How to get the thesis written?

Plain_Sailing

Hey all,

i'm desparate to get my research masters thesis written and it just hasn't been going my way at all.

any advice?

Thanks

gerry87

What's your word limit and subject/topic?

Break it down to what you want to talk about ad write out your headings. There's probably better layouts than this, but its a start.

Title Page
Introduction
Literature Review
Paper 1
Paper 2
Paper 3
...
Discussion of your approach
Present your results
Discuss your results
Conclusion (basically same as introduction)


Try and think of as many different headings or things to talk about as possible and throw them down on a page. Then group them and put them in order.

Say for a 10,000 word thesis, if you can come up with 5 headings with 4 subheadings each... then you only have to do 500 words - a paragraph - for each subheading, easily doable.

Plain_Sailing

that's great advice it all makes good sense but my main difficulty is actually sitting down and doing it.
I have absolutely everything i need to construct my chapters/papers but it's just seeming like its never ending. It's about 80,000 words in a science research masters that has taken alot of time to complete and im just tired of it.

Red Alert

Have you got the papers published already, or at least in a pretty final form?

Use them to give you a starting point, then you'll need the background section probably next. My PhD thesis has a short intro chapter (3 pages) followed by the lit review (about 30-40 pages), then three work chapters, followed by a 3-page conclusion.

At least then you should feel like you're starting with more than just a blank page.