Your Dissertation Literature Review: What's Your Story?

We’ve been having some discussions recently in our UnDissertation Group calls and online Discussion group about how to write a literature review that includes what’s needed, leaves out what’s not needed, and doesn’t leave you or your reader all wrapped in unnecessary detail.

One of the issues we’ve been exploring is Story.

Even a non-fiction, serious research review is a Story (or needs to be).

After all, what you’re doing is guiding your readers to where you need them to be to understand:

• why your research questions and answers are important; and
• why you’ve designed your study in the way you have.

To get them there, you need to construct a “story line”, that includes such elements as:

• Why is this an interesting and important question in this field or for the world at large?
• What do we already know about the issue you want to explore?
• What don’t we know? Where are the gaps? Why haven’t we looked at this already?
• What do we know about how to explore those gaps — are there technological or methodological innovations that contribute to how we could look afresh at this question?
• How are you proposing to look at this question differently? What methds will you employ?
• How do you predict the Story will turn out?

One of the writing challenges that can get a writer very “blocked” is figuring out how to create a nice, tidy linear Story out of what feels like a very nonlinear, all inter-connected web of reading and thinking.

Well, maybe you can’t.

Not that you can’t end up with a linear laying out of ideas and findings and questions, but there may be times when you need to share Something, then come back at it later to weave it into your Story again in a new way or to be able to shed a different light on it.

Marketing guru Sean D.Souza from PsychoTactics this week published a useful little article on exactly this topic of needing to “skip around”. His focus is writing marketing materials, but hey - if you want to finish, you need to convince your audience of the solidness of what you’re writing, and that’s, well…marketing. ;-)

Hope you enjoy his thoughts…feel free to add your own in a comment or two….

How Planned Disconnectors Create Powerful Articles

(http://www.psychotactics.com/artpowerful-articles)

Imagine you were reading a mystery novel.
You’ve just finished five pages.
The story line is becoming really interesting.

And then you turn the page

And find the sixth page has been torn out.
Now that’s really irritating, eh?

But let’s suppose you decide to continue reading anyway

And you move to page seven, and pick up the thread of the story.
And you’re reading page eight, page nine, page ten.
And page eleven is torn out.
At this point, you’re more than frustrated.
And this is the feeling that many readers have when they read your article.

It’s because you’re not planning your disconnectors.

So what are disconnectors?

Disconnectors can be simply described as a sudden stop.
So let’s say you’re telling a story.
Or telling a joke.
Or singing a song.

A sudden stop in the middle of your story/joke/song would be a disconnector.

But a disconnector isn’t a bad thing, provided you understand the difference between a planned and an unplanned disconnector.

1) Planned Disconnectors.

2) Un-planned disconnectors.

Planned Disconnectors are what you see on any TV serial. You’re watching this villain chasing the hero. The tension builds up. And it reaches a crescendo.

And the scene changes to something else. Like a scene at the beach.

What you’ve just experienced is a disconnection. One moment you’re watching a crazy chase. Next moment the waves are lapping on the sand.

And this experience is a planned disconnector.

But how do we know it’s a planned disconnector?

Because the villain and the hero will show up again in the same serial. Which means the thread of the serial is to disconnect, then connect, then disconnect.

And this planned disconnector allows us to pick up the thread of the serial.

But what of unplanned disconnectors?

Unplanned disconnectors are simply a factor of too many thoughts.

Imagine that same villain chasing the hero. And you don’t see the scene again.
The scene doesn’t re-connect at all. So you’re left with half a story.

And that’s frustrating

Because the reason you were reading the story, was because you were interested.
If the story suddenly ‘disappears’, you’ve created a disconnect. The reader may tolerate the disconnect, as long as you bring up the connection later in the article.

So let’s see an example:

Peter worked for few years as a volunteer in a little village in Peru. He really enjoyed his work and felt he was doing something useful. Eventually he moved back to his own country, and got a job.

35 years later, his professional life came to an end, as he had reached the mandatory 62 years retirement age. His volunteer Peruvian years came back nagging him more and more.

What happened to the people he had lived with 35 years earlier? What became of the village? In the case of Peter, his time was filled with questions about the people and the village in Peru.

It was difficult for him to focus on other activities. He eventually went to Peru.

Martha felt that retirement age came to early. She still had things she wanted to do professionally. She resented seeing her years of professional experience as a bank manager almost being cancelled by the fact she reached retirement age. She felt drained of all her energy. She felt tired right in the morning when she woke up.

See what happened in the story above?

You got into the story of Peter and Peru.
But the story suddenly disconnected.
And went on to Martha.

Now as you read further, you’d expect the writer to bring back the connection. To complete the Peter in Peru story, as it were.

But most article-writers never bring back the connection

They’re so eager to move to the next idea, that they fail to complete the first.
They’re onto the next idea. The next paragraph. The next piece of information.
And the reader is now totally confused. But reads on anyway.

But isn’t that the point of the article?: To get the reader to read on anyway?

Yes, it is. As we’ve found, disconnectors provide an intense lift in drama. Or a drop in drama. But if the reader continues to find disconnects, and there’s no connection, the reader feels cheated.

They feel like they’ve read to page five. And then page six is gone.
And then continued to page ten. And page eleven is gone.

This unplanned disconnect leaves an incomplete, icky feeling.

And it’s not what you set out to do

So either complete your story in the greatest detail (No, you don’t have to create disconnectors at all).
But if you disconnect—disconnect deliberately!
Or not at all.

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So what do you think? Are there places you need to include disconnectors? Or are you inadvertently including some you don’t even need? How do you decide if you need to create a deliberate disconnect?