Writing for Publication
Kathy Charmaz
Coordinator, Faculty Writing Program
Department of Sociology
Sonoma State University
Guidelines for Writing
1. Start with techniques to get your ideas
flowing—
2. Write for yourself first
3. Write in drafts. Keep those expectations
and standards low for your early work but
high for your later drafts. Stay with your
writing--keep at it. Don’t toss it!
4. Give yourself permission to write freely
and badly without a clear order in your
early drafts
Guidelines for Writing (cont.)
5. Impose organization upon your drafts.
Outline your
writing.
6. Revise for a clear, tight, organization.
Find your
argument and then reorder the piece around it. Be willing now to
trim and slice ruthlessly. Get rid of all your warm-up exercises.
Attend to the logic of your argument and your evidence. Go right to
the core of the piece and develop it.
7. Show, don’t tell.
Provide evidence, data, support for your
assertions. Demonstrate your points. Convince your reader with the
strength of your evidence and the power of your reasoning.
8. Offer pithy definitions for vague, general, or
abstract terms. Define your central concepts. Make
assumptions explicit--yours, cited authors’, and research
participants’.
Guidelines for Writing (cont.)
9.
Revise for clarity and power. Now it’s time to let your
Internal Censor loose. Use descriptive nouns and active
verbs. Avoid the verb “to be” in all of its forms.
10. Read the paper out loud to identify weak spots
such as unexplicated assumptions, missing definitions,
logical gaps, and unsupported claims.
11. Look for the implications of your work and discuss
them in the conclusion. Make the conclusion your own.
Claim your knowledge.
12. Write your introduction last. Make sure it says what
you did, not what you thought you did or intended to do.
Try to create a strong thesis sentence.
Trust in the process. You will make discoveries and learn
along the way. Enjoy your work!
Guidelines for Freewriting
Freewriting is a non-linear technique that can help you get
started and unlearn past writing habits. It provides a
warm-up exercise for sparking ideas, quelling fears, and
preserving your natural voice.
Write anything that comes to mind
Get your ideas down on paper as quickly and fully
as you can
Write to and for yourself
Permit yourself to write freely and badly
Don't attend to grammar, organization, logic,
evidence, and audience
Guidelines for Freewriting
Aim to spark ideas, rather than to organize
thoughts
Write as if you are speaking
Try to freewrite for 5-8 minutes
Extend your freewriting period gradually
Move toward focused pre-writing
Guidelines for Clustering
Clustering is a writing technique that shares
similarities with grounded theory conceptual or
situational mapping.
• Jot down your central category.
• Draw a circle around it large enough for you to indicate
what is inside the category.
• Make the circled category the center of this cluster.
• Draw spokes from your category to circled sub-categories
to show the relationships.
• Use configurations of clusters to construct an image of
how your main categories fit together and relate to
other categories.
Guidelines for Clustering
• Make the size of your circled categories reflect their
relative empirical strength.
• Allow your clusters to be non-linear.
• Work quickly and keep involved in the process.
• Take a cluster as far as you can.
• Treat clustering as flexible, mutable, and open-ended.
• Keep clustering. Try several on the same categories.
Compare them.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing
Pulling the Reader In--The writer:
• Invites, entices, and involves the reader to
stay with the story.
• Provides the context of the story or implies
what might follow.
• Makes implicit or explicit claims from the
beginning.
• Reproduces the power of his or her
experience.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing (cont.)
Adding Surprise--The writer:
• Shows how unforeseen events pile upon each
other.
• Observes when ordinary rules, values,
expectations are discarded.
• Provides tension and surprise by recounting a
predicament.
• Adds elements of surprise by revealing implicit
meanings and rules, assumptions,
subtle worldviews, and hidden
social processes.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing (cont.)
Recreating Experiential Mood--The writing:
• Keeps the reader engaged.
• Unifies the scene and tightens the story.
• Provides a view of the action or feeling with
minimal distractions.
• Distills experience to those narrative details
that bring the scene to life.
• Gives priority to an effective story over
efficient writing, i.e. narrative
description.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing (cont.)
Reconstructing Ethnographic Experience—The
writer:
• Presents images that resemble the
experience
• Strives to be faithful to the experience
• Shows readers what he or she wants them to
know
• Does not simply tell readers what is important.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing (cont.)
Creating Closure for the Story —The writing:
• Builds tension.
• Makes the entire piece cohere.
• Implies the closure from the beginning.
• Moves the reader toward the conclusion
through style, imagery, and voice.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing[i], (cont.)
The following excerpt was written some years
before I delineated the guidelines above. However, I
made explicit efforts to preserve the mood the
described experience in my analysis. The analytic
emphasis in grounded theory can mute mood and
flatten meaning.
Thus, building experiential mood into a theoretical
treatise requires blending imagery and analysis of the
experience. Note how I included the story then moved
on to the analysis. I began with a statement by Ernest
Hirsch (1977) of a telling moment that transformed his
life. Subsequently, I picked up the rhythm and feeling
in his story to recreate its experiential mood in my
analysis.[i]
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing, (cont.)
Example: Building Experiential Mood and Theory into
the Narrative
[B]ecause of my illness, patients might feel sorry for
me, so that I could not have optimal effectiveness as
their therapist....This pronouncement came altogether
unexpectedly…. But I found out that I was simply to
finish the psychotherapy cases that I was carrying and
that I was then to end my psychotherapeutic activities
for good and all. What had been at the center of my
professional life was no longer to be even at the
periphery. I could not imagine what my professional
life, or even just my life, would be like without doing
this type of work (1977:7l-72).
.
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing (cont.)—Bringing
Experiential Mood into Analytic Writing
Significant Events as Turning Points
Relived moments. Retold stories...recurring feelings.
Significant events echo in memory. Whether validating or
wholly disrupting, a significant event reveals images of present
or possible self and evokes feelings. Thus, these events mark
time and become turning points. [ii]
A significant event stands out in memory because it has
boundaries, intensity, and emotional force. Furthermore, a
significant event captures, demarks, and intensifies feelings.
Frequently, those feelings are unhappy ones such as
bewilderment, humiliation, shame, betrayal, or loss. The event
flames and frames these feelings. The emotional
reverberations of a single event echo through the present and
future and therefore, however subtly, shade thoughts and
feelings about self and alter meanings of time (cf. Denzin l984).
Guidelines for Ethnographic Writing (cont.)
Significant events transcend the actors within them and the stage on which
they occur. These events are emergent realities, events sui generis; they
cannot be reduced to component parts (Durkheim 1951). Thus, a significant
event reflects more than a relationship or another's actions. When, where,
and how the event occurs and who participates in it contribute to the force of
the event and affect subsequent interpretations of it. Sorting what the event
means and the "correct" feelings to hold about it shapes self-images and
self-worth.
A significant event freezes and enlarges a moment in time. Because of
inherent or potential meanings of self within the event, people grant obdurate
qualities to it. They reify it. To them, the event supercedes past meanings
and foretells future selves. [iii]
[
i] For
further analysis of these points in ethnographic story-writing, see Richard G. Mitchell, Jr. and Kathy Charmaz, "Telling Tales, Writing Stories: Postmodern
Visions and Realist Images in Ethnographic Writing," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 25: 144-166, 1996. Adapted by permission of Sage
Publications.
[ii] The copy editor changed my final wording about relived moments and recurring feelings without consulting me. My original rendering is included here.
[iii] The preceding section is lightly adapted from Kathy Charmaz, Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time. (pp. 209-210).
Memo-writing
Memo-writing is the pivotal intermediate step
between defining categories and the first draft
of your completed analysis.
•
•
It consists of taking your categories apart by
breaking them into their components.
Memo-writing allows you build your analysis
or story in sections.
Memo-writing
Writing memos includes:
• Defining each code or category by its analytic
properties
• Spelling out what fits under the category
• Bringing raw data into the memo
• Providing sufficient empirical evidence to support
your definitions of the category and analytic
claims about it
• Offering conjectures to check in the empirical
research
• Identifying gaps in your analysis
Writing Memos
• Prerequisite: Study your emerging data!
• Identify what you're talking about--title your
memo as specifically as possible
• Keep reworking memos for clarity, power,
analytic level
• Treat memos as personal documents
Finding Your Argument
Questions to help you find hidden arguments:
• What sense of this process or data do you want
your reader to make?
• Why is it significant (even practiced writers
often assume the significance of their
work)?
• What did you tell your reader that you intended
to do? Why did you tell them that?
• In which sentence or paragraph do your major
points coalesce?
Finding Your Argument (cont.)
Strategies for Finding Your Argument
•
•
•
•
•
Read each paragraph out loud.
Colorcode key points with highlighters
Better yet, outline the manuscript
Identify your sub-arguments
Determine the extent to which your main
argument needs the sub-arguments. If
not needed, cut them or place in
endnotes.
• Look for the telling sentence or paragraph that
makes your points coalesce. That's where
you'll find your argument.
Finding Your Argument (cont.)
• Revise paragraphs to explicate your buried
points
• Tie your paragraphs to the main argument—
make your analysis do rhetorical work for
you
• Then outline the paper again
• Discuss the implications of your argument and
analysis in the conclusion
The Writer’s Style and Voice
Look for imagery and power in the two selections below. Listen to
the difference between them.
Identity levels are implicit or explicit objectives for personal and/or
social identity that chronically ill people aim to realize. These identity
levels reflect the kind of selves they wish to shape or select, their
preferred identities. Hence, realizing them negates or overrides
identifications derived from illness. The efforts of these chronically ill
people to construct preferred identities emerged out of their
experience as ill individuals. Almost none of my respondents derived
their identity objectives from any organized group of similar others (cf.
Anspach [2]). These ill persons then constructed their identity levels
in relationship to their hopes, desires, or dreams juxtaposed with their
expectations and definitions of their specific circumstances. Hence
particular individuals aimed toward different preferred identities
representing different identity levels during specific phases in their
illnesses and at particular points in their biographies. (Charmaz 1987,
p. 286-287)
The Writer’s Style and Voice (cont.)
Through struggle and surrender, ill people paradoxically grow
more resolute in self as they adapt to impairment. They suffer
bodily losses but gain themselves. Their odyssey leads them to
a deeper level of awareness--of self, of situation, of their place
with others. They believe in their inner strength as their bodies
crumble. They transcend their bodies as they surrender
control. The self is of the body yet beyond it. With this stance
comes a sense of resolution and an awareness of timing. Ill
people grasp when to struggle and when to flow into surrender.
They grow impervious to social meanings, including being
devalued. They can face the unknown without fear while
remaining themselves. At this point, chronically ill people may
find themselves in the ironic position of giving solace and
comfort to the healthy. They gain pride in knowing that their
selves have been put to test--a test of character,
resourcefulness, and will. They know they gave themselves to
their struggles and lived their loss with courage.
The Writer’s Style and Voice (cont.)
Yet the odyssey seldom remains a single journey for these
chronically ill people. Frequently, they repeat their journey on
the same terrain over and over and, also, find themselves
transported to unplanned side trips and held captives within
hostile territories as they experience setbacks, flare-ups,
complications, and secondary conditions. Still they may
discover that each part of their odyssey not only poses barriers,
but also brings possibilities for resolution and renewal.
(Charmaz 1995, p. 675)
What images does each selection evoke? In which passage
do you hear a human voice? Which one is loaded with
disciplinary codes? How, if at all, does the wording catch
your attention? What spurs you to want to hear more?
Writing Vivid Narratives
Catch the experiential timing and reproduce it
in your writing.
From embarrassment to mortification. From
discomfort to pain. Endless uncertainty.
What follows? Regimentation. (Charmaz
1991 Good Days, Bad Days, p. 134)
Days slip by. The same day keeps slipping
by. Durations of time lengthen since few
events break up the day, week, or month.
Illness seems like one long uninterrupted
duration of time. (1991:88)
Writing Vivid Narratives (cont.)
Raise questions to tie main ideas together or
to redirect the reader.
•
Adopt the role of your participants and
ask questions as they would.
Is it cancer? Could it be angina?
Pangs of uncertainty spring up when
current, frequently undiagnosed,
symptoms could mean a serious
chronic illness. (1991:32)
Writing Vivid Narratives (cont.)
Use immediacy to draw the reader into the
story.
It seemed Connery thought little of gold and
silver stockpiling as a survival strategy, or
of my writing project.
Then, the conversation took an
unexpected turn. Our roles reversed.
Connery began to ask me questions, about
my wife, about the nationality of our parents
and grandparents. When he learned we were
both university faculty, and of German and
Norwegian descent, he grew excited.
Writing Vivid Narratives (cont.)
"You talk about survival," he said, "I've made an indepth study of that....You and your wife would be
prime candidates to be taught the realities of the
last hundred years of United States civilization,
and what's going to happen to us if we don't wake
up!" Connery had his own apocalyptic vision. And
he had something else I just then noticed. On the
desk top to his right, partially covered by a few
sheets of paper, lay a .38 caliber revolver, pointed
my way. Mitchell, in Richard G. Mitchell and Kathy Charmaz,
“Telling Tales, Writing Stories," Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography 25: 144-166
Writing The Literature Review
Use the literature review to analyze relevant works
in relation to your specific research problem and
ideas. Critique and assess the literature. Make
your literature review do more work for you than
merely list, summarize, and synthesize key works.
A literature review serves the following purposes:
• Demonstrates your grasp of relevant works
• Shows your skill in identifying and discussing the most
significant ideas and findings in earlier works
• Specifies who did what when and why and how they did
it
• Evaluates the earlier studies
Writing The Literature Review (cont.)
• Allows you to use your research problem to
frame, integrate, and assess the literature
• Prompts you to make explicit and compelling
connections between your study and earlier
studies
• Reveals gaps in extant knowledge and states
how your study answers them
• Helps you to position your study and to clarify
its contribution
• Permits you to make claims
Positioning Your Manuscript
Think about these questions:
• Who are your intended audiences (including
markets, publishers, editors, colleagues)?
• What do these specific audiences need to
know?
• What do they already know (that way you will
aim toward the right level[s])
Positioning Your Manuscript
(cont.)
• How can I provide a balance of information and
ideas that works for both the least and
most sophisticated reader?
• How do I tell them what they need to know in the
most effective way?
• What frame do I use to accomplish the above
tasks?
• To what extent do I stay within or move between
argument and narrative description?
• Given the above concerns, what level of conceptual abstraction should I aim?
The Etiquette of Publishing
Before submitting your manuscript, follow the three
most basic rules:
1. Ask people you know and owe you something
for help before submitting your manuscript.
2. “Finish it!” Chuck Hohm, former editor of
Sociological Perspectives—much work that comes
in is unfinished.
3. “Don’t Irritate the Editor.” Joel Best, former editor
of Social Problems.
Submitting your manuscript in good shape indicates
your awareness of practices in your field and
shows that you follow and reaffirm its etiquette.
You set a positive tone for your submission.
Guidelines for Submitting Manuscripts ©
Note: These guidelines refer to a stage late in the writing process.
• Revise, Revise, and Revise—Then submit your
manuscript for review. Give it three or four major
revisions—not just minor tinkering.
• Identify what kind of manuscript you have. Start from
there. What kind of paper do you have—a
presentation? Conference paper? A manuscript ready
for submission? Many of us revise a paper after
presenting it. We just don’t have time to develop a
polished paper although writing first for publication
is most efficient.
• What kind of analytic depth and level do you need for
the journal you choose? Is your paper congruent
with the needed analytic level?
Guidelines for Submitting Manuscripts ©
• Frame your paper with a clear, specific
research question, problem, or purpose
• Use your clear, specific focus to shape your
argument
• Adopt points in your argument (or the
analytic categories inherent in it) to
organize the manuscript. Each section of
the analysis should reflect a major point in
your argument (or analysis). Remove any
underdeveloped or only tangentially-related
ideas from the body of your narrative.
Guidelines for Submitting Manuscripts, (cont.)
• Offer an original perspective when framing your
argument.
• Make the literature review work for you and for
this manuscript.
• Demonstrate how your work furthers
conversations in this journal and discussions
about your topic, more generally.
• Be honest in your assessments of the literature.
Be critical but careful.
© Copyright, Kathy Charmaz 2001
Guidelines for Submitting Manuscripts, (cont.)
• Provide empirical evidence.
• Fine-tune the conclusion, introduction, and
abstract
• Acknowledge all those who helped you
• Do the requisite work
• Adopt a good topic and give it your best
effort!
Make writing for publication fun!
© Copyright, Kathy Charmaz 2001