The problem with writing is that it’s an invisible activity. All we see people do is sit behind a screen, typing on a keyboard. Consequently, most students (and supervisors) don’t have explicit language for the different writing activities. Yet writing encompasses a number of different cognitive modes.
Roughly, I divide writing into two major activities:
- Writing for yourself: this includes understanding the research, making sense of the findings, building the knowledge so to speak
- Writing for an audience: this includes communicating what you’ve found, explaining for an audience (you can think of it like a PhD defense, but on paper)
Writing for yourself: building knowledge (a.k.a. thinking)
Writing for yourself in the context of scientific papers means making meaning of your findings. This doesn’t even have to be done on paper, it can also be simply thinking about your work while you’re going for a walk, talking it over with a peer, or presenting your findings during a meeting.
In written form, thinking is often done in the form of generative writing or discovery drafting (same thing, different name). It simply means: getting ideas on paper and see if they make sense.
Writing for an audience: communicating knowledge
Writing for your audience means communicating your findings in a way that makes sense (and convinces your reviewers). This includes:
- Structuring your ideas: Presenting your research in a logical order within sections and paragraphs.
- Editing language: Writing clear, readable language that matches the style of your target audience (see also Language conventions).
- Polishing: Proofreading grammar, spelling, abbreviations, citations, etc.
Why this matters
Trying to carry out multiple writing activities (and therefore cognitive modes) simultaneously is exhausting and counterproductive, and often the reason why scientific writing can feel so overwhelming and frustrating. Activities I often see students mix up:
- Trying to figure out what the research means and trying to structure the text at the same time
- Trying to edit sentences while still generating ideas
- Trying to work from a structured outline when still trying to figure out what the research means (see also: Thoughts on the writing process)
Writing is not linear
Writing is more like doing a logic puzzle than following a recipe. You learn something about your findings, which reshapes the question you posed, which in turn changes how you must present the findings (x).
The phases kind of ping-pong back and forth until everything aligns. In practical terms, you’ll often find that you need to tighten the Introduction after working on the Discussion.
Bottom-up vs top-down writing
Most writing advice assumes you already know what you want to say. Start with the outline, abstract, or some other structured template. These are all top-down strategies: define the structure, then fill it in.
This work well if you already have a rough idea of where your paper is going and what your conclusions are going to be. However, I often see that novice scientific writers don’t know these clearly yet. They discover them through the writing process (see: “Writing for yourself” in What is writing). In these cases, a bottom-up approach often works better: start by building the content of the paper (including the conclusions), then reverse outline to build the structure afterwards.
Most writers mix both approaches
In practice, most writers don’t work purely in linear direction top-down or bottom-up. Most writing processes are a mix of the two, either leaning more towards top-down (if you already know what you want to write) or more bottom-up (if you need to discover more first). You write some stuff, then change the structure, or maybe work from a provisional outline. It’s all fine. It’s just important be aware of what you’re doing (see also: What is writing).
Why bottom-up suits novice writers
This hub assumes you’re relatively new to both (1) your topic and (2) the journal article format. That means you have more new information to hold in working memory than an experienced writer — so writing things down first lets the text itself become an extension of your memory.
It also means starting with an outline is harder than it sounds: you’d be imposing a structure using a format you’re not yet deeply familiar with. Getting the content down first, then structuring it, is simply less cognitively demanding.
Getting started with writing? The suggested workflow lists the bottom-up process step-by-step.