TL;DR

The essence of an ideal paper is the narrative: a short, rigorous and evidence-based technical story you tell, with a takeaway the readers care about
- What? A narrative is fundamentally about a contribution to our body of knowledge: one to three specific novel claims that fit within a cohesive theme
- How? You need rigorous empirical evidence that convincingly supports your claims
- So what? Why should the reader care?
  - What is the motivation, the problem you’re trying to solve, the way it all fits in the bigger picture?
  - What is the impact? Why does your takeaway matter? The north star of a paper is ensuring the reader understands and remembers the narrative, and believes that the paper's evidence supports it
The first step is to compress your research into these claims.
The paper must clearly motivate these claims, explain them on an intuitive and technical level, and contextualise what's novel in [...]