How soon should I begin my introduction for a PhD by publication?

Question

I'm in year 2 of my PhD, and have a fairly good idea of what papers I'm planning to get out of it by year 3. Is it too early to start writing the full introduction to the PhD? Or is it a good idea to get started early if I have a fairly good idea of what to work on?

Answer 1

I don't think that there are any hard and fast rules for this, irrespective of the discipline. I do think that the discipline might make a difference, but so too does the writer.

Like many writers, I find that writing helps me to discover what think. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I only really know what I think once I've written it down, decided that what I have written isn't quite right, and altered it to mean something closer to what I (think?) do think. A consequence is that I find it helps me to begin writing very early. I'm typically a very very slow writer. I rework sentences until I'm happy with them, rework paragraphs until I'm happy with those too ... but once I've finished as much as a paragraph, I find that it is likely to remain that way even if I don't use the paragraph in quite the place that I thought I would.

By starting to write early, I gain two things. First, I get ahead of the delay that my slow writing speed would otherwise cause. Second, I get paragraphs that I'm pretty happy with and can use en-bloc when I construct the final version of an introduction.

Other writers are very different. There are people in some (particularly empirical/experimental) disciplines who wouldn't dream of writing the introduction before writing the whole of the methods and results sections. They'd just see the writing of an introduction as a waste of time until the other sections are settled. I, on the other hand, find that even with empirical papers, doing something on the introduction helps me to formulate the kind of argument that I want to use to drive the whole thesis/paper, etc.

My suggestion would be that you take less notice of specific "start early" vs "wait" advice about writing an introduction and instead look particularly to your own history of writing.

In your undergraduate writing, in what order did you typically write things, be they essays, lab reports, or whatever? Which parts did you typically find hard? Are you a fluent, fast and easy writer, or do you congratulate yourself (like me) when you manage to write more than 150 words in a day?

Perhaps the best advice is to write whatever you can, whenever you can. Finishing a PhD can be hard. If you have bits of writing stored away, you will either be able to use what you have written in your final PhD ... or else the process of writing them will have provided you with good practice that will make writing easier later on.

Good luck!

Answer 2

It may matter what field your dissertation is in. I have just finished my dissertation, which comprised of 4 peer-reviewed articles, with an additional general introduction and general discussion, which are not peer-reviewed. I finished the four articles first, and then wrote the general introduction and general discussion in a couple of weeks. I used these sections to make a clear connection between the four articles. If I had written the introduction in an earlier stage, I would have probably had to rewrite virtually everything. For me, leaving it until the end was a good route to take. I had enough other stuff to focus on in the writing process.

Still, it could be a good idea to start the introduction now, if you think it would be beneficial for writing your papers later on, and if you are not yet able to start writing those. Even if you later on decide to scrap big chunks of what you've written now, they can be useful in deciding your direction, finding out what doesn't work etc. However, I personally would not prioritize your introduction before your papers.