The Challenge of Writing Up
This is the strongest week in the subject, and it earns that partly by being blunt about one thing: the document you finish is not the document you submit. What sits between them is a stage the material names clearly, declines to quantify, and its own worked schedule leaves out altogether.
What the week says writing is for
Most research-methods material treats writing as the thing that happens after the research. This week does not. It opens by giving writing a purpose — and the purpose it gives is not accuracy, completeness or compliance.
That framing is the same one a business case runs on: not a record of analysis, but an argument built on analysis and aimed at a reader who has to decide something. The week is saying a research report is the same kind of object.
The second sentence is the argument for the first. Nobody assesses your fieldwork or watches you code your transcripts. The only thing ever examined, cited or acted on is the account you wrote, which makes the quality of that account a hard limit on the value of everything underneath it.
The three stages, and what each one is for
- First draft
- Re-writing and editing
- Polishing
- Final draft
THE THREE STAGES AS THE SOURCE SETS THEM OUT
| Stage | What the source says happens | What you hold at the end of it | What the source does not say |
|---|---|---|---|
| First draft | Completing it is "a major milestone"; it is the point at which "you can see the scale of the research project" | A complete document of unknown quality | How long it should take, or what counts as complete |
| Re-writing and editing | Begins once the first draft is complete; the work is "re-writing, editing and re-editing" | A report whose argument has been tested against itself | What re-writing changes that editing does not, or how many passes suffice |
| Polishing | "At the polishing stage the final draft of the report comes into being" | The final draft | What polishing consists of, or where it stops being editing |
The three stages are the source's. The column of omissions is this library's.
The stages read as a line and the source half-admits they are a loop: it pairs re-writing with editing, then closes with "re-editing". The value of naming three is not that you pass through each once, but that the three demand different attention and are poor at each other's work.
Why the first draft is a milestone and not an achievement
The word the source chose is exact, and for this readership more exact than it probably intended. A milestone marks that something has happened. It has no duration, consumes no resource and delivers nothing on its own — a checkpoint in a schedule, not an item on a bill of materials.
It is important to remember that the first draft is simply that, the first draft. A great deal of work is done in producing the final draft of the report from the first draft.
That is the sentence to carry out of this page. The gap between first draft and final draft is not a tidy-up: it is a body of work large enough to take two of the source's three named stages.
What completing the draft actually buys you
The scale becomes visible
Until a whole document exists, the project is fragments and intentions. The draft is the first time anyone, including you, can see how much of it there is.
The argument becomes testable end to end
You can read your own case from question to conclusion and find where it stops following. That test cannot be run on a single section, which is why the draft must be whole before the second stage starts.
The remaining work becomes estimable
Before the draft exists, any estimate of writing effort is a guess. After it exists, the remaining work is re-writing against a known document — which is the moment to put a number in your plan.
Two claims about how much writing matters
If writing is equally important
- Writing is one of two obligations, alongside sound method
- A well-written report of weak research is still weak research
- Effort splits between doing the work and reporting it
- This is the reading that matches the earlier week's half-and-half time rule
If writing is the most critical aspect
- Writing is the only channel through which the work exists for anyone else
- An unreadable report of good research is, to the reader, indistinguishable from bad research
- The report's structure becomes a design decision, not a formatting one
- This is the reading the slide argues for in its own next sentence
The practical consequence is the same either way, which is why the contradiction is worth recording and not worth agonising over: writing is a scheduled activity with its own effort, not the residue of the activities around it. Where that time comes from is where the week goes quiet.
How long does the editing take?
The one quantified statement about writing time anywhere in the supplied material sits in an earlier week, in the research design step rather than in the writing step: "in allocating time, it is a good idea to plan half of your time for doing the research itself, and the other half for writing and rewriting." It is set out in full on Steps 9-10: Writing the Report and Storing the Data.
The same batch supplies the only complete worked project schedule in the dataset — a twenty-five-line thesis plan produced by a student, not by the teaching material, and analysed on What Goes Wrong in a Thesis Schedule. On this question it is instructive for what it lacks.
"Many parts of a report can be written early"
This is the most usable sentence on the slide and the least developed. It removes the assumption that writing begins when analysis ends — the assumption behind most write-up crises.
Material you already hold before results exist — the library's working list, not the source's
- The statement of the problem and the research question, if you wrote a proposal
- The literature review, which is written from reading rather than from data
- The methods as designed — what you intended to do, written while you are doing it
- Definitions of any specialised terms you have committed to
- The record of how access was negotiated and how the sample was selected
The last item repays the effort most and is done least. The week's own case study turns on a researcher who cannot write her methods chapter because she cannot remember how she negotiated access or devised her sample — a record-keeping failure rather than a writing one, examined on Overcoming Writer's Block.
Getting started: three instructions and no elaboration
What the three words do give you
- A sequencing instruction: begin before you feel ready
- An orientation: your reader is being persuaded, not merely informed
- A named input: somebody else's reading of your draft
What they do not give you
- How early is early, in a week with no editing allowance
- What persuasive writing looks like in a methods chapter
- Who to ask, what to ask them for, or which stage to ask at
Two of the three have material behind them elsewhere. "Be persuasive" points back to the opening slide's convince-and-persuade framing, which is the only elaboration the week offers. "Get feedback" is developed properly in the same week's supervision material — what to ask for, and at what level — on Seeking and Using Feedback. The subject's closing checklist repeats the instruction to draft early and show drafts to a supervisor: see The Do's and Don'ts of Social Research.
Working the three stages
The source names the stages and does not say how to run them. The sequence below is this library's, built on the three names the source gives and on nothing else; adapt it rather than following it as a specification.
A pass structure for the gap between first draft and final draft
Draft to completion, not to quality
The milestone is a whole document. Placeholders are permitted; gaps are not, because a gap is invisible in a table of contents and a placeholder is not. Stop editing sentences until every section has text in it.
Re-write for argument
Read the whole thing in one sitting, as a reader would, looking for where the case stops following: a conclusion the results do not carry, a literature review that never meets the findings. This pass moves and cuts material; it does not polish it.
Edit for accuracy and consistency
Now the smaller failures matter: figures that changed between chapters, a term used two ways, a citation that does not support the sentence attached to it, headings that no longer describe what sits under them.
Polish for presentation
Numbering, cross-references, tables, captions, and whatever formatting your institution actually publishes. The conventions this week states are on Structuring a Research Report.
Reconcile the abstract last
It was written earliest, revised least and will be read most. The week's own instruction is that the abstract is written last because it summarises the finished paper — see Writing an Abstract.
What to carry forward
- Three stages: first draft, then re-writing and editing, then polishing. The final draft comes into being at the third, not the first.
- Finishing the first draft is a milestone. It marks that work has happened and delivers nothing on its own — a great deal of work is done in producing the final draft from it.
- The week claims both that writing matters equally with research practice and that it is the most critical aspect of all. Both readings lead to the same action: schedule the writing.
- "Take as much time as is needed" is the only guidance on editing duration, and phrased that way it produces no task in a plan. Derive the allowance backwards from your submission date and name it.
- Many parts can be written early; the source does not say which. Decide from what you already hold — and keep the record of access and sampling as you go, because it cannot be reconstructed later.
Frequently asked questions
How much of a research report can honestly be written before the analysis is done?
The source states that many parts can be written early and never says which parts. What you hold before results exist is the problem statement, the literature review, the methods as designed and your definitions of specialised terms. Deciding from that list is your call; the material supplies the principle and no list.
How long should I allow for editing and polishing?
The week says only to take as much time as is needed, which is unquantifiable and produces no line in a schedule. The one quantified statement in the whole subject sits in an earlier week and puts half of the project's time into writing and rewriting as a single bucket, without separating drafting from editing. Fix a first-draft date and a submission date, and treat the calendar between them as the allowance.
What is the difference between re-writing, editing and polishing?
The source names all three and defines none of them. It pairs re-writing with editing and describes the work of producing the final draft as "re-writing, editing and re-editing", which suggests a loop rather than three single passes. The distinction this library works to is that re-writing changes the argument, editing corrects the document, and polishing prepares it for presentation.
Is the first draft supposed to be any good?
No, and the slide says so directly: the first draft is simply that, the first draft. The remark that the project's scale is "always impressive" at first sight is encouragement about how it feels to finish a draft, not a claim about draft quality.
Which claim about the importance of writing should I work to?
The week makes both — equal weight with good research practice, and the most critical aspect of all — and does not choose between them. It makes no practical difference: under either reading, writing is an activity with its own effort that has to be planned rather than absorbed.
Does the worked schedule in this material show how to plan writing time?
It shows the opposite, usefully. That student plan contains no re-writing, editing or polishing task at all, and only two days between its last content task and submission. Its figures are that one plan's own and are not benchmarks.
References and source attribution
- The supplied teaching source: weekly study notes, slide decks and assessment activities for a master's-level research methods subject in project management. Author, institution and year are not stated in the supplied files.
- The three drafting stages, the milestone framing and the "Getting started" triad are quoted from the Week 13 slide deck of that source.
- The time-allocation rule quoted in the editing section is from the research-design step of an earlier week of the same source.
- The worked thesis schedule referred to for its lack of an editing task is student work supplied with the same batch, analysed elsewhere in this library. Its durations and dates are that plan's own.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Which sections of a research report can I draft before my data is analysed?
- How do I put an editing allowance into a thesis schedule?
- What is the difference between re-writing and editing a research report?
- How do I tell when my first draft is actually complete?
- What does it mean to write a research report persuasively rather than descriptively?