I find myself writing papers in two distinct phases.
Infodump.
Put all the experiments, figures, graphs etc in the draft.
Recount exactly what I did. At this stage it’s fine to just narrate things in chronological order, e.g. “We do experiment A, the result is B. We do experiment X, the result is Y”, etc. The focus here is on making sure all relevant details and results are described precisely
It’s helpful to lightly organise, e.g. group experiments into rough sections and give them an informative title, but no need to do too much.
This stage is over when the paper is ‘information complete’, i.e. all experiments I feel good about are in the paper.
Organise.
This begins by figure out what claims can be made. Then all subsequent effort will be focused on clarifying and justifying those claims.
Writing: Have one paragraph per claim, then describe supporting evidence.
Figures: Have one figure per important claim.
Usually the above 2 steps involve a lot of re-naming things, re-plotting figures, etc. to improve the clarity with which we can state the claims.
Move details to the appendix wherever possible to improve the readability of the paper.
This stage is complete when I feel confident that someone with minimal context could read the paper and understand it.
Usually at the end of this I realise I need to re-run some experiments or design new ones. Then I do that, then info-dump, and organise again.
Repeat the above process as necessary until I feel happy with the paper.
I find myself writing papers in two distinct phases.
Infodump.
Put all the experiments, figures, graphs etc in the draft.
Recount exactly what I did. At this stage it’s fine to just narrate things in chronological order, e.g. “We do experiment A, the result is B. We do experiment X, the result is Y”, etc. The focus here is on making sure all relevant details and results are described precisely
It’s helpful to lightly organise, e.g. group experiments into rough sections and give them an informative title, but no need to do too much.
This stage is over when the paper is ‘information complete’, i.e. all experiments I feel good about are in the paper.
Organise.
This begins by figure out what claims can be made. Then all subsequent effort will be focused on clarifying and justifying those claims.
Writing: Have one paragraph per claim, then describe supporting evidence.
Figures: Have one figure per important claim.
Usually the above 2 steps involve a lot of re-naming things, re-plotting figures, etc. to improve the clarity with which we can state the claims.
Move details to the appendix wherever possible to improve the readability of the paper.
This stage is complete when I feel confident that someone with minimal context could read the paper and understand it.
Usually at the end of this I realise I need to re-run some experiments or design new ones. Then I do that, then info-dump, and organise again.
Repeat the above process as necessary until I feel happy with the paper.
This makes me think of Rob Miles’s advice on how to communicate research effectively, which I really like.