Drafting is the stage of the writing process in which you develop a complete first version of a piece of writing. While it should be complete, a draft is not a final version of your writing; it is only a preliminary step!
The good news about the “unfinishedness” of a draft, is that it gives you the freedom to explore and experiment with what you want to say and how you want to say it. The less-good news is that it can be intimidating. 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.
In this chapter, we discuss drafting as a part of the writing process and provide strategies and examples of drafts.
Because you have completed the first steps in the writing process–prewriting and planning, you have already recovered from empty page syndrome. You know what will go on that blank page: what you wrote in your pre-writing materials.
If you are more comfortable starting on paper than on the computer, you can start on paper and then type it before you revise. You can also use a voice recorder to get yourself started, dictating a paragraph or two to get you thinking. You may use pen and paper or the computer to write a rough draft.
The drafting stage of the writing process will look different depending on the rhetorical context of the work you’re completing. Before you begin drafting, consider the following:
What type of writing are you doing? Each type of writing you do in this course will have its own set of norms and conventions. Look at examples of the genre in which you are writing as the authors suggest in “Make Your Moves.”
Who are you writing for? Keep your audience in mind as you write. Use language, tone, and style that suits your audience’s needs.
Why are you writing? Review your assignment description and identify the purpose of the writing. Let the purpose guide your drafting process.
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. The following approaches are most helpful for essay writing, but you can apply them to any genre. Done alone or in combination with others, these steps may improve your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:
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. 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.
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. Pace yourself. On the other hand, try not to procrastinate. Writers should always meet their deadlines.
Take short breaks to refresh your mind. This tip might be most useful if you are writing a multipage report or essay. Still, if you are antsy or cannot concentrate, take a break to let your mind rest. But 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.
Keep your audience and purpose in mind as you write. 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.
Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is 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 for the intended audience. What looks like strong evidence to some audiences will seem weak or irrelevant to others.
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?
Whichever strategies you choose, remember that writing is an ongoing and messy process!
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.
Now we are ready to look over Mariah’s shoulder as she begins to write her essay about digital technology and the confusing choices that consumers face. As she does, you should have in front of you your outline, with its thesis statement and topic sentences, and the notes you wrote earlier in this lesson on your purpose and audience. Reviewing these will put both you and Mariah in the proper mind-set to start. The following is Mariah’s thesis statement.
Everyone wants the newest and best digital technology, but the choices are many, and the specifications are often confusing.
Here are the notes that Mariah wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience.
Purpose: My purpose is to inform readers about the wide variety of consumer digital technology available in store to and explain why the specifications for these products, expressed in numbers that average consumers don’t understand cause bad or misinformed buying decisions.
Audience: My audience is my instructor and members of this class. Most of them are not heavy into technology except for the usual laptops, cell phones, and MP3 players, which are not topics I’m writing about. I’ll have to be as exact and precise as I can be when I explain possibly unfamiliar product specifications. At the same time, they’re more with it electronically than my grandparents’ VCR-flummoxed generation, so I won’t have to explain every detail.
Mariah chose to begin by writing a quick introduction based on her thesis statement. She knew that she would want to improve her introduction significantly when she revised. Right now, she just wanted to give herself a starting point.
With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Mariah then looked at her sentence outline. She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline for the first body paragraph. The Roman numeral II identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and arabic numerals label subpoints.
II. E-book readers are changing the way people read.
A. E-book readers makes books easy to access and carry.
Books can be downloaded electronically
Devices can store hundreds of books in memory.
B. The market expands as a variety of companies enter it.
Booksellers sell their own e-book readers.
Electronics and computer companies also sell e-book readers.
C. Current e-book readers have significant limitations.
The devices are owned by different brands and may not be compatible.
Few programs have been made to fit the other way Americans read: by borrowing books from libraries.
Mariah then began to expand the ideas in her outline into a paragraph. Notice how the outline helped her guarantee that all her sentences in the body of the paragraph develop the topic sentence.
Ebook readers are changing the way people read, or so e-book developers hope. The main selling point for these handheld devices, which are sort of the size of a paperback book, is that they make books easy to access and carry. Electronic versions of printed books can be downloaded online for a few bucks or directly from your cell phone. These devices can store hundreds of books in memory and, with text-to-speech features, can even read the texts. The market for e-books and e-book readers keeps expanding as a lot of companies enter it. Online and traditional booksellers have been the first to market e-book readers to the public, but computer companies, especially the ones already involved in cell phone, online music, and notepad computer technology, will also enter the market. The problem for consumers, however, is which device to choose. Incompatibility is the norm. E-books can be read only on the devices they were intended for. Furthermore, use is restricted by the same kind of DRM systems that restrict the copying of music and videos. So, book buyers are often unable to lend books to other readers, as they can with a real book. Few accommodations have been made to fit the other way Americans read: by borrowing books from libraries. What is a buyer to do?
Study how Mariah made the transition from her sentence outline to her first draft. First, copy her outline onto your own sheet of paper. Leave a few spaces between each part of the outline. Then copy sentences from Mariah’s paragraph to align each sentence with its corresponding entry in her outline.
Now you may begin your own first draft.
Gather your pre-writing and planning materials
Jot some notes about your audience and the purpose of your writing
Using your outline to guide you, expand upon the ideas in paragraph format
While you do not need to stick to the exact ideas in your outline, make sure the sentences in each paragraph develop your topic sentences.
Adapted from Writing for Success by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.