General tips for revising your thesis

Jump straight to:

• Remember your viva
• Think about your audience
• Pin down your overarching narrative
• Find your voice
• Writing style
• Put yourself in your reader's place
• Signposting
• Delete your abstract
• Downplay the block quotations

Remember your viva

Look back at your examiners’ comments from your viva. Did they offer any specific advice or guidance on turning your project into a book?

Think about your audience

You wrote your thesis primarily for your supervisor and your examiners. You needed to show them you had read deeply and widely around your topic, backing up your ideas with many, many (many…) notes and citations. You were all about the literature review and the block quotations. You were leaning into while at the same time challenging what has gone before. You had to defend your thesis in your viva – almost like going into combat and hoping to emerge intact.

Now think about who will read your book. It's primarily going to be other academics, maybe some masters and upper-undergraduate students. Most will be working in your field, and you might attract some readers from related fields. These readers will assume that you are well-versed in the literature; you don’t have to prove yourself with endless citations. They will themselves be steeped in the literature and don't need to you repeat it; they want to hear something new. You're not defending against them; you need to take them with you.

Which is not to say you can throw all of your reading out the window. The expectation is that you have done all of this work and it's underpinning everything you say. You just don’t have to put it front and centre in your book.

Pin down your overarching narrative

In our proposal guidelines, we ask: what’s the hook? This is your elevator pitch, and you should have it beside you while you write. Keep checking in with it to make sure each chapter is speaking to and developing your overarching narrative. You will spell out this journey in your introduction, and it’s vital that each chapter follows the map and doesn’t go off piste.

Find your voice

Your reader has picked up your book because they want to know what you think. This can be one of the hardest parts of making that leap from thesis to book. When writing your dissertation, you could wrap your words and thoughts in the comfort blanket of what others said on the topic. But when you write your monograph, it's your time to step into the spotlight. Be bold – tell us your ideas. This doesn’t mean dismissing or failing to acknowledge what has gone before, but let your own words take priority.

Be confident and make statements rather than suggestions:

• ‘I will…’ not ‘I hope to…’
• ‘This shows…’ not ‘This may show…’
• ‘I explain…’ not ‘I will try to explain…’

This will give your reader confidence in what you are saying.

Writing style

There is a marked difference between the style of a dissertation and that of a monograph. Writing well can take time to develop, but do think about rewriting in a more fluid, narrative style. Think about your favourite book in your field: what makes it enjoyable to read, from a stylistic perspective? Can you emulate that?

Put yourself in your reader's place

You already know what you're trying to express. Your reader doesn't – they have to work it out, based on what you write. Try to put yourself in their position. Read each sentence as if someone else wrote it. This will help you to achieve the clarity that good communication requires.

Signposting

Think about how you will guide your reader through your argument. At any point, they should clearly see where they are on the journey and where they're going next. You can achieve this through clear and helpful chapter titles (more on this below). You should also break up each chapter into sections and sub-sections with descriptive subtitles to tell the reader what’s coming.

Start each chapter with a reference to what you covered in the previous chapter and what you’ll discuss in this one. This is your chance to show how you are building your argument. End each chapter with a brief concluding paragraph that sums up what you’ve covered and looking ahead to what comes next. Bear in mind that people often read (or tell their students to read) individual chapters, so including a brief introduction and conclusion helps them. Referencing what has gone before and what’s coming next might inspire them to read your whole book. You are likely to have taken this approach in your thesis and it's something to retain as an important element of your book!

Delete your abstract

It's a handy summary that you could draw on in your proposal, but it has no place in a monograph.

Downplay the block quotations

Honestly, when you read a monograph, which bits do you skip – it’s the block quotes, right?

Why is that? Hopefully, it’s because the author has explained things clearly enough that you don’t need all the back-up.

There are of course exceptions here (especially if you are working with primary texts), and they shouldn’t all be consigned to your recycle bin. But there’s a good chance you could lose a lot of them without harming your argument.

So why do authors use them? It’s back to that defensive approach, using someone else's words as a kind of protective shield. But your publisher will be keeping an eye on your word count. So be selfish, take that space for yourself!

Where to now?

• Back: Writing your first book
• Next: Section-by-section tips for revising your thesis
• Return to the ECR Hub homepage
• Ready to submit your manuscript? Discover the step-by-step guide to publishing with Edinburgh University Press