'Just Structure Your Review Chronologically': Good Idea or Comfort Trap?

Order your review chronologically. You’ve probably come across this idea before – or maybe toyed with it yourself, especially if you’re sitting on a massive pile of notes and wondering what to do next. You know you have to corral it all somehow, give it some sort of structure, turn it into a chapter or section worth someone’s time to read. But how? 

The Temptation

This is when the chronological temptation starts creeping in. Every finding has a year on it. The years can be grouped together. Look, I can start right now – there’s a cluster from 2015 . . . 

It feels like you are doing something. If feels like you are bringing order to chaos. It feels like you are finally making progress and sorting it all out. 

Beware of those feelings. 

The Reality

There are many ways to bring order to chaos. You could organise findings alphabetically by the surnames of their authors. Or you could group findings by the different journals they appear in. Or according to the order you found them in. And so on. 

I’m being deliberately silly here, of course, but you see where I’m going. All of these examples are indeed ways to bring order to a chaotic set of findings, but they are pedestrian – the organising principle is purely mechanical and provides no insight or interpretation as to why the findings matter. 

A pedestrian structure doesn’t require you to dig into what you are ordering – it lets you skim along the surface and gives you the illusion of doing something useful. That’s why it can sometimes feel like a relief. 

But in reality, you are denying yourself the opportunity to discover something new and important about the body of findings you’ve collected. And if you haven’t done that, you can’t tell your reader about it, either. So what you are left with may be organised, like a cutlery drawer, but it is still descriptive. 

"When used for the wrong reasons, a chronology can result in a pedestrian structure. These don't require you to dig into what you are ordering – they let you skim along the surface, giving you the illusion you are doing something useful".

A chronological structure can fall prey to these weaknesses – at its simplest, all you need to do is scan years of publication and key topic words. This may be convenient from a writer’s point of view because it is relatively easy, straightforward to do, and does not require you to leave your comfort zone. But your job is not to do what is easy, straightforward, and comfortable. Your job is to establish why your research question needs to be in the world. 

When the Time is Right

Does that mean chronology is forever off limits? No. It can be an important part of the story of why your research question needs to be asked. 

For example, let’s say you dig into the research in your field, and you find that there are a few things, maybe one every decade or so, until 1975, when a key paper was published, and then suddenly the floodgates opened and dozens of papers started appearing every year, and the upward trend continues, and anyone who is anyone in your field cites that 1975 paper. 

"You may be denying yourself the opportunity to discover important things about previous work in your field – things no one else has noticed yet".

Does chronology matter here? Certainly. But that is not all that matters. What was the 1975 paper? What

were its key findings? How did those findings relate to the scant handful of papers that came out before it, and how have those findings gone on to influence the questions that are currently being asked in your field? If you dig into those patterns, you might be able to show that while that 1975 paper initially led to a number of productive research areas, it has in more recent years put a stranglehold on the research, with people generally finding more of what we already know rather than discovering anything new. Now THAT is a worthwhile thing to discover, and an avenue that can pave the way to your research. But chronology alone does not get you there – you also have to dig into the actual findings of the papers and identify the prevailing directions of travel. 

Make an Intentional Decision

So if you do find yourself using a chronological structure, think carefully about why you have made this choice. Have you explicitly chosen it because it genuinely matters to the case you are making for why your research question should be asked? Are you using it intentionally as an integral part of your argument? If so, full steam ahead. 

Or have you clutched at a chronological structure in default mode because the amount of reading you have feels overwhelming and you’re not sure what you’re supposed to be doing but you have to do something? If so, take a step back. Better yet, take a self-compassion break.

Be Kind to Yourself

Remind yourself that it’s natural and okay to feel overwhelmed – there is a lot of reading to do. It is also okay to be uncertain about what to do next – that is a normal part of learning something new, which is what research is all about. So take a few deep breaths, or a walk, or whatever you do to relax and regroup,  and then come back to the literature with curiosity. Make a list of the findings from the studies you’ve read so far. It that feels too huge, start with 20. Write the findings out on cards and do some sorting, putting like with like. What patterns begin to emerge? Why are they interesting? Do some journalling to answer these questions in your learning journal to maintain your open curiosity before you start formally drafting. 

And look at that! Some new insights have emerged, and you’ve come up with a promising direction for an argument. You’re on your way 😊 

Your Blog Author 

Your blog author is Dr Susan Mandala, founding director of Writing Works Consulting. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was for many years an academic at the University of Sunderland, where her favourite role was training PhD candidates to write literature reviews. 

A specialist in the study of language, writing, and style, Susan has 30 years of experience as a teacher, trainer, and workshop facilitator. She is dedicated to helping people turn great ideas into results with impact through clearer writing, sharper thinking, and more strategic use of language. 

She doesn't write for you – she empowers you to become your own best writer. 

She develops and delivers writing workshops in a range of areas, specialising in academic writing, grammar for writing, analytical report writing, and language awareness for creative writers. 

Her signature workshop, How to Really Write Your Literature Review, runs three times a year via Zoom in October, January and June (registration and payment through Eventbrite). Watch this space for when registrations next open!

If you are a research culture manager or commission research training for doctoral candidates, graduate students, or academic staff, contact me about a workshop for your institution. I’d love to hear from you 😊

• Book a free video chat: https://calendar.app.google/kwKTRArFjJxhu27r7
• Hop over to my website: www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk
• Connect on LinkedIN and DM me: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290

 “Wonderful workshop! This gave me a method to organise my thoughts and build a strong structure for my future papers” – Justin Andrushko

How Do I Stop Summarising and Start Synthesising? Top Tips to Keep You on Track in 2026

How Do You Stop Summarising and Start Synthesising? 

This is an excellent question. And a very fair one. Research textbooks, advisors, the handy checklists and self-study videos – all of them will tell you that a literature review must synthesise previous sources, not summarise them. 

Fine. But how do you do that? Advice on this is harder to find, leaving many of us tearing our hair out in frustration. I know that’s how I felt, back when I was surrounded by piles of papers and stacks of notes and wondering what on earth I was supposed to be doing with it all. 

That’s why I’m dedicating this blog, the first of 2026, to the how in how to stop summarising and start synthesising. 

But First, Some Preliminaries

Summarising is what happens if you describe individual studies one at a time (this study said this; that study showed that). This doesn’t put anything new in the world – it only reports on information that already exists. Synthesis, in contrast, is all about finding patterns in previous research and coming to grips with what those patterns reveal about your research question and why it should be asked. To synthesise, you need to take a good hard look at the findings from previous studies on your topic and figure out how they relate to each other – what story they tell about the direction of travel in your field and what impact your research question will have on that direction. 

You are not describing studies one at a time. You are analysing the findings from those studies to uncover relevant patterns. In your literature review, finding these patterns and setting out your account of why they matter is part of how you make your original contribution. A synthesis puts something new in the world; a summary describes what is already there. 

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

So how exactly do you go about doing this synthesis thing? First, isolate all the findings. I do this by quoting or paraphrasing each finding on individual note cards, one finding per card, each with an author/year/page attribution. Remember that one study might have multiple findings, so you need a card for each finding, not a card for each study. You can do this in batches as you proceed through your reading, updating as you go. But for each batch, you probably need 25-30 findings to start tracing out meaningful patterns. 

Looking for personalised help with the ins and outs of synthesis? Book on to one of my How to Really Write Your Literature Review workshops. For an evening session on January 13th, click here. For a morning session on January 16th, click here (all times are GMT; workshops are online via Zoom).

Once you’ve liberated the findings from the matrix of the studies so that you can concentrate on them, start your search for patterns. The best way to do this is by asking questions. 

The specific questions you ask will depend on your particular research area, but here are 12 examples to get you started, one for each month of our glorious New Year 🥳

1. Which of the findings are broadly in agreement?

Feeling Overwhelmed by Your Literature Review? This January 2026 Workshop Is For You

The Holiday Season Is Approaching Fast!

The winter break is nearly here. Classes finish soon, the marking will eventually be completed – if you’re doing any – your admin tasks will stay done for a while, and the meeting invites will slow to a trickle. At least for a bit (!!) 

And you’ll have what every research writer wants: clear, unbroken time to sit down and finally make some progress. It's the perfect opportunity to dig into your literature review, to ‘locate your work in the context of your field’ and all that. 

“There’s plenty of training for methodology and methods. But for the literature review? Somehow, you’re just supposed to know about that, without much training.” 

Excellent! But how will you go about doing that, exactly? You start going through your notes. You’ve got piles of stuff on methodology and methods, pages and pages on analysis, and a whole separate notebook on ethics. But for your literature review? Hmm. There was an assigned chapter from one of the textbooks, and a self-study tutorial with a handy checklist: Don’t describe studies. Critically evaluate. Sectionise your review. Don’t summarise, synthesise. 

Not bad advice, as far as it goes. You should be critically evaluating instead of describing, synthesising instead of summarising, and eventually your literature review will need subheadings. But there’s not much how in the how-to here. There's plenty of material and help to be had on methodology and methods. But the literature review? Somehow, you’re just supposed to know that – without much actual training. 

How to Really Write Your Literature Review: A Lifeline 

That’s why I created How to Really Write Your Literature Review, for researchers just like you who may be feeling overwhelmed and confused by this thing called ‘the literature review’.

“If you like the content of this blog, now you can get even more great advice in my workshop, 'How to Really Write Your Literature Review.' Join me and dig into what the guidebooks leave out.” 

In this workshop, I cut through all the confusion and show you what you really need to know to write your literature review. You’ll learn how to: 

• Break out of the description trap
• Turn a pile of notes into a case for your research question 
• Move from critiquing single studies to analysing a body of scholarship 
• Identify patterns and trends in previous research (spotting that mysterious ‘gap’) 
• Use these patterns and trends as evidence in your argument 
• Organise and rhetorically craft your review 

“The approachable, informal delivery meant that we moved from basic concepts to tackling review ourselves without a bump in the road” – Iain Rowan, Academic Registrar

Spaces are Limited So Book Your Place Now 

Don’t let frustration derail your dissertation. Book your place now and keep your work on track with How to Really Write Your Literature Review. You can book a session in the morning or the evening, whichever suits your schedule or time zone. 

• 🌠Evening Session:
• 🗓️ Tuesday 13 January 2026 
• 🕔 5:00 – 8:00, GMT 
• 🛜 Online via Zoom 
• 🟢 £85 per person 
•  👉 Register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-to-really-write-your-literature-review-tickets-1720686643069?aff=oddtdtcreator

•  🔆 Morning Session:
•  🗓️ Friday 16 January 2026 
• 🕘 9:00 am – 12 noon, GMT 
• 🛜 Online via Zoom 
• 🟢 £85 per person 
• 👉 Register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-to-really-write-your-literature-review-tickets-1720689942939?aff=oddtdtcreator

Lasting Value 

For the price of the workshop, you also get a bundle of freebies to support you as you put what you've learned into practice. 

• Access to up to 3 Zoom drop-in sessions with me for follow-up questions
• A PDF with answers to FAQs, such as 'How do I know when I’m finished?' 
• A learners’ pack outlining the techniques introduced for future reference

🔗Know anyone else who might be interested? Please share this blog to your network. 

Your Blog Author and Workshop Deliverer 

Dr Susan Mandala is founding director of Writing Works Consulting. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was for many years an academic at the University of Sunderland, where one of her favourite roles was training PhD candidates to write literature reviews. A specialist in the study of language, writing, and style, she has 30 years of experience as an educator, trainer, and workshop facilitator. 

“Susan is a great teacher and this clear and well-structured workshop really helped to give me the confidence to move forward with my research” – Jane Pickthall 

Want More Information Before You Book? 

• Leave a comment below here on the blog 
• Connect on LinkedIn and DM me: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290
• Visit my website and email me: www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk
• Book a FREE video chat: https://calendar.app.google/kwKTRArFjJxhu27r7

I look forward to hearing from you! 😊

On the Art of Intentional Drafting: Confronting the Hard Questions

Drafting: Preparing Preliminary Versions of Whatever It Is You’re Writing

 As with most definitions, this tells you what a draft is, but not why it’s important. If you didn’t know anything about drafting and read this definition, you still wouldn’t know much because the important bits are left out, such as what drafting is for and how you go about it. 

That’s why this month’s blog is dedicated to the art of intentional drafting and why it matters when you’re writing your literature review. 

The Three Phases of Drafting 

In what is still one of the best accounts of academic writing I’ve ever read, Roland Huff points out that drafting has three main phases. The first phase is generating, where you just get things down – thoughts, ideas, topics, reading notes, bits of analysis, quotes, questions – it all just gets thrown down on page or screen, in whatever order and without worrying too much about grammar, punctuation or spelling. 

The second phase is the much more disciplined problem-solving phase, where you consciously wrestle with what you’ve generated. What, ultimately, do you have? What is it telling you? What is your argument? What is the evidence for that argument? What order should you put it in? 

The third phase is editing, dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, checking the spell check, making sure you’ve quoted accurately, and so on. 

Are You Skipping the Problem-Solving Phase? 

In my experience – doing my own writing, mentoring others, and reading thousands of drafts – I find that we are very good at phase one, the free-form unmonitored generating phase of drafting. It fits well with the ricocheting way our thoughts work, pin-balling from one thing to another in a seemingly random fashion. 

"Have you confronted your biases? Or have you only included work that supports what you already believe?"

We also tend to be very good at the third phase of drafting, editing. That can feel very satisfying. We merrily go through our draft, ticking things off our list. Completed that sentence, fixed that footnote, corrected that quote, sorted all the places I said ‘their’ when it should have been ‘there’. (Homophones! They get me every time!). 

So when we are writing, there is a tendency, perhaps even a temptation, to generate ideas in phase one, edit those in phase three, and then think the job is done. 

Do the Writerly Heavy Lifting – Your Literature Review Will Thank You 

And that’s where the problem starts, because it skips phase two, the heavy-lifting phase. That’s why you

get feedback such as Good ideas, but needs development or You’ve done some good reading, but this just summarises or Have you sent the right file? 

The second phase is the hardest, and the most frustrating, and the most time consuming. But it is crucial. 

It is in this second phase of drafting that you face and resolve the questions that matter, the questions that will decide whether your literature review does its job or just rehashes stuff that’s already been said. 

• Can you answer the ‘so what’ question for what you’ve read? If not, why not? 
• Is your evidence solid, or do you need to do more reading?
• Have you done a fair assessment of work that disagrees with your position? 
• If something you’ve read requires you to change your position, have you? 
• Have you skipped over things simply because you didn’t understand them? 
• Have you confronted your biases? 
• Or have you just included work that supports what you already believe? 

When you embrace it and let it do its work, the second phase of drafting will also reveal to you errors in your thinking as you wrestle with your argument. And we all make these errors. It is part of the process of growing and learning as you write. 

Here's an example from my own work. When I was writing my book on science fiction (sf), I encountered a lot of literary critics who argued that sf produced flat characters. I was determined to argue the opposite and show that there were plenty of round characters. And I realised, during the second phase of drafting, that I was flouncing around like a spoiled child, taking what were essentially flat characters and trying to force them into being round simply because I wanted to make an oppositional argument. 

"As if by magic, the new path through my chapter laid itself out before me."

Crestfallen, I took myself in hand and confronted the hard question: Were the critics right? Did sf produce mostly flat characters? Would I have to scrap this chapter or write something weak and concessionary? And then it hit me: well yes, sf did produce flat characters. But are flat characters necessarily uninteresting? Or worse than round ones? Those were the questions I needed to explore. The issue wasn’t flat characters in sf; it was the assumption that they were necessarily unliterary that needed to be tackled. As if by magic, the new path through the chapter laid itself out before me. If I had run away from the hard questions that the second phase of drafting revealed to me, I would never have seen that path. 

And finally, it is in this second phase of drafting where you do the work of greatest consequence for your literature review: you nail down your argument and put together a rock-solid case for why your research question needs to be asked. You establish why your research is going to make an original contribution to knowledge. 

So by all means, generate excellent ideas. Be a thorough editor. But don’t skip the hard part. 

References

Huff, Roland. 1983. ‘Teaching Revision: A Model of the Drafting Process’. College English 45 (6): 800-16. 
Mandala, S. 2010. Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Question of Style. London: Continuum. 

Your Blog Author 

Dr Susan Mandala is founding director of Writing Works Consulting. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was for many years an academic at the University of Sunderland, where her favourite role was training PhD candidates to write literature reviews. 

A specialist in the study of language, writing, and style, Susan has 30 years’ experience as a teacher, trainer, and workshop facilitator and is dedicated to helping people turn great ideas into results with impact through clearer writing, sharper thinking, and more strategic use of language. 

She develops and delivers writing workshops in a range of areas, specialising in academic writing, grammar for writing, and analytical report writing. 

Her signature workshop, How to Really Write Your Literature Review, runs three times a year via Zoom in October, January, and June (registration and payment through Eventbrite). Watch this space for when registrations next open!

If you are a research culture manager or commission research training for doctoral candidates, graduate students, or academic staff, contact me about a workshop for your institution. I’d love to hear from you. 

• Book a free video chat: https://calendar.app.google/kwKTRArFjJxhu27r7
• Hop over to my website: www.writingworksconsulting.co.uk
• Connect on LinkedIN and DM me: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mandala-phd-6a94b7290

 “Susan’s workshop was just what I needed.” – Jane Pickthall

How to Really Write Your Literature Review: A Workshop for You

 A Blog for the New Academic Year 2025-2026

It can easily happen when we’re new to this whole business of enquiry. Maybe you’re a PhD candidate or a professional moving from practice into research. You’re committed, passionate about your subject, and excited about making a contribution to knowledge. You’ve got a rock-star question and an outline of your methods. But you've hit a snag. Your literature review. 

You have a gigantic pile of studies stacked around your desk -- or a file full to bursting on your computer, depending on how you prefer to do these things. You’ve done the recommended reading in the how-to books, sat through the self-study tutorials, and followed the easy-step guides. It’s still not entirely clear from all this what you are expected to do, exactly, but you give it your best shot. 

"You love your research. You can’t wait to dig in. But you’ve hit a snag. Your literature review."

You sink months into a draft -- frustrating, hair-tearing, pen-chewing months. Surely, that will do the trick. But the feedback when it comes is like a punch in the stomach: Too descriptive. Critically evaluate the studies. Link them together. Don’t summarise, synthesise. You sink into your chair and randomly thumb the pages. Link the studies? Synthesise? What does that even mean?! 

 

How to Really Write Your Literature Review: A Workshop to Keep You on Track 

Here at Writing Works Consulting, I understand the challenges you face as a new researcher. I’ve been there. There is plenty of advice on what to do, but very little on how. That’s why I’m delighted to announce that my workshop How to Really Write Your Literature Review – for new researchers just like you – is now available to take online. 

 “If you find this blog helpful, you can now get even more great advice in my workshop How to Really Write Your Literature Review.”

In this workshop, I cut through all the confusion and show you what you really need to know to write your literature review. You’ll learn how to: 

• Break out of the description trap 
• Turn a pile of notes into a case for your research question 
• Move from critiquing single studies to analysing a body of scholarship 
• Identify patterns and trends in previous research (spotting that mysterious ‘gap’) 
• Use these patterns and trends as evidence in your argument 
• Organise and rhetorically craft your review 

 “Susan’s workshop was just what I needed.” – Jane Pickthall 

Spaces are Limited So Book Your Place Now

Don’t let frustration derail your dissertation. Book your place now and keep your PhD on track with How to Really Write Your Literature Review. 

• Date:14 October 2025 
• Time: 5:00-8:00, BST 
• Where: On-line via Zoom 
• Cost: £85 per person 
•  Register: Via Eventbrite ⬇️

 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-to-really-write-your-literature-review-tickets-1692672040639

 Lasting Value 

 For the price of the workshop, you also get a bundle of freebies to support you as you put what you've learned into practice. 

• Access to up to 3 Zoom drop-in sessions with me for follow-up questions. 
• A PDF with answers to FAQs, such as 'How do I know when I’m finished?' 
• A learners’ pack outlining the techniques introduced for future reference. 

➡️ Know anyone else who might be interested? Please share this blog to your network. 

Your Workshop Deliverer and Blog Author

Dr Susan Mandala is founding director of Writing Works Consulting. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was for many years an academic at the University of Sunderland, where one of her favourite roles was training PhD candidates to write literature reviews. A specialist in the study of language, writing, and style, she has 30 years’ experience as a teacher, trainer, and workshop facilitator.

 “The approachable, informal delivery meant that we moved from basic concepts to tackling review ourselves without a bump in the road, and Susan was constantly guiding and provoking the group to take us further.” – Iain Rowan

Can I Use an AI to Summarise Research Papers for Me?

😞 This blog begins with a big sigh because, yes, these days, you can now use an AI to summarise papers for you. 

➡️ But should you?

That is another question entirely. 

You’ll make your own decision on this one as the glorious, sovereign individual you are. 😊

⚠️ But speaking for myself, my decision on this one is a very firm NO and in this blog I outline three reasons why. 

📚 If you get an AI to summarise a paper for you, you are not reading it for yourself. It doesn’t matter how good the summary is, or how thorough, or how shiny the new AI is. 

If you yourself don’t read the original, you can’t really know what it said. 

You remain ignorant of the paper’s actual premises and claims because you don’t have any real knowledge -- you only have what Shane Parrish (2023: 165)* calls the ‘illusion of knowledge’. Your job in your literature review is to evaluate previous work to make the case for why your research question should be asked, and you can’t make any good decisions about that if you haven’t actually read any of that previous work. 

➡️ If you want to develop a secure understanding of what a source says and why it matters, you simply have to read it for yourself. There is no substitute for this. 

📚 When we report on our research, we are responsible for the claims we make. We cannot stand by what we have said if we don’t really know anything. 

Let’s say you have used an AI to summarise papers for you and have written your literature review based on those summaries. What will happen when a reader – your examiner, perhaps – says something like ‘I see here you have dismissed X’s finding about Y. On my reading of X, this dismissal is perhaps hasty. Tell me more about your decision here.’

😟 What will you say? You can’t really account for the decision because you haven’t made it – an AI has. And you can’t have a wider discussion of X’s work because you haven’t read X yourself. 

➡️ Summarising is not a neutral act. It is a series of value judgements. When we are doing our research, we need to be the ones making those judgements so that we can take responsibility for them. 

📚 We diminish our own experience and de-skill ourselves if we outsource our reading of original papers. To demonstrate this, let me tell you about a little experiment I did. I took a foundational paper in my field, H.P. Grice’s Logic and Conversation **, that I had not used in a while, re-read it thoroughly and carefully as the me I am today (different from the me when I last read it), and wrote my own summary of it. 

🤖 I then got ChatGPT to do a summary of the same paper and compared the two reading experiences – the reading of the AI summary, and my reading of Grice’s original. 

🟥 The AI version was a summary of summaries, a pre-digested compilation of tertiary sources. It was the consensus view of Grice, what most people remember about the paper. The problem with this is that the ‘remembered’ version drifts away from the original over time, so if we depend on that we aren’t really engaging with the original. 

Reading the AI summary was flat, perfunctory, soon forgotten, and meant little. There was nothing in it I didn’t understand, so there was nothing I had to struggle with or learn. It stimulated no curiosity, no sense of agreement or disagreement, and led to no questions. There were no ‘Hang on a minute, what does this really mean?’ moments. 

🟩 Reading Grice himself was a deep and valuable learning experience that will go on to inform other learning experiences I will have. There were things I had to grapple with, even on a re-read, because the original is complex and multi-layered. 

🔑 But what struck me the most in my comparison between the AI summary and the original was Grice’s inimitable style. Something of the man Grice was reached me through his style. It was a style I could learn from, a language that enriched my own. In my reading of the original, I was in touch with the living, breathing soul who wrote it. 

🔴 What am in touch with when I read AI generated text? 

➡️ We sometimes think of style as inconsequential, some sort of optional extra when write. But that is not the case. Style is expression of our humanity. 

🤔 Will you use an AI to summarise papers for you? That’s up to you. But consider carefully what the actual gains and losses are as you make that decision.

* Parrish, S. 2023. Clear Thinking: The Art and Science of Making Better Decisions. Penguin Random House UK

** Grice, H.P. 1975. 'Logic and Conversation', in Cole, P. and Morgan, J. (eds.). Syntax and Semantics: Volume 3: Speech Acts. 41-58. New York: Academic Press. 

✳️✳️✳️✳️✳️✳️✳️✳️

Susan Mandala, PhD | Writing and Language Awareness Consultant | Founder and Director, Writing Works Consulting

Susan is dedicated to helping everyone she works with achieve greater personal and professional success through more effective writing, thinking, and use of language. 

➡️ She specialises in dissertation literature review workshops for doctoral candidates and academics new to research.

➡️ Interested in workshop? Contact Susan to discuss a workshop or short course.

🟢 Leave a comment here on the blog. 

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

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

But Does My Literature Review Sound Clever Enough?

✍This is a common worry, and a particularly pernicious one. You’ve just got absorbed into your work, you’re feeling motivated, you’ve started noticing interesting connections between sources, and then 💥BAM!💥 Am I doing it right? All the papers I read sound so clever! I don’t sound like that! How can I ever establish myself as an expert with this mess?! Fear and doubt rear their ugly heads and then paralysis sets in. You’d set aside the whole morning to get some real work done, but now? Impossible. Your pen falters on the page and it feels like there's a weight crushing down on you.

🤫 I’m going to let you in on a secret. 

All those papers you are reading 📚 -- the ones that sound so clever, the ones by the biggest and most established names in your field -- they all began as sloppy, messy drafts, every single one of them. And that is because drafts are supposed to be sloppy and messy. That’s their job. 

➡️ No one’s draft sounds clever. 

That’s all very well for a draft, you might say, but the final product has to sound clever. How do I get from here to there? A good point. And here is my counter-intuitive answer:

✳️ Sounding clever is one of those things that emerges while you are doing other things, an insight inspired by John Kay's Obliquity (Profile Books). 

➡️ So stop trying to sound clever and do those other things. Here are some ideas to get you started. 

🟣 Be curious. That paper you are reading now – does it use a statistical test you don’t know? That’s interesting. Take 15 minutes to look it up. Or maybe there’s a theoretical approach that seems particularly popular in your field. Why is everyone jumping on that bandwagon? That would be interesting to know. 

🟣 Be visual. Free yourself from the tyranny of the screen and experiment with some storyboarding techniques. Most literature reviews start with ‘There are many studies on X’ and end with ‘And therefore we need to ask Y’. ‘Y’, of course, is your research question. Write these two sentences out on cards. Put the first one at the top of your work space, and the last one at the bottom. Now take all the findings from previous studies you've read. Convert those into cards and start sorting. What patterns do you find? Map out the journey, step by logical step, between your start and end points.

🟣 Ask genuine questions. Start with that first paper in your to-read stack. Work out what it’s arguing and what its main findings are, and then read the rest of your allotted papers for the day in who-dunnit mode, recording the answers as you go. Who agrees with the first paper? Who disagrees? Which findings point in the same direction? Which do not? Who goes off in a different direction entirely? Who do you think makes the strongest arguments, and the weakest? Having assessed the evidence, what in your view does the weight of evidence suggest?

🟣 Remember your true purpose. The point of your literature is not to sound clever. The point of your literature review is to make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. Concentrate on making the case. 

🟣 Remember that the very act of reading is strengthening your style. There is a curious connection between reading and writing: the more you read in the style in which you want to write, the better you will get at it, naturally and without trying. 

💡I’ll leave you with one last insight. It’s not really about sounding clever. It’s about knowing your stuff. Work out your argument. My research question needs to be asked because . . . Work out the answer to that, the main points that support that answer, and the evidence for each point. Once you've done that, sounding clever takes care of itself.