Drafting Your Writing

Introduction

Drafting is the stage of the writing process in which you develop a complete first version of a piece of writing.

Even professional writers admit that an empty page scares them because they feel they need to come up with something fresh and original every time they open a blank document on their computers. Because you have completed the first two steps in the writing process (prewriting and organizing), you have already recovered from "empty page syndrome."

You have hours of prewriting and planning already done. You know what will go on that blank page: what you wrote in your outline. Now, you are all set-up to turn your ideas into paragraphs, your draft!

Making the Writing Process Work for You

What makes the writing process so beneficial to writers is that it encourages alternatives to standard practices while motivating you to develop your best ideas. For instance, the following approaches, done alone or in combination with others, may improve your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:

• Start with what you know: Begin writing with the part you know the most about. You can start with the third paragraph in your outline if ideas come easily to mind. You can start with the second paragraph or the first paragraph, too. Basically, just because a paper starts with an introduction does not mean that is the first paragraph you need to write. Your instructor will not know which order you wrote in because they will only see the final product. In fact, many times writers write their introduction and conclusion paragraphs last, after they have fleshed-out their ideas through their body paragraphs.

• Pace yourself: Write one paragraph at a time and then stop. As long as you complete the assignment on time, you may choose how many paragraphs you complete in one sitting. Keep in mind to try not to procrastinate, so you can meet your deadlines with minimal stress.

• Take breaks: Take short breaks to refresh your mind. This tip might be most useful if you are writing a multi-page report or essay. Still, if you are antsy or cannot concentrate, take a break to let your mind rest. This is helpful because during your break, your mind is still processing your essay and might come-up with a solution to whatever roadblock you are facing. However, do not let breaks extend too long. If you spend too much time away from your essay, you may have trouble starting again. You may forget key points or lose momentum. Try setting an alarm to limit your break, and when the time is up, return to your desk to write.

• Be reasonable with your goals: If you decide to take ten-minute breaks, try to stick to that goal. If you told yourself that you need more facts, then commit to finding them. Holding yourself to your own goals will create successful writing assignments.

• Be aware of your audience and purpose: These aspects of writing are just as important when you are writing a single paragraph for your essay as when you are considering the direction of the entire essay.

• Mind paragraph lengths: Although paragraphs may vary in length, keep in mind that short paragraphs may contain insufficient support. Readers may also think the writing is abrupt. Long paragraphs may be wordy and may lose your reader’s interest. As a guideline, try to write paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than the length of an entire double-spaced page.

Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is one of the most important key to writing success. If your purpose is to persuade, for example, you will present your facts and details in the most logical and convincing way you can.

Your purpose will guide your mind as you compose your sentences. Your audience will guide word choice. Are you writing for experts, for a general audience, for other college students, or for people who know very little about your topic? Keep asking yourself what your readers, with their background and experience, need to be told in order to understand your ideas. How can you best express your ideas so they are totally clear and your communication is effective?

Tip: You may want to identify your purpose and audience on an index card that you clip to your paper (or keep next to your computer). On that card, you may want to write notes to yourself—perhaps about what that audience might not know or what it needs to know—so you will be sure to address those issues when you write. It may be a good idea to also state exactly what you want to explain to that audience, or to inform them of, or to persuade them about.

Setting Goals for Your First Draft

A draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is not the final version. The step in the writing process after drafting, as you may remember, is revising. During revising, you will have the opportunity to make changes to your first draft before you put the finishing touches on it during the editing and proofreading stage. A first draft gives you a working version that you can later improve.

Tip: If you invest some time now to investigate how the reviewing tool in your word processor (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc.) works, you will be able to use it with confidence during the revision stage of the writing process. Then, when you start to revise, set your reviewing tool to track any changes you make, so you will be able to tinker with text and commit only those final changes you want to keep.

Tip: Just write. Do not worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, flow, etc. The best thing you can do is to just get your thoughts out before you forget them. When you are done, then you can worry about perfecting your draft through editing and revising, which will be discussed in the next section of this lesson.

Discovering the Basic Elements of a First Draft

If you have been using the information in this lesson step-by-step to help you develop an assignment, you already have an outline to direct your writing. Knowing what a first draft looks like will help you make the creative leap from the outline to the first draft. A first draft should include the following elements:

These elements follow the standard, academic essay format. This basic format is valid for most essays you will write in college, even much longer ones.

Sample Introduction Paragraph

The following is the introduction paragraph based on the 3 parts explained above:

Climate change caused by humans is having a drastic effect on the world. However, the damage is not only affecting glaciers and rivers. Temperatures are starting to noticeable shift in cities and neighborhoods that have been otherwise consistent for centuries. Addressing the issue may require challenging decisions by individuals who have grown comfortable with their lifestyles and my be unaware of how their choices contribute to climate change. While it has long been convenient to ignore how small changes may have a compounding effect on slowing climate change, it is vital to consider the extent to which measures such as eliminating single-use plastics can provide meaningful help.

Body Paragraphs

The body paragraph is the main structural component of an essay as well as other forms of writing. Each body paragraph of an essay adds another related main idea to support the writer’s thesis. Each related main idea is supported and developed with facts, examples, and other details that explain it. By exploring and refining one main idea at a time, writers build a strong case for their thesis.

How long should a paragraph be? One answer to this important question may be “long enough”—long enough for you to address your points and explain your main idea. To grab attention or to present succinct supporting ideas, a paragraph can be fairly short and consist of two to three sentences. A paragraph in a complex essay about some abstract point in philosophy or archaeology can be three-quarters of a page or more in length. As long as the writer maintains close focus on the topic and does not ramble, a long paragraph is acceptable in college-level writing. In general, try to keep the paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than one full page of double-spaced text.

Tip: Journalistic style often calls for brief two- or three-sentence paragraphs because of how people read the news, both online and in print. Blogs and other online information sources often adopt this paragraphing style, too. Readers often skim the first paragraphs of a great many articles before settling on the handful of stories they want to read in detail.

Tip: You may find that a particular paragraph you write may be longer than one that will hold your audience’s interest. In such cases, you should divide the paragraph into two or more shorter paragraphs, adding a topic statement or some kind of transitional word or phrase at the start of the new paragraph. Transition words or phrases show the connection between the two ideas.

In all cases, however, be guided by what you instructor wants and expects to find in your draft. Many instructors will expect you to develop a mature "college-level" style as you progress through the semester’s assignments.

Follow these steps below to write good body paragraphs:

Sample Body Paragraph

The following is a sample body paragraph that follows the steps listed above:

Television, textbooks, and computer games are just a few technological mediums in which information is presented and widely accepted as a form of communication even for education. This must be taken into account when determining what literacy means and how students receive information as well as how they master the skill of developing their competencies. Where reading and writing skills in the medium of spoken word or paper and ink once strictly defined literacy, the definition is widely changing to include proficiency in modern technology such as computers and other digital sources of information. For example, students can access digital applications, and according to Kervin, “Digital play with carefully selected apps can provide active, hands-on, engaging and empowering learning opportunities. Apps can facilitate versatility in children’s literacy experiences by providing opportunities for reading and writing, and to listen and communicate through a range of scenarios and activities” (70). By this explanation, an app on a tablet can provide students an alternate medium for education while introducing them to technology literacy. Although not all available apps are created to enrich a child’s educational experiences, the guided use of carefully chosen apps for digital play can be a powerful learning tool when used in academic contexts.

More About Topic Sentences
(the "Step 1" part of Body Paragraphs)

Topic sentences make the structure of a text and the writer’s basic arguments easy to locate and comprehend. In college writing, using a topic sentence in each paragraph of the essay is the standard rule. However, the topic sentence does not always have to be the first sentence in your paragraph, even if it the first item in your formal outline.

Tip: When you begin to draft your paragraphs, you should follow your outline fairly closely. After all, you spent valuable time developing those ideas. However, as you begin to express your ideas in complete sentences, it might strike you that the topic sentence might work better at the end of the paragraph or in the middle. Try it. Writing a draft, by its nature, is a good time for experimentation.

The topic sentence can be the first, middle, or final sentence in a paragraph. The assignment’s audience and purpose will often determine where a topic sentence belongs. Choosing where to position the topic sentence depends not only on your audience and purpose but also on the essay’s arrangement, or order.

• When the purpose of the assignment is to persuade, for example, the topic sentence should be the first sentence in a paragraph. In a persuasive essay, the writer’s point of view should be clearly expressed at the beginning of each paragraph.

• When you organize information according to order of importance, the topic sentence may be the final sentence in a body paragraph. All the supporting sentences build up to the topic sentence.

• Chronological order may also position the topic sentence as the final sentence because the controlling idea of the paragraph may make the most sense at the end of a sequence.

• When you organize information according to spatial order, a topic sentence may appear as the middle sentence in a paragraph. An essay arranged by spatial order often contains paragraphs that begin with descriptions. A reader may first need a visual in his or her mind before understanding the development of the paragraph. When the topic sentence is in the middle, it unites the details that come before it with the ones that come after it.

Tip: As you read critically throughout the writing process, keep topic sentences in mind. You may discover topic sentences that are not always located at the beginning of a paragraph. For example, fiction writers customarily use topic ideas, either expressed or implied, to move readers through their texts. In nonfiction writing, such as popular magazines, topic sentences are often used when the author thinks it is appropriate (based on the audience and the purpose, of course). A single topic sentence might even control the development of a number of paragraphs.

Developing topic sentences and thinking about their placement in a paragraph will prepare you to write the rest of the paragraph.

Sample Conclusion Paragraph

The following is the conclusion paragraph based on the 3 parts explained above:

While no single action is going to reverse centuries of unregulated degradation to the atmosphere, something as minor as lessening societal reliance on plastic appears to be a reasonable first step toward progress. Reducing the greenhouse emissions will play a huge part in keeping our atmosphere balanced from a climate perspective. The extent to which such factors help will have a direct correlation to the sacrifices citizens of the world are willing – and able – to make. Over time, small changes such as this may add up to a restored consistency in the climate, fewer natural disasters, healthier water, and happier people. Whether such seismic shifts in societal behaviors are feasible is a separate discussion, but the evidence suggests that doing so could lead to a future where it can be said that climate change was solved, not made worse, by humans.

Writing a Title

A writer’s best choice for a title is one that alludes to the main point of the entire essay. Like the headline in a newspaper or the big, bold title in a magazine, an essay’s title gives the audience a first peek at the content. If readers like the title, they are likely to keep reading.

Keep in mind, titles should not be complete sentences.

The first letters of the first and last word are always capitalized. First letters of major words should also be capitalized while first letters of smaller articles and prepositions are not capitalized.

Bringing it All Together

The video below, although not made for our class, goes-over how to move from an outline to a rough draft by using an example.

Key Takeaways

• Make the writing process work for you. Use any and all of the strategies that help you move forward in the writing process.

• Always be aware of your purpose for writing and the needs of your audience. Cater to those needs in every sensible way.

• Remember to include all the key structural parts of an essay: a thesis statement that is part of your introductory paragraph, a sufficient amount of body paragraphs as described in your outline, and a concluding paragraph. Then, add an engaging title to draw in readers.

• Write paragraphs of an appropriate length for your writing assignment.

• Use your outline to guide the development of your paragraphs and the elaboration of your ideas.

• Writers must put their ideas in order so the assignment makes sense. The most common orders are chronological order, spatial order, and order of importance.