Topic Sentences are important in academic writing.  The Thesis Whisperer has blogged about “The Zombie Thesis” and how a lack of clear topic sentences can make your thesis, well, zombie like.

Luckily, Scrivener has several awesome built-in features that makes regular checking of your writing for topic sentences really easy. The first feature you should master is the Synopsis feature.  The Synopsis Feature lives within the Inspector on the top right hand corner.  You have two options with the Synopsis feature – auto generate or manual input.  Manual input is good when you want to write a quick outline or draft note /abstract to yourself about what you plan to write in the main text. However, once you’ve started writing the main text, I like the auto-generate Synopsis.  This will grab the first paragraph of your writing for each Scrivener Item and add it to the Synopsis section.

You can then flip your view to Index Cards or Outliner (with Synopsis ticked) and check – does your writing flow? Do the first paragraphs of each section have a topic sentence? Are they strong enough with the following text or are you creating a zombie thesis?

More posts to come on how to use other features to check for Topic Sentences.  Happy Thesis Writing!

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