects. I would suggest focusing only on getting words on the paper. It doesn’t matter if it’s written in a bad way because editing is always easier than writing. This is a really important concept. Editing will always be easier, therefore get through the writing element as fast as you can.

Editing then will be a lot easier. It is an iterative process where you can jump around. Like a painter who paints a little bit of the river, little bit of the sun, you can also jump around editing your intro or your discussion!

Spending too much time on one section might disconnect you from what a reader would experience. Writing in iterations, getting breaks from sections can help you get a fresh pair of eyes to improve your paper.

6. Validate as early as possible ✅

be comfortable with sharing early drafts
ask your professor for feedback
ask your coursemates for feedback
ask someone who is not in the field (e.g. partner, family) for feedback
do this as often as possible

Why it matters

Feedback is incredibly valuable in writing. Getting external input on whether what you’re writing is correct or clear is the only way to make real improvements. Therefore, you need to validate what you’re writing with external audience. As often as possible and as many people as possible.

I know this is tough. Showing someone your work in itself is a real challenge. Especially when you know how bad your draft actually is.

But let me give you three personal stories.

In the first one, imagine that you work all night perfecting a paper or a paragraph. You work for three days until it’s perfect. You send it to the supervisor and guess what… You went in a completely wrong direction. You misunderstood how the signalling mechanism you wrote about actually works and now the whole thing is rubbish. Yepp, this was me…. it’s one of the worst feelings ever. Three days of work thrown outside the window in a matter of seconds. The conclusion? Share the early draft. Validate the the basic ideas (however bad they might be) to avoid going down the wrong rabbit hole.

The second story involves peers. Asking your coursemates for feedback can be incredibly valuable. After two days in the library by myself working on a paper, I showed the draft to my friends. In some magical way they managed to find ways to cut out words, shorten sentences and reduce complexity. I never understood how. Yet whenever I was asked to do the same thing, I found ways to help them as well. Why? Because others have the advantage of looking with a fresh pair of eyes. When you’re too deep into your writing… it can be really tough to see things high-level.

And lastly, the reason why I’m advocating you show it to people who are not in your field is because they can help with your grammar. Your brother/sister or a friend who is studying something completely different can actually focus on spelling, typos and other minor stuff. And I found it to be a massive help.

7. Design matters 🎨

pay attention to your design
use a universal colour scheme (monochromatic usually works pretty well)
choose a neutral font
ensure that the text, the headings have the appropriate size
make your figures aesthetic
ensure that alignment is good (no figures overlapping, no paragraphs jumping to the next page etc)
keep it simple and clean

Why it matters

In the book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahnemann describes an interesting phenomenon (in the Cognitive Ease chapter). Compare the following two statements:

Steve Jobs was born in 1957.
Steve Jobs was born in 1952.

While both are false (Jobs was born in 1955) experiments have shown that the first statement is more likely to be believed. Here is what they found: if you make it easier for the reader to comprehend your message, you will come across more credible and intelligent. Using design tricks to create a sense of cognitive ease for the reader can have massive pay offs.

Making things nicer creates this image of your work that it will be outstanding. The same principle is used by restaurants. Have you realised how all high-end restaurants always use garnish? While it would not contribute to the taste, it does impact the visuals and therefore the overall picture.

We can take advantage of the subconscious of the others by making things look nicer. And sometimes this can be the difference between a first and an upper-second class essay.

8. Take ownership ☝️

take ownership
don’t explain away criticism
always write with the reader in mind

Why it matters

This is a truth I wish I had known earlier. When you’re writing something, it is your responsibility to make sure that the reader fully understands what you’re talking about. They can disagree with you, but they should never misunderstand you.

Take ownership of what you’re writing. Period.

During my bachelor’s, I was blaming quite heavily. If they didn’t understand, I always blamed the reader: my professors, my markers, basically anyone who read and gave negative feedback on my work. And there was always an excuse: they don’t understand because they don’t have the background knowledge. They don’t get it because they didn’t read the whole thing. They don’t care so why should I even bother?

Looking back, now I see that this mindset will never lead to a first. I had to change.

During my gap-year, I was writing a lot of e-mails. My manager or other senior members were incredibly busy. If they misunderstood what I meant, whose fault was it? I could have blamed them, but it would have been stupid. I need to do everything I can to make it clear what I’m writing. This is what changed during my masters.

If the reader doesn’t understand, I haven’t written clearly enough. If it’s too complex, I haven’t provided sufficient background. If it’s boring, I haven’t built the right story. If the reader gets lost, the logical flow wasn’t good enough. If they don’t read the whole thing, I wrote it too long.

You see what I’m trying to say? If the reader doesn’t understand, it is on you to change it. Delivering your ideas accurately is your responsibility so work accordingly. Once again, you can leave the reader disagreeing with you, but they should never be confused.

9. The story is king/queen 👑

finalise your ideas
link sentence to sentence
link paragraph to paragraph
build a nice story from beginning to end
deliver a sense of enthusiasm and curiosity

Why it matters

It was always difficult for me to grasp why a story is important in the context of a scientific paper? Like I’m not writing a novel. Why do people make such a big deal out of “building a story”? Science should be exact and straight-forward. If it’s boring, well, that’s the nature of the business.

Yet, whenever I read some essays from my best-performing friends, it was so clear what a “story” referred to. Let me try to break this down.

Firstly, the story builds a flow into an essay. During my undergrad I had the tendency to list out facts as laundry lists. It was difficult to read and it reflected my lack of clear thinking. A good story is easy to follow. Sentences flow after each other. Paragraphs are linked to one another. Building links can be small things such as a writing reference to the next paragraph. This is why besides the flow, I’m emphasising the next item: the importance of story elements.

As ridiculous as it can sound, you can actually build a plot in a scientific paper. The classical plot is consisted of 5 elements:

Exposition: where you introduce the characters, establish the setting and introduce the primary conflict of the story
Rising Action: triggered by the conflict, there are multiple moments of escalating action challenging the main characters further
Climax: this is where the plot and the tension is peaking
Falling Action: the conflict is resolving, usually the pace of the story is slowing down
Resolution: the story is coming to an end where all loose ends are tied up

Believe me or not, a scientific paper can also include many elements of the classic plot style.

Introduction: Introduction can include elements of the Exposition and Rising Action. You can set the scene of the current scientific understanding and what you’re researching. The main objective of the research can also resemble as the primary conflict. At the end of the day, you are pushing the boundaries of science.
Methods: I would say this is less relevant to the story, you just need to “set the scene” for others.
Results: Definitely the climax. Any new results will probably surprising in one way or the other (because you are pursuing something novel). I always thought of this as the peak of the scientific paper.
Discussion: Linked to the climax but also the falling action. By putting the results into context you will be able to tie up “loose ends” and answer any questions the reader might have.
Conclusion: The final resolution, you can take a final look at the whole work and provide the reader a satisfying end to your story.

This might be a bit abstract, but do you see how there are multiple parallels between the story of a classical plot and a scientific paper?

And lastly, a good story bring emotions to the table and emotions are what make things memorable. If you would have told me during my undergrad that I have to think about emotions when I write a scientific paper, I would probably have laughed at you. Yet in my experience, the best papers all delivered a sense of challenge, enthusiasm and curiosity. Based on a strong climax, a strong new finding in your paper, it will be easier to evoke these emotions.

Conclusion 🏁

Writing is such an underrated skill. Not only in university but also later in your career, expressing your thoughts in a written format is essential.

Yet I always felt like there is no one who would explain to me what an outstanding or first essay actually looks like. This is what I was trying to do with this blogpost.

While some of the things here might be too fundamental, I’m pretty sure some of the things I wrote here will come to you as a surprise. While I truly believe that if I had known these things during my undergraduate I would have performed better, I’m completely open to criticism. Do you disagree with any of the points or have any other constructive criticism to add? Feel free to get in touch!

I hope this was helpful for you and if it truly was, please share your story. I’m interested in hearing more about how you managed to improve the way you write. Good luck!