Authoring a PhD

The Simpsons
) are also appropriate. You can also
use contemporary professional authors working in radically dif-
ferent fields from your own but making a relevant point for your
work. Looking for more general quotes can run the danger of
your falling for clichés or very tired, familiar aphorisms (such as
those found in most dictionaries of quotations). Reasonably
well-read readers may well see such quotes as routine: they can
be no help to you. General purpose sources (Shakespeare, the
Bible, major philosophers and so on) are helpful only if the
quotes you use are apt and unusual. If you think that quota-
tions may work for you, keep a sharp eye out for interesting
observations as you read (both in general literature and profes-
sional sources), and record any possibles in a PC file as soon you
encounter them. That way you can pick and choose from a
large selection, and are more likely to find one that is really
effective and appropriate in a given context.
A
striking example
, incident, event, conjunction, narrative or
other piece of empirical information
can also be an effective start,
crystallizing and perhaps dramatizing a theme which the chapter
will explain or develop at length. By presenting the chapter focus
in a very concrete way, or an element that leads into it, such a
start can achieve an impact which a dry recital of theories or
ideas cannot. For instance, Michel Foucault’s opening pages for
his philosophical book 
Discipline and Punish
starts with a detailed
description of the gruesome logistics of a nineteenth-century
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public execution.
8
A similar effect can be created by using very
key summary statistics or data as the ‘attractor’ element, espe-
cially where this information can be presented in a dramatic or
novel way. The trick here is to handle a few key numbers in text
(not in a table), concentrate on especially telling numbers, and
lose all unnecessary detail in the data cited (see Chapter 7 for how
to present numerical information in text). It helps if the point of
the data is to show up a clear contrast or a not-widely-appreciated
aspect of the chapter’s theme.
The final way of achieving a high impact start is to focus on
a problem or paradox
, a puzzle which has no obvious expla-
nation, usually achieved by bringing proposition A and propo-
sition B into a conjunction, and exposing a tension between
them. An effective chapter start in this mould will operate like the
overall thesis question (discussed in Chapter 1 above), only this
time defining a core focus of the chapter. Later main sections of
the chapter must then deliver an effective answer to the problem
or a solution of the paradox.
Framing text
comes after the high impact start, and domesti-
cates it, making the links and the transition from the arresting
start material to the more prosaic or mainstream themes of the
chapter. The object of the framing text is to ‘warm up’ readers
to the chapter topic, perhaps indicating previous schools of
thought about it, or the interpretation offered by earlier stud-
ies. The framing text may also handle any ‘lead-in’ material
which it is necessary for readers to encounter before the main
sections start, although this should be kept to a minimum
length. General framing text must amount to at least one sub-
stantial paragraph, but it should not extend beyond three or
perhaps four pages. If you have very substantial amounts of
lead-in stuff to get across (for example, a lengthy historical or
geographical background for a case study) then make that into
the first main section of the chapter. All your framing material
should set up and show off the rationale for the main sections
of the chapter. You should not dive off unannounced into 
substantive exposition. The framing text should lead up to the
signposts which end the (untitled) introduction.
The