Is It Relevant?

Your literature review should cover the relevant literature. 

Well of course it should. This is a piece of advice you’ll often find in textbooks on doing dissertations. It seems so obvious that it is easy to skim over it. Cover the relevant literature. Right. Go it. And how hard could it be? That article is relevant, that one isn’t, job done. 

Or is it? 😕 Like many things you’ll discover as you do your literature review, deciding what is relevant turns out to be surprisingly complex. There is more here to think about than you might have first supposed, and that is what this blog is about. 

In some cases, you will indeed find that one source is clearly relevant and another clearly isn’t. In many other cases, however, there are at least two intermediate categories between relevant and not relevant:

✅ don’t know yet, and 

✅ marginally relevant. 

We’ll deal with each one in turn. 

There will be times, especially in the early stages of your dissertation, when you simply don’t know yet if something is relevant. This often shows up as doubt. Does it fit? Could it fit? Do I need to tweak my research question? Am I on the right track? You have your two clear piles – relevant and not relevant, but every time you plonk the article into the discard pile, you fish it out again. What if it is relevant? What if I haven’t understood it properly? I just don’t know! 😱

This indecision may feel frustrating, but it is a healthy part of the process. Your research project develops as you go, so there will be many points along the way when you aren’t immediately sure about something. That is okay. 😊👍 The thing to do is to recognise that the temporary indecision is actually a decision: you don’t know yet. In between Relevant and Not Relevant, make yourself a pile for Not Sure Yet. For every source in this pile, record the basics (what the study is asking, what it found, what its methods were) and why you aren’t sure. Be as specific here as you can. Then, just leave it in the Not Sure Yet pile and go on to the next one. 

Maybe in a week, or two, or in a month, or in a year, you will encounter another article and say Ah ha! Now I know how that article is relevant! 😃 Or maybe, as you periodically review your Not Sure Yet pile from an increasingly sophisticated vantage point, you’ll be able to see at a glance why the source that originally gave you such angst either is or is not relevant. 

This brings us to the second point, the marginally relevant sources. Dealing with these takes up a surprising amount of time. At first, this seems counter intuitive, as marginally relevant suggests something you can deal with briefly. In your final write-up, this will be true – your treatment of what is marginally relevant will be brief. But getting to that confident articulation of what is worth mentioning but not centrally relevant involves some complex thinking and careful analysis. 🤔

An example from my own practice in writing literature reviews may be helpful here. I give such examples from time to time in this blog because with my own work and I can point to the decision-making process I went through as I wrestled a pile of reading notes into a finished article. This process goes straight to the heart of the matter when it comes to writing a literature review (or anything, really), but I find that what it entails is often missing from the textbooks and how-guides. I therefore share it with you here. Was it helpful? ✍ Let me know in the comments! ✍

This comes from my paper on weird -y suffixes in the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS). I approached this from a linguistic perspective, as my area of expertise is stylistics (the study of choice in language). As I was reading the literature on Buffy for my review, I noticed that the bulk of the work was coming from other fields. That body of work was relevant, as it was on the text I was studying, but not centrally so, as it was not interested in matters of language. In the final version of my paper, all of this work was dealt with in a single sentence: 

‘In the growing body of BTVS literature, two areas of enquiry have emerged as particularly salient: interpreting the vampires and demons as symbols for society’s fears (Erickson, 2002; Jowett, 2002; Krzywinska, 2002); and interrogating the transgressive potential of the show with respect to gender (Braun, 2001: 91; Graham, 2002; Levy, 2003; Owen, 1999; Pender 2002; Williams, 2002); race and class (Alessio, 2001; Edwards, 2002); and power (Buinicki and Enns, 2002; Playden, 2001)’ (Mandala 2007: 53). 

Getting to this single sentence, however, took several months of work, primarily for the following reasons. 

📌 There are 13 papers cited here so in the first place I had to read and annotate them all. Yes, they were all marginally relevant, but I still had to read them all carefully to decide why and how. 

📌After reading and annotating I had to analyse my notes, which I did through a process of thematic coding. The result of that analysis is presented succinctly above: this body of work comes down to two main areas, a dissection of fears and an interest in transgressive potential. The second area had three sub-themes, gender; race/class; and power. The 13 papers did not announce themselves as belonging to these themes; rather, that was something I had to decide and articulate after thinking carefully about the body of work as whole (instead of one study at a time). 

📌 To deal with the theme on transgressive potential, I had to come to grips with media and cultural studies, a subject outside my own area of expertise. Having trained as a linguist, I had never covered this but no matter -- it was still my responsibility. This meant taking some time to dig into the tertiary sources to figure out what this field was about so that I could fully understand the papers that emerged from them. 

📌 To put it all together, I drafted many versions of my review. Does it surprise you to learn that what eventually became a single sentence in my final version was originally 6 pages long? That might sound like wasted time, but each articulation of the longer version increased my mastery over the previous work and why it mattered to my research. Over time, this drafting process gradually distilled for me what was most essential, allowing me to deal fairly but briefly with the marginally relevant material so that I could expand on what was centrally relevant. 

And there you have it – what it really takes to deal with sources that are marginally relevant. The next time you come across a paper that deals briefly with marginal material, spend a bit of time over it. What amount and kind of work went into it? What can you learn from that about doing your own review? 

If anyone is interested in my paper or the sources cited therein, the references is Mandala, S. (2007). ‘Solidarity and the Scoobies: An Analysis of the -y Suffix in the Television Series Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. Language and Literature 16 (1): 53-73. 

Susan Mandala, PhD is an independent writing and language consultant and founder of Writing Works Consulting. She is dedicated to helping everyone she works with achieve greater personal and professional success through more effective writing and use of language. 

She specialises in dissertation literature review training for doctoral candidates and academics new to research, so if you are a research manager or research administrator in higher education and looking to develop research support in your institution, contact Susan to discuss a workshop or short course. 

🟩 Visit her website: www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk

🟩 Connect on LinkedIn and drop her a message: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290

🟩 If you know someone who will find this blog useful, please feel free to share it in your networks. 😊

Insights for 2025: Remembering What the Dissertation Literature Review is For

 Happy New Year! 🥳 Here it is, the start of January, often a time to sit down and make some firm resolutions that, this year, we are really going to stick to. So if you have your bullet point list already populated with things like:

🔆 Get up an hour earlier and write for 1 hour everyday

🔆 Read and annotate 5 articles every week

🔆 Have the complete first draft of my literature review chapter done by March 31st, 

great stuff! Keep going.

This time of year is also, however, a good time to take stock -- to step back and reassess things. Are we doing the right things for the right reasons? Over the course of a year, it is very easy to get so bogged down in the details that we lose sight of our real mission. We set out with a clear vision, translate that vision into goals, and then set out the tasks to achieve those goals. But over time, the tasks tend to take on a life of their own and without realising it they become the mission. Just get to the end of the list! we say to ourselves, hoping that by the time Friday comes we'll find most of our tasks done and crossed off. 📝

I think this tendency to slip into mindlessly chasing tasks happens because we forget to take into account how much we'll learn and develop as we spend a year working on something. Our overall mission may stay the same, but what we do to achieve it needs to be periodically updated as we become more advanced in our skills and knowledge. Ticking things off our list is excellent (and if you read this blog regularly, you know I love lists!). 📋 ✔ But every now and again, we need to step back and think about what it is that is driving our list in the first place. 

And that is what today's blog is about. As we set out on a brand new year, are we still aligned with our guiding star? 🌟As we sit amongst our piles of papers and notes, digging our way through, do we remember why we are doing a literature review in the first the place? Or are we demotivated because we have we lost sight of what it's all for?

Regular readers of this blog will know that the purpose of your literature review is to make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. And this is true -- that is what your literature review should do. But why should it do that? Why is it necessary to establish why your question should be asked? Or, as a number of my students have asked over the years, Why can't we just write about our stuff? Why can't we just ask and answer our question and leave it at that?

🔑 My answer is this: we make the case for why our question needs to be asked in order to identify how the answer we come up with counts as a contribution -- how it advances the sum of human learning. What new and unique piece of knowledge does your research put in the world and why does it matter? There is no way to know that if you don't know the state of your field. How does what you now know build on what we already know? You can't see that unless you have identified the prevailing patterns and trends in what we already know. That is what the textbooks and how-to guides mean when they talk about mastering the literature or effective evaluation or locating your study with respect previous research.

Was this blog helpful for you or your students? Want to know more about translating the why of doing a literature review into the how? 

✅ Hop onto my website www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk or connect on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290 and drop me a message to talk about master classes, day-long workshops, or short courses. I'd love to hear from you 😊

The Twelve Tips of Christmas

 It is that time of year again. 🎄🎉 We are frantically getting those last things done, running around buying presents 🎁, writing cards, and doing all the other things we do to prepare for the holiday season. If, in amongst all that you are also one of those brave people writing a dissertation 📚, you might also be setting aside some precious undistracted time to work on your literature review. In honour of the season, I wanted to share with you my 12 most successful mistakes. Yes, you read that correctly  -- successful mistakes. Doing anything for the first time involves some stumbling around, and I certainly did my share of that. It was when I fell down and got back up that I learned the most, and in this blog that is what I want to share with you. 

So, here it is -- my 12 most productive mistakes from 30 years of writing literature reviews and what they taught me.

1. Not understanding the role of description. If you read my blog regularly, you'll know your literature review is an argument in which you make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. Your evidence for this argument comes from previous research.  However, in order to get to the stage of putting  that argument together, you first have to understand the previous research, and that means a lengthy phase of describing those studies to yourself. Value this, as it is essential. But don't stop there, as this phase is just for you. For your dissertation, use your knowledge of each source to construct your argument and work out the evidence for it. ✍

2. Thinking that the unit of analysis in my literature review was each study, and trying without much success to figure out how the summary of each study was or wasn't evidence in my argument. That sent me back down the describe-every-study rabbit hole, until I figured out that the unit was not the study per se, but the findings of all the studies.  What were the patterns and trends in all the findings? That was the thing to figure out. 🤔

3. Writing endless outlines but not getting anywhere. Finally, I figured out that this did not work, at least not for me, because my outlines were lists of topics.  Lists of topics do not allow you to work out the structure of your argument.  For that, I finally hit on the card-sorting technique, which allowed me to determine my main points (my research question needs to be asked because. . . . ) and the evidence for each point. For more on that, see my post on how your literature review is like a qualitative research project.

4. Thinking that frustration was my enemy.  It certainly feels like an enemy 😖, but over time I came to understand that frustration was a sign that I was moving out of my comfort zone  -- and moving out of your comfort zone is the only way to learn and make progress. If you stay where you are comfortable you never have to grapple with anything new. You will avoid frustration that way, but you will also avoid important breakthroughs in your understanding.

5. Confusing productive breaks with displacement activities. We all need breaks when we are writing. Sometimes we hit what feels like an impenetrable snarl, and taking a walk 🏃 helps us to think in new ways. But know the difference between a break that enables more creative and productive thinking and the displacement activity, which is really just a form of procrastination. If you are thinking Oh, I'll just do the dishes before I start, and since I've done the dishes I might as well do the counter tops . . . that is a displacement activity. If you go down that road, your house might sparkle, but you won't be any further along on your literature review. 

6. Thinking that if I ended the day as confused as I began that I hadn't made any progress. This is not true. A literature review is a complex thing and some of the issues you have to deal with won't be solved in a day. If you stop work some days and all you have is a list of things you don't understand, that is progress. Now you know what you don't know yet. 💡

7. Trying to write in the afternoon and finally figuring out that I am a morning person 🌅. The literature review involves a lot of reading, thinking, and writing, but there is also a fair amount of administrative work. Figure out when you are at your best and do your writing then. Plough through the admin stuff during the other part of the day. 

8. Thinking I should be able to concentrate solidly for hours without a break and getting annoyed with myself when I couldn't. 😠 I found that I got immersed for about 30 minutes, then needed a micro-break -- to look up, shift my gaze, roll my shoulders -- then could do another 30 minutes, and so on. I was relieved to discover that this was normal. 

9. Trying to find shortcuts. On a day when I just couldn't face more note-taking, I would highlight things instead as I read. And that way, it wasn't even like work, as I could sit in my cosy chair and just read. I told myself I would go back to the highlighted bits and convert them into notes later so that I could figure out how they fit into my argument (or not). That never worked, not once, and was always wasted time. Inevitably, I lost track of the highlighted material and just wound up re-reading and taking the notes I should have taken the first time.  📖

10. Worrying about the word limit. The word limit is a tangible metric and can be a useful guide, but it is not the goal. Your goal is not to write a certain number of words. Your goal is to put together a rock-solid argument for why your research question needs to be asked. I discovered that when I did that, the word-limit took care of itself. 📘

11. Trying to edit before I knew all the steps in my argument and before I had assembled all of the evidence. This just led to hopeless confusion and much wasted time. When you have your argument nailed down and all the evidence assembled, you can spot extraneous detail immediately and just get rid of it without second-guessing yourself. ✂

12. Trying to work straight through Christmas. The holiday period frees up some time, and one year I decided I would only do the bare minimum for Christmas and then put my head down and write. I just made myself miserable and tired and wound up having to take a break when Christmas was over. There wasn't even any turkey left. 

Whatever and however you celebrate this season, allow yourself that time. I wish you the joy of it!

The Literature Review: Busting Some Common Myths

 I am sometimes startled by the myths and misunderstandings that I find circulating about the literature review, so today’s blog is the first in a semi-regular series on busting these myths 💪 or, at the very least, unpicking them to get at some useful truths. To get us started, have a think about this claim, which pops up with annoying regularity: The literature review is all about other people’s work, so it won’t be original. 

True or false? 🤔 The sharp-eyed amongst you will already have noticed that there are two claims here -- bad practice for a true-or-false item, to be sure, but a good place to begin our discussion. Let’s take each claim in turn. 

The literature review is all about other people’s work. Is it? In one sense, this is true. The main purpose of a literature review is to analyse the body of previous work in a field to establish why a research question needs to be asked. So, yes -- a literature review in this narrow sense deals with other people’s research.

But is this all it is about, or even primarily what it is about? No. If the job is done right, the findings, insights, observations, and everything else discovered in the body of previous research should be treated as evidence in the unfolding case for why the research question needs to be asked. The literature review is not about what other people have found; it is about what you do with those findings as the writer of the literature review.

 The literature review won’t be original. To tackle this claim, let’s stay with idea of discovery for a moment more. If the review gets stuck describing studies one after another instead of presenting an argument, this will be true. The literature review won’t be original since it will simply recount what already exists. What the literature review needs to do is put forward a view on why this material matters – that is what will be original. As we dig into the body of existing work in our field, that is what we should be seeking to discover – what we think about what everyone else has said. And how do we come up with that? By identifying patterns and trends in previous work and figuring out how they add up to the need to ask our question. 

 A concrete example might help. When I was writing my analysis of the character Gus in Harold Pinter’s play The Dumb Waiter, I found that there were many, many existing analyses on this play. Why did the world need one more? Why should anyone be interested in what I had to say about the play? When I dug into the existing studies, I noticed an interesting pattern – most of them were concerned with the same two or three scenes and as a result offered generally convergent analyses, variations on narrow set of similar themes. Bingo❗There it was. Why did the world need my analysis of The Dumb Waiter? Because I offered a careful look at neglected scenes and was able to put forward a new reading of Gus by doing so. 

🔑 The key take away? Identifying patterns and trends in previous findings is a key skill in doing a literature review, a skill that will help lift the review out of description and into original analysis. 

So how do you enable students to do this? 

•  Some of my previous blogs, which go over practical tips, might be of interest -- click through and have look: Your Literature Review Is an Argument; Your Literature Review is Like a Qualitative Research Project; Reverse Engineering a Review. 

• If you like what you find, are UK-based and want to go further, contact me to discuss a workshop on How to Really Write Your Literature Review (available as 2-hour master classes; 4-hour in-depth sessions; 1 day intensives; and 2-day courses). 

• Hop onto my website or connect on LinkedIn and drop me a message.

I would love to hear from you. 😊

Listening to Your Drafts: Insights for Students and Supervisors

As I look back on my writing about writing, I realise there is something I sometimes say without much explanation: we need to know how to listen to our drafts. So in this blog, I am going to tell you a bit more about what I mean by that.  If you are currently working on your literature review, the practical examples I give here may help you develop your own listening process. If you are supporting other researchers with their literature reviews, these insights may help you when it comes to giving feedback, as this technique is useful whether we are listening to our own draft or someone else's.  

First, let's quickly review Huff's (1983)* three phases of drafting. Phase 1 is the generative phase, when you get your ideas down on paper in whatever way works for you. This is a relatively unmonitored phase when you actively want to encourage your ideas to tumble out, one after the other. In this phase, you can give your stream of consciousness free reign without worrying about grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Just get your ideas down.  

Phase 2 is the more disciplined problem-solving phase, when you need to start sorting, sifting, and evaluating these ideas. Do you have an argument yet? Do you need to read more? Are you fairly considering the evidence or cherry-picking? When you sit down to write your first solid draft, are you making progress? Why or why not? Are you writing for hours at a stretch but just describing what others have said? It is during phase 2 that writing and active critical thinking come together and reinforce each other. 

Phase 3 is the editing phase, when you dot the i's, cross the t's, and look up the rules on using semi-colons for the hundredth time. While phase 3 generally should be done last and can, depending on the size of your document, be done in one sitting, phases 1 and 2 are not strictly speaking linear (you may drop back into phase 1 for a bit after starting phase 2) and will generally be done over multiple sittings. 

The listening I refer to here occurs in the second phase of drafting as part of the essential problem-solving process. Listening, of course, is metaphorical, as what I am really talking about is the act of noticing specific things in your writing that crop up when you are drafting and paying attention to what these things may be trying to reveal to you about your own argument or writing process. This feels like an act of listening to me when I engage in it, so that is what I call it. In the rest of this blog, I'll outline four things that might crop up when you draft and why you might want to listen to them in the way I suggest here.

Repeating Things: Any time you keep repeating something, such as an idea, a quote, a question,  or a position in a debate, pay attention.  When something like this crops up again and again, and insists on inserting itself even when you set out to write about something else, it is an indication that you need to think more about it. Simply removing repetition may feel like progress, but in order to truly resolve this you need to know why you keep repeating it. In my experience, repetition of this kind tends to occur for two reasons: 1) you haven't yet nailed down the steps in your argument, so your account is beginning to meander; or 2) you have hit on something important, but you haven't figured out why it is important yet. In the first case, sort your argument out and the repetition will most likely take care of itself -- the thing you are repeating will slot into the place it should go, and you will stop repeating it. If it is the second case, think carefully about this thing that you keep repeating. Is it important evidence you haven't considered yet? Is it something that disturbs the framework you have thus far assembled? In such cases, we might keep pushing a thought away because it is inconvenient, but back it comes, in the form of repetition, demanding to be dealt with. Listen to it. 

Asserting What You Are NOT Doing: Any time you declare My purpose is NOT to X; or This section will NOT go into Y, pay attention to that, especially early on in the second phase of drafting. Often, we set out with a certain structure in mind and the temptation is to stick to that structure. But early in our drafting new things emerge because we are still collecting information. The new information may at first look irrelevant, so we loftily declare there is no need for us to go into it. Later, however, it turns out that the thing we dismissed as most definitely NOT our purpose turns out to be the key to our whole argument. The early decision to dismiss it came about not because the idea was truly irrelevant, but because the structure of our argument was not yet complete. There are, or course, times when you do need to state that you won't be dealing with something, but that decision should be made when you are pretty sure you are finished with the second phase of drafting, not at the start of it.

Things That Come Out as Brief Asides: These are ideas that make their first appearance in your draft as though they are unimportant. They come out as quips on the far side of a dash, or comments in parentheses, or items shunted into subordinate clauses. Pay attention to these. While it may seem counter-intuitive, these seemingly dashed off things often turn out to be the key to something important -- an avenue you need to pursue or an aspect of your topic that turns out to be crucial.  They make their first appearance tentatively, but that is all the more reason to stop and pay attention to them. Try foregrounding them -- give them their very own sentences, start paragraphs with them, and see what happens. Have you learned something new about your argument? Pursue it. If, towards the end of your drafting, these things do turn out to be superfluous, by all means delete them. But do this because of a conscious decision, not because of an assumption. 

You Suddenly Become Overly Discursive: When we are secure in what we think, our prose tends to be clear. If we are still grappling with new ideas, our prose rambles. You can, for example, write There are four books on the table. Clear, confident, done -- you've said what you needed to say. Or, you might write Well, I was in the library, it was the afternoon and it was after lunch when I was just coming back and I saw this table. Oh, and I noticed some books. Four, I think. This is overly discursive, and notice that the important bits appear only as after thoughts. When you catch episodes like this in your draft, trying to simply edit them won't work because what you really need to do is improve your understanding of something. Do more reading, attend more lectures, nail down the point of confusion and then start re-writing. The greater your understanding, the clearer your prose.

* Huff, R. 1983. 'Teaching Revision: A Model of the Drafting Process'. College English 45 (6): 800-816.

Well, this turned out to be a long one! If you find this blog helpful and are UK-based, I now offer workshops as an independent writing and language consultant, bringing the content of this blog to life in greater detail and with opportunities for face-to-face discussion and feedback. 

If you want know more or talk to me about a workshop or a series of workshops, 

• Hop onto my website and contact me www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk
• Visit me on Linked In and message me there: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290

I would love to hear from you. 😊

An Announcement

Hello Readers 😊

I am delighted to announce that I can now bring you this blog as an independent writing and language consultant and founder of Writing Works Consulting! My mission at Writing Works is to help you achieve your highest level of achievement and professional fulfilment through more effective writing and thinking. 

For many years an academic at the University of Sunderland (UK), I had the opportunity to work with students and research staff in my capacity as a lecturer, associate professor, and research writing mentor. As I taught, mentored, and led seminars, I realised the work of greatest and lasting value – and most pressing need across a range of disciplines and subject areas – was all about writing, thinking, and drafting. 

• How do you take a pile of random notes and turn it into a persuasive argument? 
• How do you sort and sift through all your material to know what you should say first, and then next, and so on, until your conclusion?
• How do you evaluate the information you’ve collected to communicate to your readers why it matters? 
• How do you move through successive drafts of your own work with deliberate purpose so that your final piece is effective and worthwhile? 

As regular readers will know, unpacking issues such as these and suggesting ways that you can roll up your sleeves, dig in, and actually do these things when you are writing your dissertation literature review has been my focus in this blog. 📕✍ 

As an independent writing and language consultant and founder of Writing Works Consulting, I will still be bringing you this blog. The only difference is that I can now, in addition to this blog, offer live workshops! 🎉 

If you are UK-based, like the contents of this blog, and would welcome the chance to practice the techniques set out here with direct feedback and guidance in a live workshop, contact me today to discuss a workshop for your research group. I can also discuss options for one-to-one support. 

You can

• Visit my Writing Works website: www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk
• Visit me on Linked In and drop me a message there: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290
• Email me directly at Writing Works: susan@writingworksconsulting.co.uk

I can’t wait to hear from you 😊

In the meantime, happy writing, thinking, and drafting! 📒🤔✍️ 

I Should Start with an Outline, Right?

It is that time of year again. August has drawn to a close and we are now into September. The shops have their school stationary front and centre – pens of all kinds, piles of printer paper, shiny new notebooks in all manner of designs, just waiting for your brilliant ideas. Ah, yes – the start of the academic year. 

If you’re an MA student or a doctoral candidate, these golden days on the cusp of autumn may find you embarking on your dissertation, which typically starts with your literature review. What’s out there on your topic? What do we already know, or think we know? What is the lay of the land in your subject? As the autumn sunshine streams through your window, you’ll be digging into a stack of research articles and filling up one of your shiny new notebooks or its electronic equivalent. 

So what do you do with all this material you are collecting – all the findings, all the quotes, all the conclusions, and all the thoughts you have about these things? How do you turn that into your literature review chapter? An outline!, you say to yourself in triumph. That’s how I’ll start. I’ll make an outline. And you turn to an inviting new page in your notebook. 

So that’s how you should start, right? With an outline? Well, hang on a minute there. I have been reading another fantastic book, David Allen’s Getting Things Done (Viking Penguin, 2001). While this is mostly geared towards defining and organising your flow of tasks to maximise productivity at work, an insight he shares applies here: if you haven’t actually written anything yet, what will you outline? 

When I work with people on drafts, they often ask Will an outline be okay? And my answer is generally something along the lines of Well, outlines can be very useful, but I don’t suggest it as a starting point. Here are 3 of the main reasons why. 

• Outlines may make you feel like you are getting something done, but this can lead to a false sense of productivity. You might wind up listing topics you have read in outline format and if you then use that outline to write your chapter, you’ll end up with a description of what you’ve read.

• Outlines may be a satisfying way to impose some order on your unruly collection of notes, but if you haven’t come to grips with what your argument is, the order you have come up with won’t be useful. An outline should reflect the structure of your argument. That is, your first point should be your research question, and every other point and sub-point should be your evidence, culled and curated from your reading notes, for why it should be asked. If you haven’t done that thinking yet, outlining is the equivalent of running in place – lots of energy spent without getting anywhere.

• Outlining can be a very tempting displacement activity. Coming up with your argument is hard – we all face that when we write our literature review. It is just intrinsically hard. Producing an outline can be a way fool ourselves into thinking we are going forward when in reality we are just avoiding the hard bit of grappling with what our argument is. 

So what to do, especially if you are required to produce an outline? I return to David Allen: do some drafting first. Turn your notes into a set of cards, with one single sentence or idea per card. Why does your research question need to be answered? When you have 3 main points backed up by evidence from your reading notes that answer that question, you are ready to start outlining. 

Did you find this blog useful? Would more detail and guidance be helpful? I am now an independent writing and language consultant, and founder of Writing Works Consulting (watch this space for more announcements!) I offer writing workshops and specialise in workshops on writing dissertation literature reviews. 

If you are UK-based and organising research development training for MA or doctoral students and like the content of this blog, visit me on Linked In (www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290) and drop me a message to discuss a workshop that is right for you. 

And if you found this post helpful, please share it with your networks.

Susan Mandala, PhD

Independent Writing and Language Consultant

Founder, Writing Works Consulting