Today I want to share with you my way of planning an article.
Start with the draft title
- Don’t waste your time at the beginning for long thinking about the title and choosing the right words. Leave it at the end. You will see, it will be easier and the result will be better. It is not worth spending the energy we have at the beginning on the title.
Write down your requirements so that you do not have to look for them repeatedly.
- write down your requirements so that you do not have to look for them repeatedly.
When I was writing an article for my first conference, I checked five times what its maximum length was, and then again how many words an abstract and other such details should have. Do you do that too? It is worth saving that time. Before you sit down to write, when you’re reviewing the requirements of a magazine or conference, write down the things you need to stick to – the deadline, the length of the article, the length of the abstract, the citation and bibliography style, and other relevant information. This will only take a minute, and it will save you more than just a minute – it will help you not be distracted while you are writing.
Ask yourself the purpose of the article
But seriously, why am I writing it? I will break this question into two parts:
- a hypothesis or a question I want to answer. It is important that it can be described in one, maximum two sentences – this will make your article about it. It is easy to describe all the research and analysis you have done, but sometimes it adds nothing to the topic. Asking yourself a question – and writing it down – will make it easier for you to filter the content and choose what really matters.
- Which research/analyses I want to present – this completes the first question. Write down what needs to be included in the article to be able to answer the chosen question. You will see, at the same time you will reject what does not have to be in the article – and if it does not have to, it usually should not.
Think about the references
Science does not exist in a vacuum. We are not alone and usually we are not the only ones dealing with a given issue. We are based on someone else’s work, and someone else will be based on ours. Therefore, before we start to create the content of the article, it is worth thinking about what work we should refer to. Who should we quote? You know – references will always include works that we use directly, quoting or showing someone else’s graphics. But maybe your conclusions wouldn’t be without reading this or that paper? If so, it would be worthwhile for it to be included in the bibliography as well. A moment spent on this before you start writing will help you to avoid later embarrassing “adding” more articles to your reference list and looking for a place for them in the text.
Plan the content… and time
Brainstorming
At this point I always act on the dirt first – I write out all the important things that have to be in the article. It’s always a little bit of a misash – some researcher’s theory from X that I want to refer to, a specific chart from my research, a graphic from another article that illustrates a good point – everything that comes to my mind as worthy of being put in the article.
Chapter plan
Then I prepare a plan for each part – I write out the mid-titles. Sometimes they are partially imposed by the magazine, sometimes I arrange them myself. I write where the individual elements from brainstorming are to be. I will add what is most important in each part. Often it is not about writing the whole article in the plan 😉 Rather, it’s about defining the structure and then, while writing, moving smoothly from one issue to the next, and not suffering from blank card syndromeÑ–
Schedule
And now the most difficult challenge is to answer the question “until when? I set myself a deadline when a particular part of the article is ready. I look at the calendar, take into account other commitments and try to set a real date, demanding, but one to be done.