Planning the thesis itself
No software fixes a thesis with no plan. These habits do most of the work.
Give every chapter one job
If you can't say in a sentence what a chapter is for, the reader won't be able to either. For a standard empirical thesis, the jobs look like this.
| Chapter | Its job | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | State the question and why it matters | Three pages of background before the question appears |
| Literature review | Show what's known and where the gap is | Summarizing papers one by one |
| Methodology | Let someone repeat the study and judge its limits | Describing what you did without saying why |
| Results | Report what you found | Interpreting before reporting |
| Discussion | Say what the findings mean against the literature | Repeating the results in different words |
| Conclusion | Answer the question; note limits and next steps | Introducing new evidence |
Check your own university's structure
Structures vary. Humanities theses are often organized by argument, not by the sections above, and some universities allow a thesis by publication. Read your handbook first and adapt the template to it.
Write out of order
Almost nobody writes the introduction first and gets it right. Methodology is the easiest chapter to start with, because you're describing things that happened. Results follows from your tables.
Write the introduction last, when you know what you're introducing.
Keep a running decisions list
A thesis involves hundreds of small choices: which spelling, which term, which cut-off. Keep a short list at the top of your document. It saves you from deciding twice, and it makes the final consistency pass much quicker.
Use your supervisor's time well
Send a chapter with two or three specific questions instead of "any thoughts?". You'll get sharper feedback, and you'll get it sooner.