What is it you’re trying to say? How to make sure you get your point across.

Chances are you’ve got a writing project on the go right now. A chapter from the PhD, or a conference paper. Maybe you’re lucky enough to be working on a full draft of the thesis.

But whatever it is you’re writing, are you sure you know what it is you’re trying to say?

Do you know what the point is you’re trying to get across?

If someone asked you to explain the central themes and arguments of your chapter, article, or whatever else you’re working on in 30 seconds, would you be able to? Sure, you might be able to speak for 30 seconds, but would you get the core message across? How about in 15 seconds?

Be honest with yourself.

Most of the time, we can’t. We might think we do, because we have words on the page and lots of neat sections and themes. But in this detail, we can often lose sight of the bigger objective: making a point, or a series of points.

Having lots of paragraphs and sections is great, but if you’re not sure of the higher purpose they’re serving, they remain just that: lots of paragraphs and sections.

They need the glue that holds them together.

So I come back to that question: do you know what the point is you’re trying to make?

If you don’t, that’s fine – but I’d suggest going back to basics and working on the answer.

Doing so will help you make sense of your writing; it’ll help you understand what steps you need to take to ‘arrive’ at those conclusions and that point. If you’re editing your work, it’ll help you work out what’s relevant, what’s not, and what’s in the wrong place.

A useful exercise if you don’t yet have an answer is to work towards summarising your writing into two or three sentences. It’ll take a while, and that’s kind of the point. See if you can fit the summary onto a post-it note. Keep trying until you get there. Once you do, stick it to your screen and use it as the hook to help you stay relevant and on message in your writing and editing. It can help to know what job each chapter or section of your thesis does, so you know what you’re working towards.

It’ll take time, and it may be difficult. It’s hard to filter out all the detail and nail down the crux of what you’re writing. But persevere you must, as it’ll make the rest of the writing and editing process a lot more straightforward.