写作方法

本节介绍如何写作。包括如何选择要写作的第一章，写作中的各种方法。

从“导论”开始写，还是从正文开始写？

哈佛历史写作指南中说：从引言开始写，可以增强你的动力，因为你可以首先轻松地解释你的主题，提供历史背景，回顾历史，并概述你论文的其余部分。然而，你也要注意，一般来说，在你写完整个论文后，引言会需要大量修改，以适应最终论文。你也可以选择从正文章节开始。这可能看起来令人望而生畏，但在写完三个案例研究之一或涵盖三分之一的叙述后，您可能会感觉更好。当然，在写作中间的章节时，请务必概述之前和之后的内容。

在写作上，有如下方法：

详见附录的英文原文

参考文献


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附录：写作方法原文

At this point in the process of writing your thesis, you should have a welldefined research quest, an annotated bibliography, and enough research accomplished to be able to construct a detailed argument and write a useful thesis outline.

Perhaps the hardest part, at least for me, is not the research but the writing stage. My solution to this difficult stage is to imagine someone who is interested in hearing about my work, someone who makes me excited about talking about my work. Writing then becomes a series of imagined conversations, attempts to persuade my imagined listener about what I want to argue. Presenting your work for your peers could be an occasion to enact these imagined conversations and get good feedback as well.”

如何论证（Argument）

What is an argument, and why do you need one?

The argument is the core of your paper, its purpose. Its quality determines the potential of the contribution of your paper, though the quality of your research is responsible for whether or not you succeed in making your argument, and the quality of your writing will determine whether anyone enjoys reading your thesis, or, for that matter, understands it.

The best arguments answer a critical question or solve a puzzle. The most common questions or puzzles are those that address a gap in the scholarly literature, or a logical or thematic inconsistency in the literature. Another common type of argument is one that recasts, refutes, or re-interprets the prevailing arguments of other scholars, either with new evidence or different readings of an existing body of evidence. Your argument is likely to be of a level of complexity such that it will take several pages to fully set it out in the final draft of the thesis. That said, if you are unable to condense your central argument to a few clear sentences, consider whether or not it needs clarification.

When and How to Write an Argument

Some people start work on their thesis with a provisional argument, a sense of what they intend to establish. Others start with a topic, and only formulate an argument once they have a certain amount of material in hand. Either approach is valid.

The most important step is to refine your question or problem as much as possible. Think about the assumptions you are making in asking the question. Can you break down the question into more precise, derivative questions? If so, see if hypothetical answers to those questions change the initial question at all. In other words, make sure you are asking the right question. It should be a “how” or a “why” question. Only rarely will a “what,” “when” or “who” question work as the basis of a thesis argument; in most cases such questions are meant to challenge or refute conventional wisdom as an alternative to asking a how or why question. (For example, to ask whether women had a Renaissance is really to ask how historians go about periodization, how they measure eras and why they account for some people and not others.)

One useful strategy is to write out your argument in the simplest, clearest language possible, in a way that would be intelligible even to a person unfamiliar with your discipline. One form it might take is a simple, clear question and a suggested answer. Write out the argument on an index card, tape it up near your computer, and refer to it often. Revise it as necessary.

How to Situate Your Argument within the Existing Literature

Some theses contain an entire chapter that situates the argument within wider debates in their field of study; others explicitly integrate the secondary literature chapter by chapter. A review of the related literature can establish the importance of your topic, bring the reader up to date on previous scholarship related to it, and help justify your theoretical approach and methodological choices. Be selective; it is neither necessary nor desirable to mention everything you have read. Consider carefully which are the most important and influential texts in the relevant field, and which are most germane to your topic. It is not appropriate to use this section to provide a chronology of your personal reading history, nor to string together a series of book reports. The goal is to map the contours of the intellectual dialogue and to place your work within it.

In what way is your argument unique?

Has anyone else written about your precise topic? Has the same evidence been examined but different conclusions drawn? Are you comparing two things that have yet to be set side by side? Are you seeking to overturn another scholar’s argument? Are you applying an argument you’ve encountered elsewhere to a different data set?

Making sure that you understand how your argument differentiates your thesis from other works of scholarship will help make clear what is most relevant to emphasize in the secondary literature. Writing a brief “state of the question” that summarizes the work of people who have asked similar and related questions will help you to refine your own argument.

How are you going to execute your argument?

What techniques of argumentation might be useful?

In general, the thesis should employ inductive, not deductive, reasoning: that is, work from the evidence you have found to structure an argument; do not choose your evidence to support a pre-determined argument.

Argumentation should be as explicit as possible. Never write by implication. That is to say, you must connect all the dots between your pieces of evidence. You must not rely on the reader to infer connections that you have not made explicit.

Remember that it is not enough to simply make your own argument in a work of this length. You should also account for alternative explanations and approaches. Either explicitly or implicitly, address the most important objections that might arise to your argument. The secondary literature you have read might help you in providing some alternate perspectives. It is just as important to acknowledge works that countervail against your own work as those that support it.

利用大纲（Outlining）

An outline is a formal, hierarchical schema of your thesis. Depending on what kind of writer you are, you may find it to be more or less useful. Given the scale of the thesis project, we recommend that everyone try making an outline as an organizational exercise before writing.

Remember that although your outline defines an order for your thesis, it won’t necessarily turn out to be the final order. You may find that the requirements of narrative flow shuffle the order of subtopics. In the end, the outline is merely a tool; when writing, let it help remind you of your priorities, but do not let it dictate your paper’s form. However, the process of outlining, if done thoughtfully, should help you to establish the scale and priority difference between topics and subtopics. It can also aid you in assessing whether or not your project is of an appropriate scale. Does it look like you have enough supporting evidence? Is your thesis composed of so many disparate parts that it might benefit from a more narrow focus?

Before you write each individual chapter you should re-outline that chapter in greater detail. Periodically re-assessing your outlines will enable you to assess your progress, as well as the strength with which you are making your argument, as you move from researching to writing your thesis.

How to Organize a Chapter

A chapter is similar in length and organizational type to a typical term paper. It requires its own introduction, exposition, and conclusion. Ideally, each chapter will be able to stand on its own as a substantive piece of work. That said, your chapters should build upon each other, and it is wise to avail yourself of opportunities to build upon arguments you’ve already established, or narratives you’ve begun, both for purposes of continuity, and to add richness and complexity. Each chapter should open with an introduction, which sets out the chapter’s central claim and provides a preview of organization, but which also situates it in relation to the larger project and to the previous chapter. Be sure to write informative headings and, if appropriate, subheadings. Give extra attention to intermediary transitions. In a project of this length it is more important than in a term paper to remind the reader of where your argument has come from, where it is headed, and how sub-arguments relate to each other and to the larger context.

How can you structure your thesis to reflect the methodological approach you’ve chosen?

The chapters should reflect clearly defined aspects of your argument. If you are writing an analytical thesis, think of them as thematic components, or pieces of a puzzle. Or if you are writing a historical narrative, think of them as layers of a cake, or as chronological sections along a line of argument. If you’re writing in the sciences, think of them as logical steps in the process of scientific experiment.

What belongs in the introduction and conclusion of the thesis?

As the first and last impression you will leave on your reader, the introduction and conclusion are in many ways the most important parts of the thesis. The quality of your prose matters even more in these sections, and you should take especial care in making them clear, lively, convincing, and memorable. The introduction has three important purposes: introducing your topic and argument, providing a “map” to your thesis, and drawing in your reader. After finishing your introduction, a reader ought to understand what question your thesis seeks to answer, what your chosen methodology is, and why it’s the most fruitful approach to your topic.

The introduction may be the part of the thesis that goes through the most drafts. Often, students revise their introductions as they compile further research and refine their arguments. This can be a useful exercise in re-orienting yourself to your project as it evolves. Some people get good results from writing introductions—or a fresh draft of the introduction—last. While you should not leave the introduction of your entire thesis as a conceptual blank until the final hours, you may find that you do a better job describing what you are going to write once you have indeed written much of it.

Your conclusion should give a sense of the stakes of the paper: why and how are your discoveries important, meaningful, or useful? What future research might they indicate? How do they relate to larger problems or inquiries? When writing your conclusion, be sure to synthesize, not summarize your thesis (or, worst of all, recapitulate its points in order).

Your conclusion should demonstrate, rather than simply insist, that your argument, evidence, and examples cohere into a larger whole. Remember the golden rule: show, don’t tell.

Be careful with epigraphs. When beautifully chosen, they can illuminate the tone or import of your thesis. Yet it is easy to fall back upon a clichéd quotation, or for that matter, one imprecisely related to the topic at hand, which can cheapen the effect. Similarly, beware of either beginning or ending sections, chapters, or the thesis itself with quotations. Rely upon your own words to introduce and sum up the most important sections of your thesis

“Once you start writing, go back to the library and read some of your sources again-once you’ve got your argument and you’ve been working on it for a while, you’ll see things in those books that you didn’t see the first time you read them.”