It’s a very common problem in research writing: the experiments are done, the data are analyzed, now it’s time to write. But what to write? Although you have lots of promising data, it can be difficult to know where to start. A common mistake is starting to write before you are clear what you want to say. While this approach works well for some writers and can help to generate ideas, it is not the best way to draft a research paper.

Writing a good first draft that is clearly thought out and well structured will help you enormously in the revising phase when you refine your writing to create a clear and coherent final manuscript. It will also help your co-authors to give effective feedback to improve the paper. But how can you do this? In this blog post, I give tips on how to overcome writer's block and get your ideas flowing into a well-structured first draft.

Before you start writing, think about what your take-home message is. In a research paper, this should centre around your research question (i.e., what you set out to investigate). Being aware of this will help you create a focused and coherent draft that you and your colleagues can revise later on.

Now it's time to make a plan. Research papers have a set structure, which is a big help when it comes to getting started. Some journals even provide a template for their articles. This gives you the basic skeleton of your paper: you know that you need to write an Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion section. By thinking about what needs to go in each section, you can draft an outline of your paper.

A common cause of writer’s block is not knowing how to interpret your findings. You may be feeling pretty overwhelmed at the task of interpreting your masses of data, drawing conclusions, and justifying these conclusions based on the literature. So leave that for now. Start with what you know: what you did (the Methods) and what you found (the Results). These are the easiest sections to write because it is already decided what needs to go down on paper.

Start with the Methods section, writing up how you did each of your experiments in turn. This will warm you up for the more demanding writing to come. It also gives you an idea of the timeline of your study – what you did and when – which will help you when writing your Results section. Once your Methods are drafted and you have a clear idea of what you did, prepare your figures and tables. Think about the order in which you presented your methodology – can that help you organise your figures and tables in a logical order? Now you are ready to write the narrative text for your Results section, where you describe your figures and tables in turn.

Once the Methods and Results sections are drafted, you are ready to tackle the Introduction. By now you should have a clear idea what your results are and what the answer to your research question is. The Introduction needs to prepare the reader for this information: it needs to give them the background knowledge they need to understand why your study was needed and what the research question is. To help you draft your Introduction, answer these questions:

• What is the rationale of my study? Give your reader the context and background.
• What is the current state of the knowledge? Tell your reader what we already know.
• What is the gap in the current knowledge that my study will fill, or what is the problem that my study will solve? Tell your reader why your study is needed and what it can bring to the field.
• What is my specific research question? Tell your reader exactly what you are investigating.
• How did I answer the research question? Briefly explain your methodological approach to answering the research question.

If you write answers to these questions, in this order, you will have a sound outline for your Introduction.

Once your Introduction is drafted, you are in a good position to start on your Discussion. You now have a clear idea of your results and you know what you set out to achieve and why. You can draft an outline of your Discussion by asking yourself the following questions:

• What is the answer to my research question?
• How does my data support this answer?
• How does the published literature support my answer?
• Are there any discrepancies between my findings and those of other studies? How can I explain these?
• Are any of my results unexpected? How can I explain these?
• What are the strengths and limitations of my study?
• How has my work solved the problem I outlined in the Introduction?
• What are the broader implications of my work?

The answers to these questions will give you a structured outline for your Discussion.

You are now ready to write your Abstract. This short section needs to summarize your entire research paper, which might seem like a daunting task considering the tight word limit (usually around 300 words). But if you stay focused, you can write a clear, concise summary of your work. Write one or two sentences on each of the following points and you will have a well-structured Abstract:

• The rationale behind the study
• The research question
• How the study was performed
• What the main findings were
• What the findings mean

Of course, the steps presented here are not the only way to draft your paper. You may prefer to start by listing your main conclusions and going from there, deciding which results support each conclusion and which methods were used to gather these results. Your supervisor may also have a tried-and-tested approach to start writing a paper. That's fine. Whatever helps you to create a first draft that is well structured and ready for revision and initial feedback from your co-authors.

Writing a research paper is a process and the first draft is just a starting point. You have now formed the clay with which to sculpt the masterpiece that will be your research paper! In my next post, I will move on to look at the revision process: how you can turn your first draft into a coherent research paper that tells a clear story.

Claire Bacon is a former research scientist with professional qualifications in copyediting and medical editing. She edits scientific research papers and teaches courses on scientific writing.