Limiting Bit Players 

Points that are being made in a research article are like characters in a novel. You do not want to introduce so many that your reader cannot keep track them. The experience of fiction writers is not so foreign as it might seem to academic writers. Fiction writers often describe the experience of bringing a character on (read, idea) who is influential to one scene but then fades to the background. The reverse happens as well. A bit player comes to life unexpectedly and lives on to play a role across many scenes.

The same can be said for the number of points that can be realistically made in a journal article or chapter. It is only possible to flesh out two or three arguments in a single publication. It is wise to set these in place from the beginning. Each of these will make an appearance in the introduction and be revisited in the discussion. A new idea that emerges in one section of a manuscript but is not carried through elsewhere is often needs to be set aside for another publication. 

Writers are always advised to create an outline. As well thought out as they may become, outlines are not all that they are cracked up to be. Their segmentation is not conducive to thinking across the different sections of a manuscript to create a coherent argument.

Some fiction writers use software to keep track of what their characters are doing by chapter and scene. That’s a strategy to avoid calling them John in one place and Jimmy in another. It’s also a strategy to keep dates and places straight. Mystery writers use this kind of software to keep track of what clues are dropped where.   

Academic writers can benefit by a similar practice by constructing a spreadsheet to keep track of how ideas about a concept are elaborated across different sections of a manuscript. This kind of format facilitates developing a coherent argument across sections of a manuscript. Sometimes it helps identify an errant idea that is a good one but belongs elsewhere. 

Below is an example of a table I created to summarize the points I hoped to make in a chapter about building quality in mixed methods research by embedding a theoretical framework.