An intensive workshop for post-candidacy doctoral students to assist in the development of the conceptual structure of their dissertations. Writing a doctoral dissertation is a larger intellectual project than most doctoral students have undertaken at any prior point in their studies. Doing a good job requires developing a conceptually coherent and compelling argument that makes the case for the claim(s) being advanced and defended. Developing such arguments is a hard-won skill, which must be practiced, honed, and refined over many iterations. A number of factors can impede the process of formulating a conceptually sound argument, especially in the context of a dissertation: (i) the magnitude of the writing task can get in the way of focus on the argument itself; (ii) writers can become mired in the details of a set of findings, and find it difficult to grasp the logical structure of what is to be claimed; (iii) the best structure for the ultimate argument is often far from clear early in the process. Arguments often need be adjusted during the dissertation process—often completely restructured (an analogy, in prose, to refactoring a computer program); (iv) once draft prose is created, it has a tendency to draw the writer ineluctably into an endless process of incremental adjustments and edits, at the expense of addressing more urgent and fundamental structural problems in the underlying conceptual framework. The aim of this seminar is to assist doctoral students in framing, articulating, developing, and revising the conceptual structure of the arguments on which their dissertations will be based. Techniques to be developed include the developments of skeletons—short, distilled, logical précis of arguments, stripped of all prose, rhetoric, introductions, etc., designed to reveal the conceptual structure of an argument in a bare-bones manner. Developing a good skeleton is extraordinarily difficult, but more than repays the effort in simplifying and making more effective the subsequent writing process.