Before you write your article, write one sentence that will guide you

My scientific writing students and my editing clients often seem to get lost while writing their articles. It's as if they set out to cross the forests of Siberia without a map and compass, or a GPS, and with no clearer goal than the hope of reaching an ocean someday. And whereas some people might enjoy months or years of footloose wandering through a real wilderness, my clients generally don't enjoy the feeling of being lost while writing. So what I try to do is show them some techniques that will help them write a clear, focused article that is organized like those that are in many high impact journals.

The first thing I do is use a variation of a technique that I found in The Craft of Research (Booth, Colomb and Williams 2003, 49-52). The technique consists of writing one long sentence in three parts:

1. I/we studied…
2. because I/we wanted to find out whether/what/when/why/where/who/how...
3. in order to help my/our readers better understand…

Part 1 helps the writers start to put their thoughts into words. The information here should be expanded on in the introduction to the article.

Part 2 is key. A precisely defined research question helps to connect and organize the whole article, because everything in the article should relate back to the question. The introduction helps the reader to understand the question and why it is interesting or important or both; the methods section tells the reader how the question was answered; the results section presents the answer(s) to the question; and the discussion tells what the answer means.

Part 3 helps the writers to write for their readers. If the writer can't complete part C, he or she has little chance of having the article accepted by a high-impact journal or cited by another researcher.

After we complete these three parts, both the writers and I feel that it is easier to focus and organize their articles. However, this technique is also very useful before starting a research project and can help with writing grant applications and proposals.

In two weeks, I'll be back with an example of how an article from a high impact journal clearly answers all of these questions in its introduction. This example should help writing students to use this technique with their own writing.

REFERENCE
Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The craft of research. University of Chicago Press, 2003.