Complete Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis

Writing a PhD thesis was one of the most challenging journeys in their lives, according to many of our customers. Make no mistake, PhD writing is an extremely rocky road by itself, even without considering the economic, political, and academic threats that may come into force in the next 3-7 years.

The worst thing you can do is to start your PhD journey without a clear plan of how you are going to get there, no matter what. This PhD writing guide summarises the insights of many PhD students that we have provided PhD thesis writing help to in the past.

Here is a 12-step plan to aid you in mapping a route through unfamiliar PhD territories.

1. Read the Manual

One widespread mistake made by hundreds of students is starting to write their thesis on a whim. Inspiration definitely plays its part in producing a novel piece of research. However, it is of no use when you have to delete 50 pages of quality text after suddenly finding out that you have missed some original requirements of your university.

The very first thing you must do is to:

1) Find 3-5 theses published by your specific department that passed within the previous 3 years. Tear them down structurally and content-wise. Create a mock-up ‘Frankenstein’ document with sample chapters and write down their approximate word count. Don’t pay too much attention to section and sub-section names since they will be adjusted multiple times during your writing process.

2) Find your official university guidelines on PhD thesis structure and compare your sample structure with these requirements. If you find any discrepancies between the two, clarify these issues with your supervisor. Make 100% sure that your PhD thesis structure matches both their suggestions and your university’s instructions. With that being said, some discrepancies are normal in most cases due to the uniqueness of each PhD thesis.

2. Choose a Favourite Reference Manager

A good PhD thesis may include several hundred references that all must follow strict referencing standards. You also need to keep all your sources available from any device to ensure seamless work from libraries, commuter trains, and any location where inspiration may strike you.

Try 3-4 reference management tools and find the solution that works best for you. You will thank yourself later when you’re not spending dozens of hours fixing your references right before the draft submission.

3. Start Big (Introduction Chapter Writing)

This section must answer the difficult question, “Why Should Anyone Really Care?”. You have to ‘sell’ your ‘Big Problem’ to the audience and substantiate your solution(s) for it. A good practice here is to first create a draft introduction section and update it later when you have all the cards. This will help you develop a convincing and focused chapter that works as an elevator pitch.

4. Showcase Your Knowledge (The Literature Review Chapter)

This step is usually the one that kick-starts your thousand-mile PhD journey. Start by developing the ideas from your proposal, and don’t be afraid to be descriptive or indecisive at first. The only way to overcome a PhD writing crisis is to start small and revise your drafts enough times afterwards. Here are some ideas that will help you ace your literature review:

1) Begin with the ‘Big Problem’

First, simply collect everything you know about your ‘Big Problem’ so far. Include all concepts, theories, and recent research. Ignore your Literature Review sections for now and use your earlier created draft structure.

2) Organise Your Concepts

As soon as you have all the relevant information ready, internal relationships between separate studies, theories, and concepts will start to show. Use these insights to organise the earlier collected knowledge and restructure your chapter accordingly if necessary.

3) Introduce Criticism

It may be difficult to explore your topics from multiple standpoints when you are just starting. Give yourself sufficient time to get acquainted with the key ideas in the field. Then, gradually move away from focusing on individual studies towards discussing overarching concepts and worldviews.

4) Clarify the Research Gaps

At this phase, you will be able to pinpoint the gaps in knowledge your thesis can address. Identify these areas and update your Introduction accordingly.

5. Provide Your Research Plan (Methodology chapter writing)

All strong methodology chapters follow the same golden rule. Any researcher must be able to fully replicate your study using only this section of your thesis. Make sure that you include:

1) Research philosophies, strategies, and approaches.

2) Data collection and processing methods.

3) Survey and interview forms.

4) Main expected findings and limitations.

5) The schedule of your study, its main participants, and its protocols.

6. Present Your Findings (Results)

In this section, you have to simply provide the things you have identified when collecting and processing your data. Don’t start the interpretation just yet. Here are some ideas on how you can organise your results section:

1) Use visualisation. A well-designed diagram makes your key findings instantly readable. This is convenient for both your PhD thesis reviewers and yourself since you may recognise additional patterns and correlations within your data.

2) Include all results. Some of your initial expectations may not be confirmed. This is perfectly fine. Make sure that you include all your results, including the negative ones.

3) Identify key interesting points for further discussion. Mark any emerging unexpected themes in qualitative analysis or (un)confirmed hypotheses in quantitative analysis.

4) Get familiar with your key findings and patterns within your analysis results. You will need a strong awareness of them during the next chapter.

7. Connect the Dots (Discussion chapter)

Here is where you need to get back to your Literature Review and discuss your findings in light of prior studies and theories. Here is how you do it:

1) Write down your key findings that are most interesting, unexpected or have the strongest statistical significance.

2) Link them with specific theories, studies, and earlier formulated expectations.

3) Identify whether your hypotheses or assumptions were confirmed or discarded.

4) Discuss your limitations and the areas where your results could be explored further in future studies.

8. Draw the Line (Conclusion chapter writing)

This section allows you to achieve several key targets:

1) Re-state your key findings and link them with your research objectives, questions, and hypotheses.

2) Explain why these insights matter and what contribution your thesis has made to your area of interest.

3) Formulate recommendations and future research directions.

Make sure that you do not introduce any new ideas, studies or theories during this phase of writing a PhD thesis. Effectively, this is where you draw the line and simply present the results of your hard work. Ensure that you strictly follow the contents of your results and discussion chapters.

Your conclusion is the second-most-important section after your introduction that your examiners will read right before evaluating the quality of your thesis and writing their reports. Make sure that both of them leave a strong and lasting impression.

9. Get Back to Where You Started (Revising Your Introduction)

Now, you have a completed thesis draft in your hands. The time has come to complete and revise your introduction section. By the end of this process, it must become your elevator pitch, convincing the reader to continue reading and helping them get acquainted with the rest of the thesis.

When you revise it based on all your findings, make sure that you ask several fellow students or researchers to read it and provide feedback. This review format is extremely simple but immensely powerful since working on your thesis for several years usually leads to fatigue. In this condition, you may be biased in your appraisals, which means that a second opinion may be invaluable to see some potential flaws or improvement areas.

10. Edit Ruthlessly

Make sure that you allocate several weeks to the editing and proofreading stage. If possible, use external readers, a PhD writing service or a professional editor to look at your thesis draft with a fresh pair of eyes. There is a good reason why even professional writers use such services.

Here are some questions you should review while editing and prooreading your thesis draft:

1) Does your thesis read like a good story?

An internal flow is crucial for building a convincing argument. Try opening a new document and summarising each paragraph of your thesis in one sentence. Next, see whether these ideas flow logically.

2) Can you cut out 20% of your thesis without losing much value?

A quality thesis must be 100% straight to the point. During your writing process, some paragraphs may fall off-topic, while some sentences may not clarify your ideas or bring much value. A good editor is ruthless in this aspect and is ready and willing to eliminate large chunks of your text. Keep in mind that your examiners rarely have time to read the whole thesis and frequently skim. Hence, you must be certain that its readability is superior in any section or paragraph.

3) How does your thesis sound?

The final test is to ask someone to read your thesis out loud or record yourself doing this. While this idea may sound weird at first, it instantly demonstrates whether your text is easy to comprehend. This extra test also helps with finding some missed typos and odd phrasing.

11. Check Your Formatting and Referencing

While this phase is extremely important, many students underestimate its relevance immensely and lose some marks as a result. The urge to ignore ‘minor’ issues such as formatting and referencing until the night before the submission is strong. However, this is the worst mistake you can make.

An experienced examiner may not identify some minor flaws in logic in your literature review if they do not have sufficient time to read it thoroughly. Yet, their trained eye will instantly recognise formatting inconsistencies and referencing typos while skimming through the text. Finding some missed formatting errors right in your introduction section rarely makes your reviewers happy and willing to grant you a ‘pass’ for your efforts.

12. Prepare for Your Viva

While submitting your final draft for examination may look like ‘the finish line’, you can still win some points to increase your chances of getting a ‘pass’ at the first attempt (or ‘with minor corrections’ if we are being more realistic). From our experience, successful PhD students thoroughly revise their PhD thesis and/or come to their viva exam with a colour-coded and heavily annotated draft containing bookmarks for key sections. Even if your university may not allow you to take such notes and answers to possible questions with you, such a process will help you better prepare for what is to come.

General Recommendations and Final Thoughts

Finally, it is possible to offer some general recommendations that apply to most sections and the PhD thesis writing phases discussed earlier.

1. Take Control of the Feedback

Some meticulous supervisors expect dozens of draft revisions. Rewriting your sections can be really infuriating and tiresome at times. A good way to minimise stress is to negotiate specific submission deadlines proactively on your terms by approaching them first. This way, you can send small chunks of your work by the agreed milestones (e.g., a single section or a single chapter) and proceed with further parts while waiting for supervisor feedback. Such an approach is infinitely better than getting revision requests at random times, which completely breaks your PhD thesis writing workflow.

2. Set the Rules Right from the Start

Previously, we suggested getting a reference manager early on to minimise the need for reference list revisions down the road. The same rule applies to document templates, section headings, table styles, and other formatting elements. Spending one day to develop a custom document template incorporating all university requirements in terms of document style can save you dozens of hours later. You simply define the rules from the start and follow them without thinking too much afterwards.

3. Be Ready for the Plateau

In any activity, at some point, you ‘hit the plateau’ when your hard work does not create any visible results for a long time. You also feel exhausted and uninspired, which also contributes to your impostor syndrome. The best strategy in such situations was suggested by Winston Churchill: “If you’re going through hell, keep going”.

Writing a PhD thesis in one month is simply not possible. When you are out of inspiration and cannot write 1-2 pages of high-quality text on a really bad day, switch to the revision of previous sections, proofreading, and editing. Such mechanical tasks still contribute to your end result and help you progress even when your productivity is low.