studies cueing and branding the core is difficult, for you still
will not have begun the key stages of your research. But these
considerations need to come into even your early planning.
A key orientating device here is a rolling thesis synopsis of
three or four pages. This document is for your own use and for
your supervisors only. It greatly expands on your chapter plan
or contents page by giving a paragraph of writing about what
each chapter will say. The synopsis also expresses the main
‘storyline’ of your thesis. You should write your first synopsis as
early as possible in your first year. Thereafter it is vital to keep
revising it, so that it is permanently up to date and always cap-
tures your latest thinking. The whole point of a rolling synop-
sis is that you should never be writing or working into a
vacuum. As you work on one chapter you always need to have
a paragraph or so about what later unwritten chapters will
cover, and an accessible summary also of the key points made
in chapters already written. The rolling synopsis should always
concentrate on summarizing your substantive arguments and
conclusions – what you have claimed, what you have found
out, and what you hope to discover.
Focusing down or opening out
Thinking is a struggle for order and at the same
time for comprehensiveness.
C. Wright Mills^4Thinking is a conversation with imaginary
audiences.
Randall Collins^5There are three basic sequences of chapters for a doctorate,
which can be labelled the ‘focus down’ model, the ‘opening
out’ model, and the ‘compromise’ model.
The focus down model
The most common, and most awful, sequence records four
or five years’ work, more or less in the order that it happened.
PLANNING AN INTEGRATED THESIS◆ 53