[bluenose69]

The topic sentence idea is particularly valuable, and it's something I try to pass on to students. I also use latex macros to turn this on and off (and to put in margin notes, also). All of this advice was so similar to that I give my students that I went to the author's homepage here on HN, to see if it was somebody I had taught. (Nope, wrong field.)

[analog31]

I did something similar that was quite useful. I wrote a complete outline of my thesis, down to the paragraph level. Then I sat down with my advisor and went over it, before I did any writing. This had a couple useful effects. First, I knew he was in general agreement with my plan. Second, it acknowledged that I was in fact in the writing phase and wasn't doing any more experiments.

A useful side effect is that whenever I wasn't feeling really inspired, I could pick a paragraph at random and just fill it in. I would not call any of my paragraphs "filler" but there was stuff that needed to be written down, that didn't require profound brain work to produce.

Anyway, that's how we're supposed to write code, right? It was, 30 years ago. ;-)

[lambdatronics]

Wow, that's very detailed. I can see it being beneficial, especially in the case of an unreasonable advisor who might demand late-breaking additions to the research.

For me, I started from the slides I had presented in my immediate group meetings (~6 ppl, including my advisor, typically once per week, 2-3 slides each) plus the larger group meetings (~40 ppl, including the lab director, typically twice per year, 20-30 slides each). That gave me bullet points and figures. I wrote one chapter at a time, starting with the central chapters & ending with the introduction & conclusion. I had a 6-month time table for writing, and I was only delayed 2 weeks in the end. Remaking figures and messing with LaTeX took more time than I wish it had.

[teekert]

I do that too, I tell students to first make a skeleton document, with titles that read like a story.

I do the same when programming btw, my function names read like a story with their complexities hidden lower in the class/library. Yes I have function names that some may find ridiculously long but it helps me a lot.

[ivansavz]

Would it be possible to share the macro for highlighting topic sentences? I'd love to try that out on a recent draft I'm working on.

[bluenose69]

Sure, I'm pasting it below. Since I might sometimes want bold-face, I am also colouring it red, which my journals will not permit. (I am not sure how this will format in hackernews, but the main thing is that you uncomment either of the two `newcommand` lines.) If you want to do other things, you might want to use the `\if` method, so that altering just one line will let you alter a bunch of properties at once.

  \documentclass{report}
  \usepackage{color}
  \begin{document}
  
  \newcommand{\topic}[1]{\color{red}\textbf{#1}\color{black}}
  %\newcommand{\topic}[1]{#1}
  
  \topic{Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
  adipiscing elit.} Praesent vel consectetur est,
  sed accumsan dolor.
  
  \topic{In malesuada in nulla eget aliquam.} In 
  facilisis erat neque, non sollicitudin felis finibus a.
  Sed pellentesque suscipit lorem, quis lacinia mi
  suscipit at.

  \end{document}