McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Any Grad Students/Scientists/Technical Writers?
superpsycho:
--- Quote from: cass on April 14, 2014, 02:01:10 AM ---Or to the free beer offered by the conference organizers! (No joke. The lines wrap around entire aisles in the exhibit hall.) It's kind of comforting, really: one lousy talk won't derail your career.
There's a certain amount of lack-of-expertise inherent in any committee that is required to have members from outside the field, not to mention a certain amount of...reluctance? to adopt mathematical methods in a field that is traditionally dominated by observation and (verbal) description. I'm going to have to write my thesis in accessible language for those reasons, but I also want to write in a style that's understandable to everyone. I hate it when technical papers play "hide the verb" with subordinate clauses-- it makes it really hard to grasp the authors' main argument.
--- End quote ---
Like any good mystery, you have to ask interesting questions then answer them until you've laid out the whole story. If you just say the first step is to determine such and such, then it's going to be pretty dry. If instead you say, the first question is 'can we determine such and such, within a specific range of accuracy, considering we have these variables', then you've got a chance people will pay attention. If the answer isn't obvious, then they'll want to know the answer.
Amber:
I tend to start with my figures. I'll construct a general outline of the paper by ordering the figures in the way I want to tell my story. Write up that results section first, sometimes only in outline form, then fill it out as I go. The most painful part for me is always the introduction/literature review.
I've done a lot of writing both academically (despite quitting pre-PhD) and in a corporate setting. The two are very different writing styles. It's always useful to consider the audience. I hate science writers who purposefully make the language inaccessible, so I tend to write in plainer language than my advisers ever liked, though my bosses in the corporate world seem to prefer it.
Walking Man:
I'm just a baby grad-student (only one year into my Master of Polisci) but from what I've done so far I can say that fiction and academic work are like night and day. Like baseball and golf, both involve hitting a ball with a stick, but that's as far as the similarities go. That said, I'm hoping to one day be published in both of those categories so any advice on either would be appreciated.
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