essay vs rough draft

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How to Write a Rough Draft

Last Updated: February 6, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD . Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 296,220 times.

Writing a rough draft is an essential part of the writing process, an opportunity to get your initial ideas and thoughts down on paper. It might be difficult to dive right into a rough draft of an essay or a creative piece, such as a novel or a short story. You should start by brainstorming ideas for the draft to get your creative juices flowing and take the time to outline your draft. You will then be better prepared to sit down and write your rough draft.

Brainstorming Ideas for the Draft

• Freewrites often work best if you give yourself a time limit, such as five minutes or ten minutes. You should then try to not take your pen off the page as you write so you are forced to keep writing about the subject or topic for the set period of time.
• For example, if you were writing an essay about the death penalty, you may use the prompt: “What are the possible issues or problems with the death penalty?” and write about it freely for ten minutes.
• Often, freewrites are also a good way to generate content that you can use later in your rough draft. You may surprised at what you realize as you write freely about the topic.

• To use the clustering method, you will place a word that describes your topic or subject in the center of your paper. You will then write keywords and thoughts around the center word. Circle the center word and draw lines away from the center to other keywords and ideas. Then, circle each word as you group them around the central word.
• For example, if you were trying to write a short story around a theme like “anger”, you will write “anger” in the middle of the page. You may then write keywords around “anger”, like “volcano”, “heat”, “my mother”, and “rage”.

• If you are writing a creative piece, you may look for texts written about a certain idea or theme that you want to explore in your own writing. You could look up texts by subject matter and read through several texts to get ideas for your story.
• You might have favorite writers that you return to often for inspiration or search for new writers who are doing interesting things with the topic. You could then borrow elements of the writer’s approach and use it in your own rough draft.
• You can find additional resources and texts online and at your local library. Speak to the reference librarian at your local library for more information on resources and texts.

Outlining Your Draft

• You may use the snowflake method to create the plot outline. In this method, you will write a one line summary of your story, followed by a one paragraph summary, and then character synopses. You will also create a spreadsheet of scenes.
• Alternatively, you can use a plot diagram. In this method, you will have six sections: the set up, the inciting incident, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution.
• No matter which option you chose, you should make sure your outline contains at least the inciting incident, the climax, and the resolution. Having these three elements set in your mind will make writing your rough draft much easier.

• Act 1: In Act 1, your protagonist meets the other characters in the story. The central conflict of the story is also revealed. Your protagonist should also have a specific goal that will cause them to make a decision. For example, in Act 1, you may have your main character get bitten by a vampire after a one night stand. She may then go into hiding once she discovers she has become a vampire.
• Act 2: In Act 2, you introduce a complication that makes the central conflict even more of an issue. The complication can also make it more difficult for your protagonist to achieve their goal. For example, in Act 2, you may have your main character realize she has a wedding to go to next week for her best friend, despite the fact she has now become a vampire. The best friend may also call to confirm she is coming, making it more difficult for your protagonist to stay in hiding.
• Act 3: In Act 3, you present a resolution to the central conflict of the story. The resolution may have your protagonist achieve their goal or fail to achieve their goal. For example, in Act 3, you may have your protagonist show up to the wedding and try to pretend to not be a vampire. The best friend may then find out and accept your protagonist anyway. You may end your story by having your protagonist bite the groom, turning him into her vampire lover.

• Section 1: Introduction, including a hook opening line, a thesis statement , and three main discussion points. Most academic essays contain at least three key discussion points.
• Section 2: Body paragraphs, including a discussion of your three main points. You should also have supporting evidence for each main point, from outside sources and your own perspective.
• Section 3: Conclusion, including a summary of your three main points, a restatement of your thesis, and concluding statements or thoughts.

• For example, maybe you are creating a rough draft for a paper on gluten-intolerance. A weak thesis statement for this paper would be, “There are some positives and negatives to gluten, and some people develop gluten-intolerance.” This thesis statement is vague and does not assert an argument for the paper.
• A stronger thesis statement for the paper would be, “Due to the use of GMO wheat in food sold in North America, a rising number of Americans are experiencing gluten-intolerance and gluten-related issues.” This thesis statement is specific and presents an argument that will be discussed in the paper.

• Your professor or teacher may require you to create a bibliography using MLA style or APA style. You will need to organize your sources based on either style.

Writing the Rough Draft

• You may also make sure the room is set to an ideal temperature for sitting down and writing. You may also put on some classical or jazz music in the background to set the scene and bring a snack to your writing area so you have something to munch on as you write.

• You may also write the ending of the essay or story before you write the beginning. Many writing guides advise writing your introductory paragraph last, as you will then be able to create a great introduction based on the piece as a whole.

• You should also try not to read over what you are writing as you get into the flow. Do not examine every word before moving on to the next word or edit as you go. Instead, focus on moving forward with the rough draft and getting your ideas down on the page.

• For example, rather than write, “It was decided by my mother that I would learn violin when I was two,” go for the active voice by placing the subject of the sentence in front of the verb, “My mother decided I would learn violin when I turned two.”
• You should also avoid using the verb “to be” in your writing, as this is often a sign of passive voice. Removing “to be” and focusing on the active voice will ensure your writing is clear and effective.

• You may also review the brainstorming materials you created before you sat down to write, such as your clustering exercise or your freewrite. Reviewing these materials could help to guide you as you write and help you focus on finishing the rough draft.
• You may want to take breaks if you find you are getting writer’s block. Going for a walk, taking a nap, or even doing the dishes can help you focus on something else and give your brain a rest. You can then start writing again with a fresh approach after your break.

• You should also read the rough draft out loud to yourself. Listen for any sentences that sound unclear or confusing. Highlight or underline them so you know they need to be revised. Do not be afraid to revise whole sections or lines of the rough draft. It is a draft, after all, and will only improve with revision.
• You can also read the rough draft out loud to someone else. Be willing to accept feedback and constructive criticism on the draft from the person. Getting a different perspective on your writing will often make it that much better.

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.umgc.edu/current-students/learning-resources/writing-center/online-guide-to-writing/tutorial/chapter2/ch2-13
• ↑ https://writing.ku.edu/prewriting-strategies
• ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/outlining
• ↑ http://www.writerswrite.com/screenwriting/cannell/lecture4/
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-outline/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/rough-draft/
• ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/style/ccs_activevoice/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

About This Article

To write a rough draft, don't worry if you make minor mistakes or write sentences that aren't perfect. You can revise them later! Also, try not to read over what you're writing as you go, which will slow you down and mess up your flow. Instead, focus on getting all of your thoughts and ideas down on paper, even if you're not sure you'll keep them in the final draft. If you get stuck, refer to your outline or sources to help you come up with new ideas. For tips on brainstorming and outlining for a rough draft, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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12.1 Creating a Rough Draft for a Research Paper

Learning objectives.

• Apply strategies for drafting an effective introduction and conclusion.
• Identify when and how to summarize, paraphrase, and directly quote information from research sources.
• Apply guidelines for citing sources within the body of the paper and the bibliography.
• Use primary and secondary research to support ideas.
• Identify the purposes for which writers use each type of research.

At last, you are ready to begin writing the rough draft of your research paper. Putting your thinking and research into words is exciting. It can also be challenging. In this section, you will learn strategies for handling the more challenging aspects of writing a research paper, such as integrating material from your sources, citing information correctly, and avoiding any misuse of your sources.

The Structure of a Research Paper

Research papers generally follow the same basic structure: an introduction that presents the writer’s thesis, a body section that develops the thesis with supporting points and evidence, and a conclusion that revisits the thesis and provides additional insights or suggestions for further research.

Your writing voice will come across most strongly in your introduction and conclusion, as you work to attract your readers’ interest and establish your thesis. These sections usually do not cite sources at length. They focus on the big picture, not specific details. In contrast, the body of your paper will cite sources extensively. As you present your ideas, you will support your points with details from your research.

Writing Your Introduction

There are several approaches to writing an introduction, each of which fulfills the same goals. The introduction should get readers’ attention, provide background information, and present the writer’s thesis. Many writers like to begin with one of the following catchy openers:

• A surprising fact
• A thought-provoking question
• An attention-getting quote
• A brief anecdote that illustrates a larger concept
• A connection between your topic and your readers’ experiences

The next few sentences place the opening in context by presenting background information. From there, the writer builds toward a thesis, which is traditionally placed at the end of the introduction. Think of your thesis as a signpost that lets readers know in what direction the paper is headed.

Jorge decided to begin his research paper by connecting his topic to readers’ daily experiences. Read the first draft of his introduction. The thesis is underlined. Note how Jorge progresses from the opening sentences to background information to his thesis.

Beyond the Hype: Evaluating Low-Carb Diets

I. Introduction

Over the past decade, increasing numbers of Americans have jumped on the low-carb bandwagon. Some studies estimate that approximately 40 million Americans, or about 20 percent of the population, are attempting to restrict their intake of food high in carbohydrates (Sanders and Katz, 2004; Hirsch, 2004). Proponents of low-carb diets say they are not only the most effective way to lose weight, but they also yield health benefits such as lower blood pressure and improved cholesterol levels. Meanwhile, some doctors claim that low-carb diets are overrated and caution that their long-term effects are unknown. Although following a low-carbohydrate diet can benefit some people, these diets are not necessarily the best option for everyone who wants to lose weight or improve their health.

Write the introductory paragraph of your research paper. Try using one of the techniques listed in this section to write an engaging introduction. Be sure to include background information about the topic that leads to your thesis.

Writers often work out of sequence when writing a research paper. If you find yourself struggling to write an engaging introduction, you may wish to write the body of your paper first. Writing the body sections first will help you clarify your main points. Writing the introduction should then be easier. You may have a better sense of how to introduce the paper after you have drafted some or all of the body.

Writing Your Conclusion

In your introduction, you tell readers where they are headed. In your conclusion, you recap where they have been. For this reason, some writers prefer to write their conclusions soon after they have written their introduction. However, this method may not work for all writers. Other writers prefer to write their conclusion at the end of the paper, after writing the body paragraphs. No process is absolutely right or absolutely wrong; find the one that best suits you.

No matter when you compose the conclusion, it should sum up your main ideas and revisit your thesis. The conclusion should not simply echo the introduction or rely on bland summary statements, such as “In this paper, I have demonstrated that.…” In fact, avoid repeating your thesis verbatim from the introduction. Restate it in different words that reflect the new perspective gained through your research. That helps keep your ideas fresh for your readers. An effective writer might conclude a paper by asking a new question the research inspired, revisiting an anecdote presented earlier, or reminding readers of how the topic relates to their lives.

Writing at Work

If your job involves writing or reading scientific papers, it helps to understand how professional researchers use the structure described in this section. A scientific paper begins with an abstract that briefly summarizes the entire paper. The introduction explains the purpose of the research, briefly summarizes previous research, and presents the researchers’ hypothesis. The body provides details about the study, such as who participated in it, what the researchers measured, and what results they recorded. The conclusion presents the researchers’ interpretation of the data, or what they learned.

Using Source Material in Your Paper

One of the challenges of writing a research paper is successfully integrating your ideas with material from your sources. Your paper must explain what you think, or it will read like a disconnected string of facts and quotations. However, you also need to support your ideas with research, or they will seem insubstantial. How do you strike the right balance?

You have already taken a step in the right direction by writing your introduction. The introduction and conclusion function like the frame around a picture. They define and limit your topic and place your research in context.

In the body paragraphs of your paper, you will need to integrate ideas carefully at the paragraph level and at the sentence level. You will use topic sentences in your paragraphs to make sure readers understand the significance of any facts, details, or quotations you cite. You will also include sentences that transition between ideas from your research, either within a paragraph or between paragraphs. At the sentence level, you will need to think carefully about how you introduce paraphrased and quoted material.

Earlier you learned about summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting when taking notes. In the next few sections, you will learn how to use these techniques in the body of your paper to weave in source material to support your ideas.

Summarizing Sources

When you summarize material from a source, you zero in on the main points and restate them concisely in your own words. This technique is appropriate when only the major ideas are relevant to your paper or when you need to simplify complex information into a few key points for your readers.

Be sure to review the source material as you summarize it. Identify the main idea and restate it as concisely as you can—preferably in one sentence. Depending on your purpose, you may also add another sentence or two condensing any important details or examples. Check your summary to make sure it is accurate and complete.

In his draft, Jorge summarized research materials that presented scientists’ findings about low-carbohydrate diets. Read the following passage from a trade magazine article and Jorge’s summary of the article.

Assessing the Efficacy of Low-Carbohydrate Diets

Adrienne Howell, Ph.D.

Over the past few years, a number of clinical studies have explored whether high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets are more effective for weight loss than other frequently recommended diet plans, such as diets that drastically curtail fat intake (Pritikin) or that emphasize consuming lean meats, grains, vegetables, and a moderate amount of unsaturated fats (the Mediterranean diet). A 2009 study found that obese teenagers who followed a low-carbohydrate diet lost an average of 15.6 kilograms over a six-month period, whereas teenagers following a low-fat diet or a Mediterranean diet lost an average of 11.1 kilograms and 9.3 kilograms respectively. Two 2010 studies that measured weight loss for obese adults following these same three diet plans found similar results. Over three months, subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet plan lost anywhere from four to six kilograms more than subjects who followed other diet plans.

In three recent studies, researchers compared outcomes for obese subjects who followed either a low-carbohydrate diet, a low-fat diet, or a Mediterranean diet and found that subjects following a low-carbohydrate diet lost more weight in the same time (Howell, 2010).

A summary restates ideas in your own words—but for specialized or clinical terms, you may need to use terms that appear in the original source. For instance, Jorge used the term obese in his summary because related words such as heavy or overweight have a different clinical meaning.

On a separate sheet of paper, practice summarizing by writing a one-sentence summary of the same passage that Jorge already summarized.

Paraphrasing Sources

When you paraphrase material from a source, restate the information from an entire sentence or passage in your own words, using your own original sentence structure. A paraphrased source differs from a summarized source in that you focus on restating the ideas, not condensing them.

Again, it is important to check your paraphrase against the source material to make sure it is both accurate and original. Inexperienced writers sometimes use the thesaurus method of paraphrasing—that is, they simply rewrite the source material, replacing most of the words with synonyms. This constitutes a misuse of sources. A true paraphrase restates ideas using the writer’s own language and style.

In his draft, Jorge frequently paraphrased details from sources. At times, he needed to rewrite a sentence more than once to ensure he was paraphrasing ideas correctly. Read the passage from a website. Then read Jorge’s initial attempt at paraphrasing it, followed by the final version of his paraphrase.

Dieters nearly always get great results soon after they begin following a low-carbohydrate diet, but these results tend to taper off after the first few months, particularly because many dieters find it difficult to follow a low-carbohydrate diet plan consistently.

People usually see encouraging outcomes shortly after they go on a low-carbohydrate diet, but their progress slows down after a short while, especially because most discover that it is a challenge to adhere to the diet strictly (Heinz, 2009).

After reviewing the paraphrased sentence, Jorge realized he was following the original source too closely. He did not want to quote the full passage verbatim, so he again attempted to restate the idea in his own style.

Because it is hard for dieters to stick to a low-carbohydrate eating plan, the initial success of these diets is short-lived (Heinz, 2009).

On a separate sheet of paper, follow these steps to practice paraphrasing.

• Choose an important idea or detail from your notes.
• Without looking at the original source, restate the idea in your own words.
• Check your paraphrase against the original text in the source. Make sure both your language and your sentence structure are original.
• Revise your paraphrase if necessary.

Quoting Sources Directly

Most of the time, you will summarize or paraphrase source material instead of quoting directly. Doing so shows that you understand your research well enough to write about it confidently in your own words. However, direct quotes can be powerful when used sparingly and with purpose.

Quoting directly can sometimes help you make a point in a colorful way. If an author’s words are especially vivid, memorable, or well phrased, quoting them may help hold your reader’s interest. Direct quotations from an interviewee or an eyewitness may help you personalize an issue for readers. And when you analyze primary sources, such as a historical speech or a work of literature, quoting extensively is often necessary to illustrate your points. These are valid reasons to use quotations.

Less experienced writers, however, sometimes overuse direct quotations in a research paper because it seems easier than paraphrasing. At best, this reduces the effectiveness of the quotations. At worst, it results in a paper that seems haphazardly pasted together from outside sources. Use quotations sparingly for greater impact.

When you do choose to quote directly from a source, follow these guidelines:

• Make sure you have transcribed the original statement accurately.
• Represent the author’s ideas honestly. Quote enough of the original text to reflect the author’s point accurately.
• Never use a stand-alone quotation. Always integrate the quoted material into your own sentence.
• Use ellipses (…) if you need to omit a word or phrase. Use brackets [ ] if you need to replace a word or phrase.
• Make sure any omissions or changed words do not alter the meaning of the original text. Omit or replace words only when absolutely necessary to shorten the text or to make it grammatically correct within your sentence.
• Remember to include correctly formatted citations that follow the assigned style guide.

Jorge interviewed a dietician as part of his research, and he decided to quote her words in his paper. Read an excerpt from the interview and Jorge’s use of it, which follows.

Personally, I don’t really buy into all of the hype about low-carbohydrate miracle diets like Atkins and so on. Sure, for some people, they are great, but for most, any sensible eating and exercise plan would work just as well.

Registered dietician Dana Kwon (2010) admits, “Personally, I don’t really buy into all of the hype.…Sure, for some people, [low-carbohydrate diets] are great, but for most, any sensible eating and exercise plan would work just as well.”

Notice how Jorge smoothly integrated the quoted material by starting the sentence with an introductory phrase. His use of ellipses and brackets did not change the source’s meaning.

Documenting Source Material

Throughout the writing process, be scrupulous about documenting information taken from sources. The purpose of doing so is twofold:

• To give credit to other writers or researchers for their ideas
• To allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic if desired

You will cite sources within the body of your paper and at the end of the paper in your bibliography. For this assignment, you will use the citation format used by the American Psychological Association (also known as APA style). For information on the format used by the Modern Language Association (MLA style), see Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” .

Citing Sources in the Body of Your Paper

In-text citations document your sources within the body of your paper. These include two vital pieces of information: the author’s name and the year the source material was published. When quoting a print source, also include in the citation the page number where the quoted material originally appears. The page number will follow the year in the in-text citation. Page numbers are necessary only when content has been directly quoted, not when it has been summarized or paraphrased.

Within a paragraph, this information may appear as part of your introduction to the material or as a parenthetical citation at the end of a sentence. Read the examples that follow. For more information about in-text citations for other source types, see Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” .

Leibowitz (2008) found that low-carbohydrate diets often helped subjects with Type II diabetes maintain a healthy weight and control blood-sugar levels.

The introduction to the source material includes the author’s name followed by the year of publication in parentheses.

Low-carbohydrate diets often help subjects with Type II diabetes maintain a healthy weight and control blood-sugar levels (Leibowitz, 2008).

The parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence includes the author’s name, a comma, and the year the source was published. The period at the end of the sentence comes after the parentheses.

Creating a List of References

Each of the sources you cite in the body text will appear in a references list at the end of your paper. While in-text citations provide the most basic information about the source, your references section will include additional publication details. In general, you will include the following information:

• The author’s last name followed by his or her first (and sometimes middle) initial
• The year the source was published
• The source title
• For articles in periodicals, the full name of the periodical, along with the volume and issue number and the pages where the article appeared

Additional information may be included for different types of sources, such as online sources. For a detailed guide to APA or MLA citations, see Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” . A sample reference list is provided with the final draft of Jorge’s paper later in this chapter.

Using Primary and Secondary Research

As you write your draft, be mindful of how you are using primary and secondary source material to support your points. Recall that primary sources present firsthand information. Secondary sources are one step removed from primary sources. They present a writer’s analysis or interpretation of primary source materials. How you balance primary and secondary source material in your paper will depend on the topic and assignment.

Using Primary Sources Effectively

Some types of research papers must use primary sources extensively to achieve their purpose. Any paper that analyzes a primary text or presents the writer’s own experimental research falls in this category. Here are a few examples:

• A paper for a literature course analyzing several poems by Emily Dickinson
• A paper for a political science course comparing televised speeches delivered by two presidential candidates
• A paper for a communications course discussing gender biases in television commercials
• A paper for a business administration course that discusses the results of a survey the writer conducted with local businesses to gather information about their work-from-home and flextime policies
• A paper for an elementary education course that discusses the results of an experiment the writer conducted to compare the effectiveness of two different methods of mathematics instruction

For these types of papers, primary research is the main focus. If you are writing about a work (including nonprint works, such as a movie or a painting), it is crucial to gather information and ideas from the original work, rather than relying solely on others’ interpretations. And, of course, if you take the time to design and conduct your own field research, such as a survey, a series of interviews, or an experiment, you will want to discuss it in detail. For example, the interviews may provide interesting responses that you want to share with your reader.

Using Secondary Sources Effectively

For some assignments, it makes sense to rely more on secondary sources than primary sources. If you are not analyzing a text or conducting your own field research, you will need to use secondary sources extensively.

As much as possible, use secondary sources that are closely linked to primary research, such as a journal article presenting the results of the authors’ scientific study or a book that cites interviews and case studies. These sources are more reliable and add more value to your paper than sources that are further removed from primary research. For instance, a popular magazine article on junk-food addiction might be several steps removed from the original scientific study on which it is loosely based. As a result, the article may distort, sensationalize, or misinterpret the scientists’ findings.

Even if your paper is largely based on primary sources, you may use secondary sources to develop your ideas. For instance, an analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s films would focus on the films themselves as a primary source, but might also cite commentary from critics. A paper that presents an original experiment would include some discussion of similar prior research in the field.

Jorge knew he did not have the time, resources, or experience needed to conduct original experimental research for his paper. Because he was relying on secondary sources to support his ideas, he made a point of citing sources that were not far removed from primary research.

Some sources could be considered primary or secondary sources, depending on the writer’s purpose for using them. For instance, if a writer’s purpose is to inform readers about how the No Child Left Behind legislation has affected elementary education, a Time magazine article on the subject would be a secondary source. However, suppose the writer’s purpose is to analyze how the news media has portrayed the effects of the No Child Left Behind legislation. In that case, articles about the legislation in news magazines like Time , Newsweek , and US News & World Report would be primary sources. They provide firsthand examples of the media coverage the writer is analyzing.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Your research paper presents your thinking about a topic, supported and developed by other people’s ideas and information. It is crucial to always distinguish between the two—as you conduct research, as you plan your paper, and as you write. Failure to do so can lead to plagiarism.

Intentional and Accidental Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of misrepresenting someone else’s work as your own. Sometimes a writer plagiarizes work on purpose—for instance, by purchasing an essay from a website and submitting it as original course work. In other cases, a writer may commit accidental plagiarism due to carelessness, haste, or misunderstanding. To avoid unintentional plagiarism, follow these guidelines:

• Understand what types of information must be cited.
• Understand what constitutes fair use of a source.
• Keep source materials and notes carefully organized.
• Follow guidelines for summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting sources.

When to Cite

Any idea or fact taken from an outside source must be cited, in both the body of your paper and the references list. The only exceptions are facts or general statements that are common knowledge. Common-knowledge facts or general statements are commonly supported by and found in multiple sources. For example, a writer would not need to cite the statement that most breads, pastas, and cereals are high in carbohydrates; this is well known and well documented. However, if a writer explained in detail the differences among the chemical structures of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, a citation would be necessary. When in doubt, cite.

In recent years, issues related to the fair use of sources have been prevalent in popular culture. Recording artists, for example, may disagree about the extent to which one has the right to sample another’s music. For academic purposes, however, the guidelines for fair use are reasonably straightforward.

Writers may quote from or paraphrase material from previously published works without formally obtaining the copyright holder’s permission. Fair use means that the writer legitimately uses brief excerpts from source material to support and develop his or her own ideas. For instance, a columnist may excerpt a few sentences from a novel when writing a book review. However, quoting or paraphrasing another’s work at excessive length, to the extent that large sections of the writing are unoriginal, is not fair use.

As he worked on his draft, Jorge was careful to cite his sources correctly and not to rely excessively on any one source. Occasionally, however, he caught himself quoting a source at great length. In those instances, he highlighted the paragraph in question so that he could go back to it later and revise. Read the example, along with Jorge’s revision.

Heinz (2009) found that “subjects in the low-carbohydrate group (30% carbohydrates; 40% protein, 30% fat) had a mean weight loss of 10 kg (22 lbs) over a 4-month period.” These results were “noticeably better than results for subjects on a low-fat diet (45% carbohydrates, 35% protein, 20% fat)” whose average weight loss was only “7 kg (15.4 lbs) in the same period.” From this, it can be concluded that “low-carbohydrate diets obtain more rapid results.” Other researchers agree that “at least in the short term, patients following low-carbohydrate diets enjoy greater success” than those who follow alternative plans (Johnson & Crowe, 2010).

After reviewing the paragraph, Jorge realized that he had drifted into unoriginal writing. Most of the paragraph was taken verbatim from a single article. Although Jorge had enclosed the material in quotation marks, he knew it was not an appropriate way to use the research in his paper.

Low-carbohydrate diets may indeed be superior to other diet plans for short-term weight loss. In a study comparing low-carbohydrate diets and low-fat diets, Heinz (2009) found that subjects who followed a low-carbohydrate plan (30% of total calories) for 4 months lost, on average, about 3 kilograms more than subjects who followed a low-fat diet for the same time. Heinz concluded that these plans yield quick results, an idea supported by a similar study conducted by Johnson and Crowe (2010). What remains to be seen, however, is whether this initial success can be sustained for longer periods.

As Jorge revised the paragraph, he realized he did not need to quote these sources directly. Instead, he paraphrased their most important findings. He also made sure to include a topic sentence stating the main idea of the paragraph and a concluding sentence that transitioned to the next major topic in his essay.

Working with Sources Carefully

Disorganization and carelessness sometimes lead to plagiarism. For instance, a writer may be unable to provide a complete, accurate citation if he didn’t record bibliographical information. A writer may cut and paste a passage from a website into her paper and later forget where the material came from. A writer who procrastinates may rush through a draft, which easily leads to sloppy paraphrasing and inaccurate quotations. Any of these actions can create the appearance of plagiarism and lead to negative consequences.

Carefully organizing your time and notes is the best guard against these forms of plagiarism. Maintain a detailed working bibliography and thorough notes throughout the research process. Check original sources again to clear up any uncertainties. Allow plenty of time for writing your draft so there is no temptation to cut corners.

Citing other people’s work appropriately is just as important in the workplace as it is in school. If you need to consult outside sources to research a document you are creating, follow the general guidelines already discussed, as well as any industry-specific citation guidelines. For more extensive use of others’ work—for instance, requesting permission to link to another company’s website on your own corporate website—always follow your employer’s established procedures.

Academic Integrity

The concepts and strategies discussed in this section of Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” connect to a larger issue—academic integrity. You maintain your integrity as a member of an academic community by representing your work and others’ work honestly and by using other people’s work only in legitimately accepted ways. It is a point of honor taken seriously in every academic discipline and career field.

Academic integrity violations have serious educational and professional consequences. Even when cheating and plagiarism go undetected, they still result in a student’s failure to learn necessary research and writing skills. Students who are found guilty of academic integrity violations face consequences ranging from a failing grade to expulsion from the university. Employees may be fired for plagiarism and do irreparable damage to their professional reputation. In short, it is never worth the risk.

Key Takeaways

• An effective research paper focuses on the writer’s ideas. The introduction and conclusion present and revisit the writer’s thesis. The body of the paper develops the thesis and related points with information from research.
• Ideas and information taken from outside sources must be cited in the body of the paper and in the references section.
• Material taken from sources should be used to develop the writer’s ideas. Summarizing and paraphrasing are usually most effective for this purpose.
• A summary concisely restates the main ideas of a source in the writer’s own words.
• A paraphrase restates ideas from a source using the writer’s own words and sentence structures.
• Direct quotations should be used sparingly. Ellipses and brackets must be used to indicate words that were omitted or changed for conciseness or grammatical correctness.
• Always represent material from outside sources accurately.
• Plagiarism has serious academic and professional consequences. To avoid accidental plagiarism, keep research materials organized, understand guidelines for fair use and appropriate citation of sources, and review the paper to make sure these guidelines are followed.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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From Draft to Done: A Full Breakdown of the Writing Process

Micah McGuire

So you’ve decided to write a story and hope to publish it. For write-to-publish newbies, you might want to know what you’re getting into, especially if you’re working on a large project like a novel. It’s natural to wonder: how many drafts will it take before my story is ready to publish?

Unfortunately, you’re more likely to answer “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie pop?” before knowing how many drafts you’ll need before publication. Here’s why.

A rose by any other name: What’s in a draft?

The biggest problem with breaking down the writing process from first to last draft can be linked back to one little detail:

How do you define a draft?

There are as many ways to define the word “draft” as there are writers. Which means every writer’s version of “the writing process” will look different. It’s impossible to say: “oh, writing a novel will take five drafts.”

Because the definition of “draft” can vary so much, it’s useful to think about drafting on a spectrum:

• The fewest drafts: Only rewrites count
• Middle-of-the-road: The fiction patching method
• The most drafts: Every change counts

Keep reading for more on how this draft spectrum works.

Only rewrites count

The minimalist take on drafting. By this definition, only full rewrites of a piece count as a true draft. Which means when saving a manuscript to a file, you wouldn’t alter the file name until you completely rewrite that chapter, section, or piece.

The advantage here lies in simplicity: you have fewer files to juggle since you’re saving to the same file over and over. But you may risk losing details from earlier drafts because of the repeat saves. Plus, for larger projects like novels, you need to divide your manuscript into parts and have a file system in place to keep track of your revisions.

The fiction patching method

While this started as more of a joke between writers on social media, it’s a great middle-of-the-road way to think about drafting. It takes cues from software versioning , noting that not every change means a new draft. Smaller changes are like patches (the version’s third number) and rewrites might be closer to updates (the second number) rather than a new version release/new draft (the first number).

So draft names might look like this:

• Draft 0.1: Outline
• Draft 1.0: Rough Draft
• Draft 1.5: Rough draft with some rewrites
• Draft 2.0: Rough draft fully rewritten with feedback from critique partners
• Draft 2.0.1: Rewritten rough draft with a minor tweak (or “patch”) to the protagonist’s motivation

Here, you can always revisit an older version to review details you want to re-emphasize in rewrites. But, it’s easy to end up with dozens if not hundreds of files and you’ll have to decide what constitutes a “patch,” an update and a brand new release ahead of time to stay consistent with naming.

Every change counts

Taken to its extreme, this approach to drafting may seem silly. Why would anyone count every change as a new draft? But most writers favor a less extreme version of this approach. It’s how we end up with draft names like “Final draft” and “Final draft I swear,” and “No really this is the last draft.”

Fortunately, this means you’ll never lose a detail again and you have complete control over naming conventions. However, you can end up with hundreds of files in a blink. And, if you’re not careful with what you name each file, it may take some detective work to figure out which one is the most recent version.

So, where do you fall on the drafting spectrum? Keeping it in mind can help you estimate the number of drafts you might need before publishing your story.

From outline to finished product: the writing process

Now that you have a better understanding of what the word “draft” means to you, you can look at the writing process with fresh eyes.

While it’s impossible to say how many drafts a manuscript takes, it is possible to break the writing process down into stages . We can define the process in 5 stages:

• The rough draft
• Content edits
• Proofreading

Try not to think of this as a step-by-step process. It’s more like a series of loops as each one of these stages may require multiple revision rounds. Sometimes, the process can feel like one step forward and two steps back, but each round will strengthen your manuscript.

Let’s look at each stage.

1. Outlining

2. the rough draft, 3. content edits, 4. line edits, 5. proofreading.

We couldn’t talk about the writing process without touching on outlining. Planners, applaud and cheer as much as you’d like—just make sure not to upset your color-coded highlighter sets.

Pantsers, resist the urge to skip this. It still applies to you, even if you think it doesn’t.

Like a draft, there are thousands of ways to define the term “outline.” But whether you fall on the planner detailed scene-by-scene index card method or the pantser “I know the ending. How I get there is up to the characters” end of the spectrum, you need some form of an outline.

The point of an outline is to ensure your writing produces a story with a plot. Otherwise, you risk writing pages and pages in which your characters run around and do things but never advance the plot.

So at the bare minimum, an outline requires you know:

• Who your protagonist is
• Who your antagonist is
• Why the protagonist and antagonist have a problem with each other (otherwise known as your central conflict)
• Where the story starts
• Where the story ends

Pantsers, breathe a sigh of relief: you don’t have to answer any of these questions in detail for it to count as an outline. You just need to know where you’re starting and where you’re going. You don’t even need to use a pen and paper— try these three fun outlining methods .

Spend as much or as little time on this stage as you’d like.

But once your outline is complete, you can move onto what most of us think of as the “real” writing: drafting.

This is the most crucial aspect of writing a story. Fortunately, it’s also the one stage that’s impossible to get wrong.

There’s one goal to a rough draft: get the story out of your head and onto a page in a somewhat comprehensible form. That’s the only focus. So if you’re writing, you’re succeeding.

Most writers face perfectionist paralysis in the rough draft stage. We think that because the writing doesn’t match what we see it in our heads, it’s bad. Or the story’s going to be bad. Or we’re bad writers.

If you’re in the analysis paralysis camp, invoke Anne Lamott’s “Sh*tty First Drafts” rule . To quote the late great Terry Pratchett, “the first draft is you telling yourself the story.”

So don’t judge it. Or better yet, accept that it’s bad. Cringe, wince, make faces. Just get it down on the page. Because you can’t edit a story that’s floating around in your head.

So you’ve finished your rough draft. Take a moment to celebrate! Your story is out of your head and onto the page.

Next up: editing.

Writers usually see editing as a terrifying mountain or a fun challenge. But there’s no denying it’s a monumental job, no matter how long or short your story is.

Because the scope of editing can be overwhelming, it’s easiest to break the process up into steps. Those steps are:

Here’s a breakdown of each.

A content edit is just what it sounds like: a pass editing the content and story of your work. This is the place to catch plot holes, character inconsistencies, and scenes that are a bit of a slog. For some, it’s easier to think of this as a “rewriting” round rather than an “editing” round since you’re making large-scale changes.

Sometimes, content edits are obvious on a read-through of a rough draft. Yet the longer you’ve worked on a piece, the harder it is to spot those editing opportunities.

Self-editing

Each draft you write marks progress in your writing abilities. When you read back over the first few scenes you wrote, you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come. This is why the self-edit is so important. You need to apply your newfound skills and perspective to your manuscript so that it’s the best it can be before you open it up for feedback.

The first step is to use an editing software like ProWritingAid to help you spot issues with overly long sentences, awkward constructions, unruly dialogue tags, and pacing. Using an editing tool at this stage helps you to get the most out of any human beta-readers and editors you may reach out to down the line.

Some reports give you the tools to visualise your draft at a glance to see where you need to focus. The Sentence Length Report shows you all of your sentences in a handy bar chart so you can cut long, winding sentences down to size. This will help keep your ideas clear and avoid any readability issues.

Other reports let you get to work directly on your manuscript, like the Overused Words Report. This report highlights words that are often overused in published writing. These are words like could , just , and feel that point to vagueness or telling rather than showing.

The report lets you pick out these words and change them to make sure your description is doing the work it needs to to immerse your readers.

Learn how to approach the self-edit, and how ProWritingAid can help .

Critique partners and beta readers

Once your first self-edit is complete, you’ll need a fresh set of eyes to help direct your efforts. Enter critique partners and beta readers.

On the surface, it may sound like critique partners and beta readers do the same thing: they both read through your work and provide feedback.

However, there’s some nuance that separates the two:

Critique partners are writers who read like writers. But beta readers are writers or readers who read like readers.

Because your critique partners are fellow writers, they’re great at spotting technical issues, like:

• Weak character motivations
• Stilted dialogue
• Clichéd descriptions
• Continuity errors

Getting this technical feedback is especially helpful before handing your story off to readers, so it’s best to let your critique partners read a story before jumping into a beta reading round.

As a bonus, your critique partners can spot these issues and help you figure out ways to fix them while you’re both “talking shop.”

Beta readers, on the other hand, are fantastic for getting feedback on emotional reactions to your story, like:

• Whether a certain character was likable or not
• If certain chapters felt too fast or too slow
• Whether the conflict kept them engaged
• If they found themselves wanting to read more

Here, you’re getting close to how a reader would react to your story once it’s published. Use their feedback to determine if the story prompts the response you intended it to and edit accordingly.

Now, a quick note on the biggest difference between beta readers and critique partners: the detail level of their suggestions. If beta readers aren’t writers themselves, they may not be able to articulate the specifics of what they dislike in the story. Their feedback can be vague, amounting to: “I don’t like this scene, but I’m not sure why.” The best way to identify problem spots is to look at the feedback of all of your beta readers. If multiple readers have an issue with a scene or section, it’s a good indicator to pay close attention on editing.

Critique partners, however, can usually pin-point issues with laser precision, but may go overboard with their suggestions. Feedback may seem harsh and critique partners with a domineering streak may make “my way or the highway” style fix suggestions.

So it’s ultimately a fine balance. Note where you can improve and keep that in mind during your content edits, but also trust your gut instinct. In the end, it’s your story.

Once you’ve gone through a round or two (or more) of content edits, it’s time to move to line edits. These edits ensure your story is as strong as possible when it’s published. You’re examining your story, sentence by sentence, to catch dialogue issues, problems with the flow of a paragraph, and weak sentences that need rewriting.

If you’d like to hire a professional editor, this is a great stage to do it. But, if you’d prefer to tackle this edit yourself, ProWritingAid can make your process run much more smoothly. Check out our guide to six of the key reports that can make your line edits easy.

The proofreading stage is what most writers think of when they think of “editing.” Here, you’re checking for spelling and grammatical errors and ensuring consistency. Think of it as a final polish.

While some writers may hire a professional editor to proofread, it’s not a necessity, especially if you’re looking to publish traditionally. Often, a friend with a good eye for grammar can catch trouble spots on their read through. And ProWritingAid’s spelling and grammar reports can point out any little details they may have missed.

With your proofreading sweep complete, congratulations! Your story is ready to share with the wider reading world. Now, it’s time to move on to publishing or querying process.

If you’re looking to self publish your story, check out our webinar on the 7 Processes of Publishing . And for those who want to query, Jennifer Xue’s guide covers the process in depth .

Are you prepared to write your novel? Download this free book now:

The Novel-Writing Training Plan

So you are ready to write your novel. excellent. but are you prepared the last thing you want when you sit down to write your first draft is to lose momentum., this guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world..

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

As ProWritingAid’s Growth Marketing Manager, Micah’s approach to marketing combines her three favorite things: writing, user research, and data analysis. Previously, she managed PR and partnerships for startup GrowthMentor. A geek about all things science, but especially her former field of study, microbiology, and neuroscience, she’s always on the lookout for ways to incorporate fascinating new research into writing. Much of her previous freelance work analyzes the science of productivity, creativity, and how we can better understand the intersection of the two to lead richer lives. Outside of work, you can usually find her baking or typing away at her latest science fiction or fantasy project.

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Stages of the Writing Process

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Writing can’t be done without going through certain stages. All writers go through their own unique writing processes before they make their final drafts. Usually, writers start with choosing topics and brainstorming, and then they may outline their papers, and compose sentences and paragraphs to make a rough draft. After they make a rough draft, writers may begin revising their work by adding more sentences, or removing sentences. Writers may then edit their rough draft by changing words and sentences that are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate for a topic.

Brainstorming

Before you start writing, you will think about what to write, or how to write. This is called, brainstorming . When you brainstorm for ideas, you will try to come up with as many ideas as you can. Don't worry about whether or not they are good or bad ideas. You can brainstorm by creating a list of ideas that you came up with, or drawing a map and diagram, or just writing down whatever you can think of without thinking about grammar. Think of this like the erratic thunder and lightning that comes from a thunderstorm.

Next, you may want to outline your paper based on the ideas you came up with while you were brainstorming. This means that you will think about the structure of your paper so that you can best deliver your ideas, and meet the requirements of writing assignments. You will usually outline your paper by beginning with its three major parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. The specific structure of each essay may vary from assignment to assignment. Many writers call this a skeleton unto which you develop or “flesh out” the paper. Once you have the skeleton in place, you can start thinking about how to add additional detail to it.

Rough Draft

Your professors or instructors will often require you to submit a rough draft of your paper. This usually means that your work is still in progress. In the rough draft, readers want to see if you have a clear direction in your paper. When you are required to submit a rough draft, it doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be complete. That means, you shouldn't be missing any of the major parts of the paper. For more information on drafting and revising your work, watch our Drafting and Revising video.

Revise and Edit your writing

What is the difference between revise and edit ?

Revision lets you look at your paper in terms of your topic, your ideas, and your audience. You may add more paragraphs or remove paragraphs to better fit into a given genre or topic. In a word, revising means that you organize your writing better in a way that your audience can understand your writing better. You may want to read our resource on basic rhetorical elements to help guide your revision.

Editing typically means that you go over your writing to make sure that you do not have any grammatical errors or strange phrases that make it difficult for your readers to understand what you are trying to say. In other words, editing means that you take care of minor errors in your writing. This is a lot like polishing your writing.

Polish your writing

We often hear professors or instructors say that you need to “ polish your writing .” What do you mean by polish ?

The word polish originally meant to make something smooth and shiny, as in “she polished her leather shoes.” In writing, polish can mean to improve or perfect, or refine a piece of writing by getting rid of minor errors. In other words, when your professors or instructors say, “polish your writing,” it means that you should go over your writing and make sure you do not have any errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and to make sure that you do not have any sentences that do not make sense.

How to Write a Rough Draft for an Essay?

Table of contents

• 1 Understanding the Purpose of a Rough Draft
• 2.1 Before You Begin: Pre-writing
• 2.2 Begin With a Freewriting Session 
• 2.3 Start With A Strong Opening
• 2.4 Speak Then Write
• 2.5 Avoid Stopping at Hard Points
• 2.6 Don’t Worry About Perfection
• 2.7 Write the Body First
• 2.8 Write Section by Section
• 2.9 Include Citations as You Go
• 2.10 Leave Notes for Yourself and Use Placeholders
• 2.11 Reviewing the Draft
• 3.1 Moving Forward: From Rough to Final Draft
• 4 Wrapping Up on Rough Draft Writing

When writing an essay, it’s difficult to decide whether to use a rough draft first or get to the writing part right after the research. That’s one of the main reasons a rough draft may seem less effective to students, but there’s an even bigger question here: H ow to write a rough draft for an essay?

Most students need to familiarize themselves with the pre-writing and freewriting processes, so we’ll explain them all in one place through this guide.

Here are the key points you’ll learn from our article:

• The importance of creating rough drafts before writing an essay, as it allows you to brainstorm, organize your thoughts, and refine your ideas, ultimately leading to a more coherent and well-structured final essay.
• Main tips and steps to take for writing.
• Valuable technique of freewriting allows your thoughts flow freely on paper, tap into creativity and generate ideas that you might not have considered otherwise.
• Complete the process with detailed steps to achieve a flawless draft.

We know that you may be in the temptation of finding someone to edit your work or simply hold back from creating a draft because of the time it takes. That’s why our expert PapersOwl team decided to help, so let’s start by elaborating on why a rough draft can be so important when writing a good essay.

Understanding the Purpose of a Rough Draft

Before we get into the matter of how to write draft outlines, let’s take a moment to explain its purpose. To most students, these can serve as a great first attempt or take on the subject, which lays out the structure and tone of the essay’s rough draft.

Creating a rough draft includes writing the introduction heading, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Precisely, it usually includes a single body heading which will become a foundation for all the body headings in the essay.

Writing the rough draft outline can help create key ideas that you’ll be further exploring in the essay, and it’s a perfect way of properly structuring the essay. Before writing it, you’ll need to do proper research and take a few other steps to prepare for writing the final form. We’ll discuss all these steps in detail to get you in the right direction when it comes to writing a helpful draft that will truly make writing easier.

To answer the question of how to write rough draft pieces, we’ll give you specific steps to take, from creating a first draft to its final form.

Practical Tips On Writing Your Own Rough Draft

Creating your own draft outline may seem challenging if you have never done it before, but if you follow a few simple rules, it becomes much easier. You can follow the listed steps for fast and efficient writing: 

Before You Begin: Pre-writing

Your first try to write a rough draft should start with some brainstorming. The best piece of advice is to thoroughly research the subject before you start writing your essay draft to create a good outline.

It means creating a basic structure of the draft, and after that, it becomes easy to make the necessary changes if edits are needed.

Begin With a Freewriting Session 

This one goes hand in hand with the pre-writing, since freewriting includes laying down all of your new ideas on paper. Here, you should pay less attention to the structure and the tone, simply write whatever comes to your mind about the topic.

Not only would you overcome writer’s block this way, but it also makes a great source for creating a draft or even a thesis statement later on. From all the ideas you write down in this stage, you can select the most prominent ones and create a proper format.

Start With A Strong Opening

The first draft should have a strong introduction that both introduces the main statement and topic but is also catchy enough. Here are some steps to creating a perfect opening line and intro for your rough draft example:

• The beginning should have a hook that grabs the reader’s attention and introduces the topic in the introductory paragraph.
• Provide context and background information for every point to help the target audience understand the subject when you write.
• Introduce the main thesis of the paper.
• Keep the intro paragraph concise and focused on the main topic.

Speak Then Write

Most students think you should start with the outline first, but the best first step is to speak before writing. This also refers to reading enough material on the subject to gain insight into the topic and get inspiration for a thesis statement.

You can speak aloud to prepare a rough draft in your head before putting it all down on paper. You can explore the main points this way and then proceed by freewriting before you start creating a draft layout.

Avoid Stopping at Hard Points

One thing that can prevent you from creating first drafts is stopping at hard points. We recommend that you make a note if you hit any sort of obstacle or if you don’t have enough inspiration for a certain section.

This way, you can keep the flow going to maintain your rhythm and confidence, and you won’t lose that inspirational moment. Creating a note can also help make you think about a certain session and come back to it to revise and make it better.

Don’t Worry About Perfection

To write a perfect draft, you must wonder what is a rough draft first. The thing is, most students spend too much time writing the first draft of an essay when it should be quick and simple. You must keep in mind that the final version can be drastically different from your first take.

Because of this, we recommend that you stop focusing on word count, headings, and other formatting guidelines at first. Just try to do some freewriting and brainstorm to lay down the ideas on which the draft will be based. You can then align the content with structural elements and create a final draft as the end result.

Write the Body First

This one depends on your writing style, but some writers find it easier to write the body of their essay or article before the introduction and conclusion. This allows them to define their arguments before framing them.

Rough draft writing should be about just that – creating the main arguments and exploring the main ideas that the final work will be based on. You can start with the middle, and we even advise you to write the conclusion first and leave the intro section for last. This will help you get into the tone and main ideas so you can come up with the perfect opening line in the same way.

Write Section by Section

Now that you know a bit more about starting your draft, you can create the first rough draft, one section at a time. After you write down the first few topic ideas, you move on by creating a body heading.

You can use the material you’ve prepared before that, only this time you can pay attention to details depending on if it’s the MLA or  APA research paper outline , style, word limits, formatting, and so on.

Don’t interrupt your own flow of thoughts by skipping between the sections. Write the body heading first, then the conclusion, and finally, move on to the introduction. Writing a draft this way helps create a perfect outline for each section that fits together as a whole.

Include Citations as You Go

The best way to go about writing the rough draft for a scholarly paper is to include citations along the way. There’s no need to overdo it here, you should just include a few citations of credible sources, possibly the ones you’ve used for inspiration and research before writing.

This may not even be as important for official reasons as it is to give you an idea of citations you’ll use in the final draft and to categorize your sources.

Leave Notes for Yourself and Use Placeholders

As you move your way from the first draft to the final one, you can leave a note as a reminder to yourself to come back to a certain section.

You can also leave a note for a certain section that you’ll return to later on if you run into writer’s block. You can use placeholders for formatting as well to make it easier to organize the text.

Reviewing the Draft

One of the most important steps for creating rough drafts is checking and revising if needed. Our recommended method is to read it around, as this can help figure out if certain sentences don’t read as well as you intended them to. We also recommend that you let someone else read it to give you a critique or feedback, which you can build on to make the essay’s first draft sound the best it possibly can.

Polish Your Essay to Perfection

If you need an expert’s hand to help with challenging sections of your essay, you can use the “ do my homework online ” service provided by our team. We can help you reduce stress if you are in a jam and get the work done by professional academic writers at your service through an example of a draft essay.

Of course, we’ll encourage you to complete your essay without any help as well, so let’s discuss the main steps of polishing your work.

First, confirm that everything while writing a rough draft is written right and prepare for the final draft. You have to ensure that your final essay draft is flawless! Here are some tips to get a perfect, polished essay after writing a rough draft.

• Take a break : Step away from your essay for a little while before you put words in their final form. This can help you approach the essay with fresh eyes and catch mistakes you might have missed before while writing. Make sure that all of your ideas are in logical order. 
• Focus on the thesis statement : Make sure your beginning is flawless by focusing on the  thesis statement . Look at the big picture and ensure it’s clear, concise, and supports the essay’s main argument in the body sections. If necessary, revise and refine the thesis statement for a compelling introduction. 
• Edit for structure and organization : Review the outline, word choices, and organization of the essay. Ensure that each paragraph flows logically and introduces new ideas. Ensure at least three paragraphs and direct quotes are in your final draft.
• Check for coherence : Make sure your essay is coherent and that each sentence and paragraph connects to the essay’s overall argument. Eliminate tangents or off-topic discussions, and make sure you are writing in your own style. Avoid passive voice when you write, and ensure you write the essay in active voice.
• Review for clarity and precision : Ensure your writing is clear and precise and in an active voice. Avoid jargon or overly complex language; use specific and descriptive words to convey your ideas when writing. Make sure to use quotation marks where required. 
• Proofread for grammar and spelling : Edit your essay for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Read the rough draft carefully, and consider using a grammar and spelling checker.
• Get feedback : Share your essay with a friend, teacher, or peer for feedback after writing. Consider their suggestions and make necessary revisions.
• Read it aloud : Read your work aloud to yourself to ensure that the outline flow well with the ideas and that each sentence makes sense. This can help you catch errors and identify areas that need improvement initially. 
• Follow the guidelines : Finally, ensure that your essay meets all the guidelines and requirements of the assignment in the final draft that’s written.

Tip: As writers do, make sure to add outside sources to support your ideas wherever required.

Working on a paper and drafting an essay can be challenging, especially if you have too much workload. In that case, you can get our services and be worry-free. We  assist students worldwide in writing essays in APA style, MLA style, or any other format on any subject. We work 24/7 and will prepare your rough draft or the whole paper without any excuses!

Moving Forward: From Rough to Final Draft

When it comes to the matter of rough draft vs final draft, it’s important to know that the initial form can always be further improved. Now that you have all it takes to write the first draft of an essay, you can keep improving and revising it to get the final shape and form you’ll be using to assist in your writing.

At this point, you should once again check the readability and flow, check for new ideas, or revise the content. Once the wiring is in its final shape, you can edit minor structural details and pay attention to spelling and the rough draft format. If you need assistance and the question “Can I  pay someone to edit my paper ” goes through your mind, our team is always available to help.

Wrapping Up on Rough Draft Writing

Creating an example of a draft essay or your first draft is tougher than it looks, but it can be done by following the right steps. In our opinion, a rough draft can significantly help as a base for your paper, and if done right, you will have a complete outline for it with only a few body sections to add.

Make sure to keep in mind the rough draft meaning when writing – it’s not about making a perfect outline from the first draft; it’s about setting up the main ideas as a base to build an essay upon.

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How to Write a Rough Draft for an Essay

March 29, 2024

Embarking on the journey to write a rough draft for an essay is not just a task but a pivotal step in effective writing. This guide is designed to be your companion in this endeavor, aiming to illuminate the path with clarity and precision. We will provide valuable insights and practical tips that will help you navigate the complexities of essay writing. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or taking your first steps in essay composition, understanding the importance of a rough draft is crucial.

It serves as the foundation upon which your ideas, arguments, and insights take shape and evolve. Remember, a well-constructed rough draft is more than just a preliminary version of your essay; it’s the backbone that supports and guides the development of a compelling, cohesive, and persuasive final piece. Our goal is to equip you with the tools and knowledge needed to craft a draft that effectively sets the stage for a powerful and impactful essay.

Accelerate your essay with our AI writing tool . Transform ideas into structured academic essays instantly.

What is a Rough Draft?

A rough draft is an initial version of your essay. It’s not about perfection, but about getting your ideas on paper. Think of it as a sketch, where you outline your thoughts, arguments, and evidence, setting a foundation for refinement. In a rough draft, your focus should be on developing a coherent structure and fleshing out your arguments. It’s where you connect your ideas, arrange them logically, and ensure they support your thesis. Don’t worry about getting everything right at this stage; the goal is to lay down a solid framework. You can revise and polish your work in subsequent drafts.

This stage is also an excellent opportunity to experiment with different perspectives and approaches. Think of the rough draft as a creative space where your ideas can evolve and grow before they are finely tuned into the final version. Remember, the key is progress, not perfection.

What to Include in a Rough Draft?

In your rough draft, emphasize the connection between your thesis statement and the supporting arguments. Each argument should be backed by relevant evidence, such as data, examples, or quotations. This stage is not just about listing your ideas; it’s about weaving them into a coherent narrative. The introduction should present your thesis and set the tone and context of your essay. The body is where you delve into the details, presenting and elaborating on each argument in its own paragraph, ensuring each point logically leads to the next.

The conclusion then serves as a mirror, reflecting on your thesis and the journey of your arguments, summarizing the key points without introducing new information. While attention to grammar and style is secondary at this stage, maintaining a clear and logical flow is paramount. Remember, a rough draft is your roadmap for further refinement, laying the groundwork for a polished, compelling final piece.

Preparing for the Rough Draft

Preparation is key. Understand your topic, know your audience, and define your thesis. These steps provide a clear direction, making the drafting process smoother and more focused.

Gathering and Organizing Your Research

When gathering and organizing your research, focus on the diversity and relevance of sources. Seek books, academic journals, reputable websites, and expert interviews that offer varied perspectives on your topic. As you take notes, categorize them in a way that aligns with different aspects of your thesis. This helps in creating a well-rounded argument. Utilizing tools like digital bibliographies or note-taking apps can streamline this process. It’s crucial to keep track of your sources for proper citation and to avoid plagiarism.

Organizing your research methodically bolsters the credibility of your essay and makes the writing process more efficient. By having a clear and comprehensive grasp of your research material, you can seamlessly integrate facts and viewpoints to write a rough draft for an essay, ensuring a robust and persuasive argument.

Writing the Introduction of Your Essay

Writing the introduction of your essay is a critical step in engaging your audience from the outset. Start with a hook that captivates the reader’s interest – this could be a striking statistic, a thought-provoking question, a relevant quote, or a brief anecdote that ties into your main topic. Next, clearly and succinctly present your thesis statement. This is the heart of your essay, outlining your central argument or perspective. Then, briefly outline the structure of your essay. This preview should include the main points or arguments you plan to cover, arranged logically.

Key elements to include in your introduction are:

• The Hook: Engage the reader and pique their curiosity.
• Background Information: Provide context to your topic, making it accessible to the reader.
• Thesis Statement: Clearly state your main argument or the purpose of the essay.
• Outline of Main Points: Give a snapshot of the structure of your essay to orient the reader.

Remember, a compelling introduction draws the reader in and sets the tone for the rest of your essay, laying a foundation for a coherent and persuasive argument.

Developing the Body Paragraphs

In developing the body paragraphs of your essay, focus on clarity and depth. Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that clearly states the main idea or point you will discuss. This sentence is a mini-thesis for the paragraph and should tie back to your thesis statement. After introducing the main idea, present your supporting evidence, which could include data, quotations, examples, or research findings. Ensure that your evidence is relevant and effectively illustrates your point.

Once you’ve provided evidence, analyzing and interpreting it is essential. Explain how this evidence supports your main idea and relates to your thesis. This analysis demonstrates your critical thinking skills and helps the reader see the connections between your evidence and your argument.

Remember these key components for each body paragraph:

• Topic Sentence: Introduce the main idea of the paragraph.
• Supporting Evidence: Include facts, quotes, and data that back up your point.
• Analysis: Explain the significance of your evidence and how it supports your main idea.
• Transition: Smoothly connect to the next paragraph or idea.

By methodically constructing each body paragraph with these elements, you ensure that your essay is informative and cohesive, guiding the reader through your arguments with clarity and purpose.

Crafting a Strong Conclusion

A strong conclusion is vital to write a rough draft for an essay effectively. This final section should not merely restate the points you’ve already made. Instead, it should revisit your thesis statement in the context of the evidence and arguments you’ve presented throughout the essay. Reflect on how your insights have developed or been reinforced, providing a deeper understanding of your thesis. Then, leave the reader with something to ponder, be it a thought-provoking question, a call to action, or a potential implication of your findings.

This approach not only reinforces the main arguments of your essay but also encourages further thought or discussion. A powerful conclusion serves as the final stitch in the tapestry of your essay, tying all the pieces together and providing a sense of completeness and closure to your work. As you write the rough draft of your essay, consider how each part of your argument builds towards this concluding section, ensuring that it resonates with your reader and effectively encapsulates the essence of your thesis.

Enhancing Your Argument

To enhance your argument, focus on depth, perspective, and persuasiveness. Start by reviewing your thesis and supporting arguments, ensuring they are robust and well-reasoned. Incorporate diverse perspectives to add depth and demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Use logical reasoning and sound evidence to strengthen your argument, making it more compelling. It’s also beneficial to anticipate and address potential counterarguments within your essay. This shows critical thinking and fortifies your position.

Additionally, using persuasive language and rhetorical techniques can make your argument more convincing. However, ensure that your persuasion is grounded in facts and logic, not just emotional appeal. Refining your argument involves a careful balance of evidence, reasoning, and persuasive writing skills, all aimed at presenting a convincing and well-supported case.

Editing and Proofreading

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in finalizing your rough draft. Begin by reading your essay for overall clarity and coherence. Check if the essay flows logically from the introduction through the body to the conclusion. Pay attention to the structure of each paragraph; each should have a clear main idea and contribute to the overall argument. Then, focus on sentence-level clarity.

This involves correcting grammatical errors, clarifying ambiguous statements, and refining awkward phrasing. Be meticulous about word choice, ensuring each word adds value to your argument. Proofreading is the final step, where you look for and correct surface spelling, punctuation, and formatting errors. It’s often helpful to read your essay aloud or have someone else review it, as fresh eyes can catch errors you might have overlooked. You transform your rough draft into a polished, coherent, and grammatically accurate essay through careful editing and proofreading.

Once your rough draft is complete, stepping away for a while is a crucial point to write a rough draft for an essay. This break allows you to return with a fresh perspective, which is essential for effective revision. When you revisit your draft, focus first on the overall structure. Check that your arguments flow logically and that each paragraph transitions smoothly to the next. Ensure that your thesis statement is clearly articulated and that each section of your essay reinforces it.

During revision, scrutinize each sentence for clarity and precision. Remove any ambiguities or complex jargon that might confuse the reader. Moreover, aim for conciseness by eliminating redundant words or phrases. Every sentence should serve a purpose, whether advancing your argument, providing evidence, or elaborating on a point.

Here are the key steps to follow in the revision process:

• Structural Review: Ensure logical flow and effective organization.
• Clarity Check: Simplify complex language and clarify any ambiguities.
• Conciseness: Remove unnecessary words or redundant phrases.
• Argument Strengthening: Make sure each part of your essay contributes to your thesis.

Remember, good writing is re-writing. Be prepared to revise multiple times, making your essay cohesive and compelling. This process is where your rough draft transforms into a refined, impactful work.

Reflecting on the Writing Process

After completing the next steps in your essay, take a moment to reflect on the writing process. This reflection is an opportunity to consider what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown as a writer. Assess the strategies that worked well, such as your approach to organizing research or developing arguments, and note areas for improvement. Reflecting on challenges you encountered and how you overcame them can provide valuable insights for future writing endeavors.

Additionally, consider how your understanding of the topic has evolved through the research and writing process. This reflection not only aids in personal growth but also enhances your skills for future academic or professional writing tasks. It’s a chance to appreciate your journey from the initial idea to the final draft, recognizing the effort and dedication involved in crafting a well-thought-out essay.

Final Words

To write a rough draft for an essay is indeed to embark on a creative and intellectual journey, one that challenges and hones your writing skills. This guide has served as your compass, offering direction and insight to help you navigate the intricacies of crafting a rough draft. From gathering and organizing your research to developing your arguments and refining your writing, each step is crucial in forming the foundation of a persuasive and well-argued essay.

As you embrace this process, allow your ideas to flourish on paper, knowing that each word you write brings you closer to expressing your thoughts in their most impactful form. Remember, the rough draft is not the end, but a significant milestone in your academic or personal expression journey. The skills you develop and the insights you gain will improve your current essay and be invaluable in your future writing endeavors.

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Rough Drafting: Writing

• Embrace the Chaos
• Get Words Down
• Delegate to Future You
• Know Your Goal Style
• Pick Your Medium
• Set the Scene

Overview of rough drafting

The first draft of an essay or other written assessment is often referred to as the  rough draft.  We call it  rough  for a reason: it's normal for the earliest version of an essay to be disjointed, underdeveloped, or otherwise messy.

We argue that the messiness isn't just normal: it's a good thing. When you embrace the rough drafting stage as a time to explore content, test out structural options, inventory your ideas, and play  with the writing, it can lead to insights you might not discover otherwise.

Guide contents

The tabs of this guide will support you in completing rough drafts of assignments and understanding how you work best as a writer. The sections are organised as follows:

• Get Words Down  - Explore practical methods and suggestions to begin producing content.
• Delegate to Future You  - Learn vital strategies to maintain your momentum now and simplify your editing later.
• Know Your Goal Style -   Discover what makes a writing goal effective and how to follow through.
• Pick Your Medium - Reflect on the benefits and limitations of writing by hand, voice dictation, apps, and more.
• Set the Scene - Experiment with environmental factors such as company and space for maximum drafting efficiency.

Let's get started

Embracing the chaos of an imperfect rough draft can benefit your writing. Accepting this premise in theory is a start, but putting it into practice is trickier – to help you out, in this section, we will cover practical tips and approaches to get started on a rough draft.

The priority: make words happen

Many students feel self-conscious or even ashamed when their work is in a rough state. They want their writing to be engaging, logically structured, and well-supported from the very first attempt. That's a nice fantasy, but in reality, those unrealistic expectations can lead to procrastination and writing anxiety.

'Whether it's a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like The Lord of the Rings , the work is always accomplished one word at a time.' – Stephen King ¹

To state it rather unacademically, when we produce a first draft, our goal is to  make words happen.  That's it. Our goals shift as we get deeper into the process: as we transform that first draft into a second draft or the second into a third, we begin to make structural changes, refine our arguments, incorporate additional evidence, and more.

The rough draft, though? Again, this is simply where you make words happen.

Find your bearings

For most people, the writing process begins with activities like research/reading, invention, planning, and just plain  thinking . Amidst all those activities, writers sometimes lose track of the assignment's specific aims. Therefore, when you sit down to begin your draft, carefully re-read the assignment prompt , first.

• Do your rough plans and ideas align with the stated goals?
• Do you understand the key content/literature well enough to begin writing? (You don't need to be 100% finished with your research – focus on whether you know enough to make a meaningful start.)

Next, study any invention or planning items you have completed (e.g. mind maps, outlines , bulleted lists, and so on). Even writers who prefer to dive right in might benefit from jotting down a few important moves they plan to make in the draft (i.e., 'Define theory of XYZ'; 'Analyse the two case studies'; 'Explain method used').

Finally, choose a general starting point for your drafting: it does not have to be the beginning! You might find it easiest to begin with the introduction , but many people prefer to draft the body of the essay first.

Draft in a natural voice

You might struggle to start drafting because you fear your words aren't good enough or 'academic' enough. It's true that academic writing should aspire to clarity, precision and accuracy; however, those qualities rarely come to fruition in the first draft. Instead, you achieve clarity, precision and accuracy as you  edit subsequent drafts of the work.

Therefore, we recommend giving yourself permission to  write in a natural voice  while producing your first draft. This frees you to focus on  what  you want to say and  why , rather than fretting over exactly  how  you will say it.

The table below identifies and illustrates some common qualities of writing in a natural voice. It then shows how the voice can be changed later with editing. [ NOTE: Some disciplines accept the use of first-person pronouns, so the first example applies only to fields where 'I', 'my', etc. are discouraged.]

If you tend to pick away at your sentences, struggling to make each one sound just right before you move to the next, you might find it challenging to adopt this freer method of drafting. We encourage you to give it a try, though. When you truly accept rough drafts as works-in-progress – subject to all manner of changes and edits, later – the focus can shift to ideas and content rather than superficial phrasing concerns.

Freewriting and freespeaking

Freewriting techniques help produce raw material for essays, and they can also kickstart your writing if the work has lost momentum. Most simply,  freewriting  refers to writing without stopping for a set period of time (often ten minutes). No pausing to think, no backspacing, no editing: you have to move forward and keep writing until the timer goes off.

Freespeaking  follows the same premise, but you speak aloud instead of writing silently. The 'Pick Your Medium' tab of this guide shares some practical techniques for using dictation/voice methods if you wish to try this.

• Remember that the goal of drafting is to produce content, discover ideas, and make connections.
• Before you start drafting, revisit the assignment prompt and your planning/invention materials.
• Give yourself permission to write the first draft in your most natural voice.
• Consider gamifying your drafting process with some freewriting or freespeaking exercises.

An overview of placeholders

A placeholder, as the name implies,  stands in place of something else  within the rough draft. Using placeholders – or related techniques such as colour-coding and notes to self – not only eases the rough drafting process, but streamlines the writing activities that follow.

How placeholders work

Simply put, you can use a placeholder when you want to keep drafting for now, but know you need to return to a specific issue, later. Using a placeholder in your rough draft can help in two main ways:

• It encourages you to keep writing rather than going down a rabbit hole (i.e., getting distracted or diverted) every time an obstacle or question arises.
• It makes other writing activities like research and editing easier because you can sort your placeholders, like with like, and work systematically.

In practice, this means that you avoid disruption and draft more continuously. When you would normally be tempted to stop and make something 'perfect' (no such thing), you instead deploy a placeholder technique and keep going.

Forms and categories of placeholders

We will first explore the literal forms that placeholders can take. We will then cover common categories of use (i.e., 'stuff you flag' via a placeholder). 

Typical forms

Placeholders and notes to self can take whatever form makes sense to you. Here are some good options:

• Bracketed words or abbreviations  – As you're rough drafting, add a keyword or abbreviation in brackets [[LIKE THIS]] . Boldface helps it stand out. You can CTRL+F to find the brackets '[[' anywhere in your document, so it's easy to jump from one to the next as you edit later.
• Colour highlighting  – You can highlight sentences/words that you definitely want to revisit. Develop a manageable coding system (i.e., yellow = 'wow that sentence is way too long,' blue = 'find a better word to use there,' etc.).
• Comments or tags  – You can use the 'Comment' feature in Word to leave keywords or notes to self throughout the draft. Viewing all your comments together in the editing pane makes it easy to work through them systematically, later.
• Bullet points  – You can insert a bullet point or two to mark a spot in the rough draft that needs development or additional ideas, quickly summarising what's needed alongside the bullet(s).

Common categories

As we look at some common categories of placeholders, we will use the bracketed keyword technique to illustrate them. However, you could use other methods like Word comments or highlighting to indicate the same ideas.

• Expand/develop  – This is a good one to use if you have started to present a promising idea in your rough draft, but you need to reflect a while or do more research to fully develop it [[DEV. FURTHER]] .
• Fact check  – A placeholder like [[FACT CHECK]] or [[ACCURATE?]] is helpful when you must return to the literature to verify something. This lets you keep drafting while guaranteeing you will remember to double-check.
• Add evidence  – Use placeholders like this to mark claims you plan to strengthen by introducing evidence from the literature [[ADD LIT]] or a data set [[DATA NEEDED]] .
• Citation missing  –  Don't  assume you will remember to add all your citations later. If a fact, idea, or data point in your draft requires attribution, leave a [[CITATION]] placeholder. Your future self will thank you!
• Move 'missing'  – This one reminds you to go back and add anything you skip over in the rough draft, such as transition sentences [[MISSING transit]] , takeaway points, definitions of key terms, etc.
• Phrasing and word choices  – Remember, your rough draft will be full of clunky, weird sentences: that's 100% okay, so don't try to mark  every  sentence with a potential issue. But if a particular sentence or word is bothering you so much that you can't move on, try adding a placeholder like [[AWK]] (for 'awkward'), [[SMOOTH]] (for 'smooth out this cumbersome phrasing'), or [[W.C.]] (for 'word choice'). Flagging it will let you feel secure enough to continue drafting.

Making it work for you

The key thing to remember is that placeholders should make your writing life easier , not harder. With that in mind, here are some questions to consider as you develop your own placeholder techniques:

Is the method logical to you ?

• Don't work against your own instincts. For example, if using different colours to mark issues feels strange and difficult to track, that isn't your method!

Is the method manageable ?

• Aim for clarity and simplicity. Creating twenty different keyword codes is comprehensive, sure, but that system will be tough to memorise and stick to. Keep it simple and consistent.

Can you easily see or find your placeholders?

• You shouldn't  need to squint, zoom in, etc. Use abbreviations/punctuation you can 'find' via the CTRL+F shortcut, such as the double brackets in our earlier examples. If highlighting, colour enough text for it to stand out.
• Don't make placeholders out of words or acronyms that you use frequently in the actual writing. That will complicate any 'find' searches you do.

Does your system let you group 'like with like' and form a game plan?

• Make sure you can logically group your placeholders to simplify the next writing activities you do.

Editing's best friend

Let's say your first draft of an essay is complete. The rough draft is very rough, but that's okay: editing, supplementary research, and proofreading will whip the essay into shape. Great! But...where do you start? What needs to be done?

While drafting, we give our memories more credit than we should. Problems feel obvious to us in the moment , so we assume they will be just as obvious later on. (Spoiler: they won't be.)

This is where  placeholders  come to the rescue, providing a great starting point to address editorial concerns like these:

• Which claims in your draft still require data/literature to back them up?
• Have you incorporated any attributable information that still needs to be cited?
• What ideas or moves are missing from the draft (e.g. definitions, transitions, topic sentences, counterarguments...)?
• Did you feel particularly unsure about any words or phrases you used in the rough draft?

You will make changes, additions, and cuts unrelated to your placeholders, of course, but reviewing and grouping your placeholders can help you form a re-drafting and editing game plan (i.e., first, I'll do supplementary research on ABC and XYZ; next, I'll synthesize that new info into the draft; then, I'll fact-check...).

Placeholders in practice

Placeholders can be used in many writing contexts beyond academic essays: CVs, personal statements, business presentations, job performance reviews, email newsletters, wedding speeches, you name it.

In fact, we used placeholder strategies while writing the online guide you're currently reading! As shown in the below snip of the guide's overview tab, our strategies included...

• Keywords  – We used a small selection of keyword tags including 'missing', 'image here', and 'example needed' to flag areas where copy or content still needed to be developed.
• Emphasis  – We used brackets and caps-lock to distinguish our keyword tags from the surrounding text, with blue highlighting for further emphasis.
• Coding  – We kept our coding simple, but with enough options to suit the project. Blue was only used to indicate gaps (e.g. missing text, examples, or images), for example, whereas yellow meant phrasing edits might be required.

These techniques allowed us to keep the rough draft of the webpage moving along. Rather than staring at a wall for 30 minutes agonising over what might make a good example of some idea, we typed ' [EXAMPLE NEEDED] ' and continued working on the next passage. When a good example dawned on us later, the placeholder made it quick and easy to pick back up in the correct spot.

Same draft, two approaches

If you are having trouble picturing how placeholders can ease the drafting process, let's have a look at one writer, 'Maria,' as she works on her dissertation two different ways. Click below to expand the first scenario:

  Scenario #1  

Maria has started drafting her dissertation but isn't getting much written so far. She has two hours to write this afternoon. She types one sentence, then types another: 'I will use an intersectional and mixed-methods approach to insure the data is fair.' She re-reads it:  insure?  Is that right? She pulls up Google and searches 'insure or ensure.' The first hit adds 'assure' to the mix, too! Ugh. She reads the article and decides 'ensure' is correct – but the article is on an American site, maybe it's different in the UK? She finds a UK website and, yes, it's supposed to be 'ensure.'

But now she's worried about a bigger problem: isn't 'intersectional' related more to theories she's using, whereas 'mixed-methods approach' is about her data analysis? Is she supposed to talk about those in the same sentence? Well, last week she read a study that used mixed methods, so maybe she can read that and see how they framed it. She opens EndNote...nope, not that article...not that article...not that article...okay, there it is. Except the article doesn't say anything about theories in the introduction: is Maria doing this totally wrong?

She also wrote ' I will use,' and she can't remember if her supervisor said she  should  or  shouldn't  use the first-person for her dissertation, so she pulls up Blackboard and starts digging through folders to see if there's a handbook or something. Eventually she remembers that information was shared via email, not Blackboard, so she opens Outlook. Before she can find the email from her supervisor, Maria sees an email she sent to herself yesterday, with an article attached that she thought could be relevant to her dissertation. She opens the article and starts reading it...then keeps reading it...then remembers to search for that supervisor email...but nope, she can't find it. Forget it. She pulls up Word again and deletes the whole sentence.

At the end of Maria's two-hour 'rough drafting' session, she has written precisely... one sentence.

Maria probably doesn't feel great about that writing session. She bounced between many discrete activities in the writing process: rough drafting, proofreading, researching, analyzing assignment parameters, more researching, etc.

Some writers can get the work done while bouncing around in this way, but for many of us, it's more efficient to  identify the nature of each writing session and stick to it.  For example: 11:00-12:00 is rough drafting; 12:00-13:00 is lunch; 13:00-14:30 is research time; break; 15:00-16:00 is rough drafting.

What if Maria were to use some placeholder techniques? Click below to see how that might work.

  Scenario #2  

Maria has started drafting her dissertation but isn't getting much written so far. She has two hours to write this afternoon. She types one sentence, then types another: ' I will use an intersectional and mixed-methods approach to insure [W.C.] the data is fair.' Maria can't remember if first-person pronouns are permitted, so she highlights that phrasing. She always mixes up insure  and ensure , so she adds 'W.C.' for 'word choice.' She will check on those things later.

She knows she needs to expand on those ideas, so she continues typing, 'In terms of the project, intersectional refers to the theoretical lenses I am applying. I will analyse the interviews through not only a feminist lens [SPEC?]  but the social model of disability, too, which posits that [QUOTATION/CITATION]. ' The 'SPEC' note is a placeholder because Maria is deciding between two particular theorists: she'll get more 'SPECIFIC', later. She remembers circling a short but helpful definition of the social model of disability in an article, but she doesn't want to get distracted pawing through EndNote, so she adds a placeholder and keeps writing...and keeps writing...

At the end of Maria's two-hour rough drafting session, she has written  five paragraphs.

Maria should feel great about this writing session! She will need to revisit those five paragraphs and do considerable editing, later, but the point to remember is that  you can't improve what doesn't yet exist.

Moreover, the placeholder and colour-coding techniques that Maria has deployed will make it easier to coordinate her approach to editing. She can group related placeholders (e.g. notes to cite some literature; notes to check word choice; etc.) and focus on one similar set of actions at a time, making the process efficient.

• Placeholders can help you push forward with a rough draft instead of letting perfectionism or worry win out.
• There are different ways to use placeholders and notes to self: play around to build a system that works for you.
• These techniques are valuable not only for producing the rough draft, but for the re-drafting and editing processes .

The power of mini-goals

With written assignments, don't think in terms of one big goal, i.e., 'Finish and submit essay by 15th January.' Instead, use mini-goals to ensure you are making enough progress to hit  incremental or staggered deadlines.  On this page, we'll explore how goal setting options work, including the potential benefits and drawbacks; then we will cover ways to hold yourself accountable to goals.

The three keys to effective writing goals

Mini-goals when rough drafting are generally quantity-based, time-based, or content-based.  Watch the video below or read the subsections that follow to learn how to use these elements in combination.

Length/quantity-based goals

With this approach, you aim to draft a certain number of words, lines/sentences, paragraphs, or pages per writing session or per day. If a 1,500-word essay is due in a few weeks, for example, you could research during the first week, then draft 300 words per day (Monday to Friday) in the second week. This would give you a 1,500-word rough draft, with one more week remaining to re-draft and edit.

If typing your rough draft, you can use 'word count' features to track your progress. If writing by hand, a paragraph or page target will be easier to follow.

• PROS  – Quantity goals compel you to actually write rather than sitting there overthinking. Breaking a big project like a 10,000-word dissertation into little 'chunks' (draft two paragraphs today; draft 150 words tomorrow; etc.) keeps you on track and makes the work feel more manageable.
• CAUTION   – Shift gears if too many writing sessions lead only  to 'fluff' or filler material while using quantity-based goals. This might signal the need to try a different goal method; it could also mean you need to engage in more invention activities or research before rough drafting.

Time-based goals

With this approach, you aim to rough draft for specific amounts of time. Plan your week in advance, setting realistic goals for each day by considering your other obligations, where you will be, anticipated energy levels, etc.

If you will be drafting for an hour or more, use a Pomodoro timer to break the time goal into shorter chunks with breaks between. For example, 'two hours of drafting' could be reframed as 'four 25-minute Pomodoro cycles.' See the quick video below for an explainer on this technique.

• PROS  – Time-based goals help you integrate drafting practices into your daily and weekly routine, which can gradually transform writing from 'random, stress-spiking intrusion' to 'normal habit.' Scheduling the decided goal into your calendar ups the odds that you will sit down to write during the blocked-out time. 
• CAUTION   – Shift gears if you are leaving too many so-called 'writing sessions' without having  written  (i.e., you 'wrote for two hours' yesterday and 'wrote for three hours' today, but have four sentences to show for it). Try combining a quantity-based or content-based goal with your time goal to remind yourself to make words happen .

Content-based goals

Students can use content-based goals for any assignment, but this method becomes crucial with extended writing at the postgraduate level . Why? Simply put, the bigger a writing project is, the more likely you are to stare at the blank page and say, 'I have no idea what to write today.'

It's important to develop a solid outline or mind map for this method because you build your mini-goals around achieving specific 'moves' or tackling specific content/ideas . That word 'specific' is key, as you can see in the examples below:

BAD content-based goal: In today's writing session, I will work on my literature review.

GOOD content-based goal:  In today's writing session, I will synthesize three different scholars' definitions of the term 'viral marketing.'

Just reading the first goal feels overwhelming: 'work on' is vague, and 'literature review' is far too broad to provide meaningful direction. The revised goal specifies the move the writer will make: synthesis (i.e., critically weaving together multiple sources). Additionally, it specifies the content/idea the writer will cover: the definition of 'viral marketing.'

To reiterate, content-based goals won't work unless you have some idea where the writing is headed, so invest time in invention and organisation activities.

• PROS  – Building your mini-goals around writing moves and content/ideas helps keep your rough drafting relevant, making this a good choice for writers who tend to stray from the assessment brief. You enter each drafting session with a clear idea of what you need to accomplish.
• CAUTION   – An overly rigid approach to content-based goals can prevent exploration of important insights that arise when you are rough drafting, so take time to reflect between each goal in case your plan needs to evolve.

But I don't wanna... (i.e., accountability)

If you are one of those magical people with a magically healthy sense of magical self-motivation...well, good for you! Skip this section. For the rest of us mere mortals, sticking to our writing goals can be a challenge. Here are some ideas to help:

Get it in your calendar as a real thing

It's easy for 'work on rough draft' to get bumped down, down, down your priority list until suddenly the essay is due...tomorrow. Drafting goals shouldn't be loose intentions that float invisibly around your head: they should be recorded and scheduled. Add your drafting sessions to the calendar you use most, and set up alarms and reminders.

Set yourself up for success

Know thyself, know thyself, know thyself: what distracts you when you're trying to draft? Identify the distractions, and do everything you can to eliminate or mitigate them. For example, if social media's siren call always gets to you, stop trying to succeed with willpower alone: leave your phone in a library locker or give it to a trusted friend until your writing session is over. See the 'Pick Your Medium' tab of this guide for more suggestions on tailoring how you write.

Lean on external accountability

In the 'Set the Scene' tab of this guide, we discuss drafting with an accountabili-buddy or writing group. It can be so helpful if you need to 'show up' not only for yourself, but for peers. For extra motivation, create a shared document where each of you log progress towards your drafting goals; this can be as basic as a table of the weekdays where you type 'Y' if you met the goal or 'N' if you didn't. Give encouragement, get encouragement: everyone wins.

Visually represent your achievements

This is a simple one, but it feels great: create a way to visually mark each goal you hit. Tap into your inner child and slap gold star stickers onto the calendar. Draw a thermometer on a piece of paper with the word-count total at the top; colour it in each day as you creep closer to the goal. Put each mini-goal in the To-Do app and relish in that 'ping' sound when you mark it complete.

Make a writing ritual

Cultivate a little ritual that tells your brain, 'It's time to write.' Buy a special tea or coffee that you only brew for writing. Or designate an ugly (but oh-so-comfy) jumper your official 'Making Words Happen Jumper.' Or do some sun salutations while singing 'Wrecking Ball' at the top of your lungs. It doesn't have to be dignified: it's your writing ritual.

Devise a reward system

Rewards that are contingent on perfection tend to be demotivating, so if you try this route, do reward yourself for a 'pretty okay' job: 100% goal-hitting is not realistic. Did you hit most your goals in a week? Perhaps you and your partner agree to binge some bad reality TV on the weekend. Complete your rough draft well ahead of the deadline? Treat yourself to an at-home spa day, or watch some rugby at the pub. For some people, it works to intersperse mini-rewards while writing, i.e., 'For every 45 minutes I draft, I'll give myself 15 minutes of TikTok.'

Being SMART

You can mix and match categories of rough drafting goals to create goals that are SMART: Specific, Motivating, Attainable, Relevant, and Trackable .

• Make a goal more specific by adding a content-based detail.
• Make a goal more  motivating by adding a reward or reflecting on the positive outcomes of achieving it.
• Make goals  attainable by adapting them to match realities of your schedule and study/writing habits.
• Make goals relevant by verifying that your planning materials reflect the assignment aims.
• Make goals trackable  with quantity-based mini-deadlines.

Writers who thrive within familiar routine may benefit from finding the goal style that works for them, then sticking with it. Individuals who respond better to variety may benefit from rotating between goal styles if one approach starts to feel stale.

Drafting goals can also evolve throughout the academic year. For example, a postgraduate researcher might respond well to primarily time-based drafting goals for much of the year. However, in the two months preceding a progression review deadline, they might layer on additional elements to build SMART drafting goals tailored to the submission requirements.

• Experiment with setting goals for your rough drafting based on quantity, time, or content written.
• Effective rough drafting goals are specific and realistic: goals that are vague or unattainable risk demotivating you.
• Setting mini-goals with staggered deadlines is vital when working on an extended piece like a dissertation or thesis, so use shorter assessments as opportunities to refine your goal-setting skills.

Pick your medium

When it comes to writing medium, your best bet is to experiment with various options . Most students default to typing in digital documents, but this isn't the only way to produce a rough draft.

Below, we will explore common drafting mediums and tools in terms of pros (i.e., benefits some writers will experience) and words of caution (i.e., potential 'cons,' many of which can be mitigated).

Typing (laptop/computer)

• THE METHOD  – Log into a computer, fire up a Word doc, and get started: you know the drill!
• It's simple to leave notes or placeholders in the text (see the 'Delegate to Future You' tab for more on this).
• Fast typing = fast drafting.
• Cloud storage enables access from any compatible device.
• Copy/paste lets you easily shuffle content around while drafting.
• You don't need to spend time typing it up later.
• If you freeze up at the sight of a cursor blinking on a blank page, try typing 'It's okay if this draft is terrible' at the top of the document, in bold. Doing so is strangely liberating!
• Long stints at the computer tire the eyes and body. Set a Pomodoro timer to remind yourself to take breaks.
• The call of the internet can be very, very distracting. Explore productivity apps/extensions that limit notifications, or bar internet access altogether, while drafting.
• Your work can be lost if you don't follow IT best practices. Never  rely exclusively on local storage, i.e., saving the file to your desktop. Back it up   via cloud storage or other options.

• THE METHOD  – You only need a pen and a notebook for this one. Project notebooks with tabbed sections are great for staying organised. You can also keep one notebook for planning/invention (outlines, mind maps, etc.) and one for drafting, then set the plan and your draft side by side while working.
• Writing by hand can quiet the perfectionistic inner voice that makes drafting difficult.
• Going device-free reduces digital distractions.
• The ritual of sitting down with a favourite notebook and pen transitions you into a writing-focused headspace.
• You have an excuse to buy cute stationery. (Kidding...kind of.)
• Getting hands-on with your draft can enhance your sense of ownership and engagement .
• You can draft in laptop-unfriendly locations (e.g. beach, forest, museum bench), with no worries about battery life and WiFi.
• If you don't make a regular habit of typing up what you have handwritten, a backlog builds up. Create a recurring 'Transcription Time' event in your calendar; use it to type up your week's writing.
• Notebooks can be lost, damaged, or misplaced. At the end of each drafting session, take quick pictures of your handwritten pages as an extra safeguard. Return your notebook to the same spot after every use to reduce the odds of misplacing it.
• Notebooks aren't secure. Warning: if your drafting involves confidential information or sensitive data, you must follow the university's research data management and privacy policies .

• THE METHOD  – Many students never consider this option, but talking is, indeed, a way to write . The first variation is to record yourself talking and transcribe it later. Just use the voice memo app in your phone to record thoughts and ideas as they come to you. The second variation uses speech-to-text technology , which transcribes your words automatically as you speak. Microsoft Word has a 'Dictate' feature; other dictation software and apps are available, too.
• Have you ever been frustrated because you can explain an idea in conversation, but you freeze or go blank when you try to write it down, later? Here's your perfect workaround: forget about big bad scary WRITING, and just...talk.
• Voice memos let us record flashes of inspiration wherever they occur (e.g. treadmill, bathtub, an annoyingly long queue at Nando's, the New Forest).
• You can squeeze some writing into a busy schedule by dictating during breaks at work, on your commute, etc.
• Writing by voice gives you a break from texting, typing, and staring at a screen.
• If using voice memos, immediately re-name your recordings (e.g. 'fallout of financial crisis' or 'Stranger Things character analysis') to avoid creating a sea of files with names like '20230713_7623.wav.'
• Delete each voice memo once you've transcribed it to prevent confusion. Follow the recurring 'Transcription Time' guidance in the handwriting section, above.
• Phones can be damaged, lost, or misplaced. Change your settings so recordings back up to cloud storage.
• If it's annoying to listen to your own voice as you transcribe, put your phone on speaker and let your computer 'listen' and type it up. You can also feed your sound files to a programme that automatically transcribes speech.

Apps and software

• Does drafting in your discipline call for mathematical formulas or other elements that a basic word processor doesn't handle well? If so, Overleaf/LaTeX  might make drafting easier.
• Are you writing a dissertation , thesis, or other lengthy work, and finding it frustrating to manage a substantial manuscript? If so, software tailored to long-form writing, such as Scrivener, might be a fit.
• Are you prone to digital distractions while drafting, or do wish you had a cleaner interface to work in? Search for 'focus writing apps' and see what's available.
• Do you like to dictate a lot of your content? Word does have 'Dictate,' but dedicated voice-to-text software provides more functionality.
• Could you benefit from assistive technology when drafting? Check the university's assistive technology software guidance for more.
• IT solutions exist for many logistical elements of rough drafting that we find frustrating or lacking.
• Working in apps that make sense to  you  saves time and frustration.
• Please don't mistake 'writing apps' for generative AI such as ChatGPT!  When we refer to 'writing apps,' we mean apps that let you type, record, organise, store, and annotate  your own writing .   We are  not  endorsing AI that generates text for you (see the university's guidance on academic integrity and Artificial Intelligence Tools ).
• Many free writing apps exist, but others require a one-off or monthly payment. Take advantage of 7-day trials and/or free versions of apps to test them out before you commit any money.
• All software comes with a learning curve. Give yourself adequate time to learn the ins and outs of new apps (i.e., don't launch Scrivener for the first time when your thesis is due in three weeks!).
• Make sure it's straightforward to reformat/export your writing into the file format required for submission.

Mixing and matching

Though you might settle on one preferred medium, many writers like a 'mix and match' approach. The medium that works best varies with a range of factors from day to day: how distracted you feel; your energy levels; your location; how open or busy your schedule is; your confidence in the content; the aims of the drafting at hand; whether you feel 'blocked'; and more.

If you are working on an extended piece of writing such as a thesis or dissertation , it can be especially beneficial to vary your writing medium. Approaching words in a different way can motivate or reengage us when a project starts to feel tedious.

• Reflect on your typical writing medium and whether it lets you engage with rough drafts as you would like.
• Consider both digital and 'old school' methods to produce content: as long as it lets you put words together, it's valid.
• Remember that switching up your writing medium can have positive results when you're feeling stuck or demotivated.

Tailoring your writing scene

What does 'university student writing an essay' look like? Several students gathered together in the library, each working on their laptops and pausing to chat now and then? A lone student sat in a bustling café, scribbling in a notebook?

We encourage you to experiment with your writing practice when it comes to environment, from when and where you write, to whether you write alone or amidst others. T his page will help you set your scene for productive rough drafting.

Pick your company

It is surprising how influential having some company – or having no company at all! – can be on our writing activities. For example, some writers find it easiest to rough draft in a public study area alongside friends, but better to  edit  at home alone. Other writers prefer the opposite! Test out different combinations to figure out what works for you.

Flying truly solo

• For this option, try rough drafting when you are all by yourself. This often means drafting in your bedroom or another study area at home, but it could mean being out in nature with a notebook. Up to you!

Solo-ing among fellow solos

• For this option, try rough drafting in a space where people nearby are also working solo: for example, study pods in the library or Building 100, a work-friendly café with lots of small tables, a computer lab, etc.
• Writers drawn to this style don't want their work interrupted with conversation, but they do feel motivated by the awareness that everyone around them is working, too.

Pairing with an accountabili-buddy

• For this option, find one peer to join you for drafting sessions as an accountabili-buddy (i.e., an accountability buddy). Their presence helps you stay focused, and in turn, you help them stay focused.
• This practice helps ensure you are drafting regularly rather than procrastinating, getting distracted on your phone, etc. Read up on the concept of 'body doubling' to stay focused if this sounds appealing!

Gathering the writing group

• For this option, draft alongside a few peers on a regular basis. Writing groups vary in size, but four to six people total tends to work well.
• Major benefits of writing groups can include increased productivity, reduced procrastination, reduced anxiety, and an enhanced sense of community .

Matching task and company

• The company (or lack thereof) that works best for you whilst rough drafting might not suit other writing activities. For example, you might draft 'solo among fellow solos' in the library but bounce ideas off peers while editing.
• Figuring out your preferences takes trial and error. Reflect on not only your levels of productivity and focus, but your emotional and social wellbeing: after all, a tiny boost in productivity isn't worth it if you feel overwhelmed, disconnected, etc.

Reflect on environment

Environment goes hand in hand with company. You want to feel physically comfortable , but not so comfortable you fall asleep; you want to feel mentally stimulated , but not to the point of distraction. Here, we consider how factors in the environment influence your senses of focus and inspiration.

Vast rooms, great heights, and cozy nooks

• Compare how it feels to draft in a large, airy space with how it feels to draft in a cozier, den-like space.
• Try drafting with visual stimuli minimised: for example, at a desk facing a wall. Then, try drafting somewhere with more action or a view: for example, sat near a window on a building's 6th floor.

Noise levels and types

• Fewer writers thrive in absolute silence than you might imagine.
• When it comes to noise, think not only about volume levels, but the qualities  of what you are hearing: is the soundscape consistent or unpredictable; ambient or self-curated; musical or music-free; etc.?
• For a quick experiment, try drafting in one of the library's designated 'quiet zones,' then try drafting on a floor that allows talking: which worked better for you?
• A decent pair of headphones can be a great investment in your writing. Explore online options for 'white noise,' 'focus music,' 'study soundtracks,' etc.
• Cue up recordings of actual cafes, train stations, rainforests, zoos, laundromats, and other spaces if the ambient vibe helps you concentrate.

Public vs. private

• Public spaces tend to spark a greater sense of accountability. No one in the library will come over and chastise you if you stop working, but...it kind of feels like they will, doesn't it? Likewise, when you leave the house specifically to go somewhere and write, you feel more driven to follow through.
• Private spaces have benefits, too. You can stretch, pace around, and talk to yourself. You can create as much writing mess as needed. No one will judge you for wearing a dragon onesie while drafting (you do you, friend). Plus, the coffee is much cheaper!

Night owls, early birds, and...midday geese?

• Experiment with what time of day you write: again, the results may surprise you.
• Some writers swear by drafting first thing in the morning because their minds feel clear and undistracted.
• Other writers let their ideas incubate throughout the day and draft best at night.
• Others, still, experience an energy spike in the afternoon that lets them focus well on drafting.
• There is no right or wrong in terms of  productivity 'sweet spots' in the day: there is only what works best for you .

Customising environments

Small adjustments can make any environment work better for you if you take time to reflect on which factors are making the drafting feel easier and which factors are hampering you. For example...

• If seeing people walking around, gesturing, etc. is nice but the noise is too much, try silencing headphones.
• If the sounds of everyone typing and chattering in the library are great but you feel exposed or visually distracted, use a jacket to turn a study pod into your own little 'writing cave.'
• If your writing group meets in a private house for the cheap snacks and 'yay we can wear onesies' factor, but the house is too quiet, take turns picking ambient soundtracks or instrumental playlists for background noise.

• Rough drafting doesn't need to be a solo activity: consider whether some company is a good fit.
• Experiment with environmental variables – space, privacy, sound, time of day, etc. – to discover your individual blends for inspiration and focus.
• Remember that different writing activities may call for different combinations of company and environment: don't be afraid to mix things up and see what works.

• Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 5:31 PM
• URL: https://library.soton.ac.uk/rough_drafting

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Building the Essay Draft

Building a strong essay draft requires going through a logical progression of stages:, explanation.

Development options

Linking paragraphs

Introductions

Conclusions.

Revising and proofreading the draft

Hints for revising and proofreading

Tip: After you have completed the body of your paper, you can decide what you want to say in your introduction and in your conclusion.

Once you know what you want to talk about and you have written your thesis statement, you are ready to build the body of your essay.

The thesis statement will usually be followed by

• the body of the paper
• the paragraphs that develop the thesis by explaining your ideas by backing them up 
• examples or evidence

Tip: The "examples or evidence" stage is the most important part of the paper, because you are giving your reader a clear idea of what you think and why you think it.

Development Options

• For each reason you have to support your thesis, remember to state your point clearly and explain it.

Tip: Read your thesis sentence over and ask yourself what questions a reader might ask about it. Then answer those questions, explaining and giving examples or evidence.

Show how one thing is similar to another, and then how the two are different, emphasizing the side that seems more important to you. For example, if your thesis states, "Jazz is a serious art form," you might compare and contrast a jazz composition to a classical one.

Show your reader what the opposition thinks (reasons why some people do not agree with your thesis), and then refute those reasons (show why they are wrong).  On the other hand, if you feel that the opposition isn't entirely wrong, you may say so, (concede), but then explain why your thesis is still the right opinion.

• Think about the order in which you have made your points. Why have you presented a certain reason that develops your thesis first, another second? If you can't see any particular value in presenting your points in the order you have, reconsider it until you either decide why the order you have is best, or change it to one that makes more sense to you.
• Does each paragraph develop my thesis?
• Have I done all the development I wish had been done?
• Am I still satisfied with my working thesis, or have I developed my body in ways that mean I must adjust my thesis to fit what I have learned, what I believe, and what I have actually discussed?

Linking Paragraphs

It is important to link your paragraphs together, giving your readers cues so that they see the relationship between one idea and the next, and how these ideas develop your thesis.

Your goal is a smooth transition from paragraph A to paragraph B, which explains why cue words that link paragraphs are often called "transitions."

Tip: Your link between paragraphs may not be one word, but several, or even a whole sentence.

Here are some ways of linking paragraphs:

• To show simply that another idea is coming, use words such as "also," "moreover," or "in addition."
• To show that the next idea is the logical result of the previous one, use words such as "therefore," "consequently," "thus," or "as a result."
• To show that the next idea seems to go against the previous one, or is not its logical result, use words such as "however," "nevertheless," or "still."
• To show you've come to your strongest point, use words such as "most importantly."
• To show you've come to a change in topic, use words such as "on the other hand."
• To show you've come to your final point, use words such as "finally."

After you have come up with a thesis and developed it in the body of your paper, you can decide how to introduce your ideas to your reader.

The goals of an introduction are to

• Get your reader's attention/arouse your reader's curiosity.
• Provide any necessary background information before you state your thesis (often the last sentence of the introductory paragraph).
• Establish why you are writing the paper.

Tip: You already know why you are writing, and who your reader is; now present that reason for writing to that reader.

Hints for writing your introduction:

• Use the Ws of journalism (who, what, when, where, why) to decide what information to give. (Remember that a history teacher doesn't need to be told "George Washington was the first president of the United States." Keep your reader in mind.)
• Add another "W": Why (why is this paper worth reading)? The answer could be that your topic is new, controversial, or very important.
• Catch your reader by surprise by starting with a description or narrative that doesn't hint at what your thesis will be. For example, a paper could start, "It is less than a 32nd of an inch long, but it can kill an adult human," to begin a paper about eliminating malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

There can be many different conclusions to the same paper (just as there can be many introductions), depending on who your readers are and where you want to direct them (follow-up you expect of them after they finish your paper). Therefore, restating your thesis and summarizing the main points of your body should not be all that your conclusion does. In fact, most weak conclusions are merely restatements of the thesis and summaries of the body without guiding the reader toward thinking about the implications of the thesis.

Here are some options for writing a strong conclusion:

Make a prediction about the future. You convinced the reader that thermal energy is terrific, but do you think it will become the standard energy source? When?

Give specific advice. If your readers now understand that multicultural education has great advantages, or disadvantages, or both, whatever your opinion might be, what should they do? Whom should they contact?

Put your topic in a larger context. Once you have proven that physical education should be part of every school's curriculum, perhaps readers  should consider other "frill" courses which are actually essential.

Tip: Just as a conclusion should not be just a restatement of your thesis and summary of your body, it also should not be an entirely new topic, a door opened that you barely lead your reader through and leave them there lost. Just as in finding your topic and in forming your thesis, the safe and sane rule in writing a conclusion is this:  neither too little nor too much.

Revising and Proofreading the Draft

Writing is only half the job of writing..

The writing process begins even before you put pen to paper, when you think about your topic. And, once you finish actually writing, the process continues. What you have written is not the finished essay, but a first draft, and you must go over many times to improve it--a second draft, a third draft, and so on until you have as many as necessary to do the job right. Your final draft, edited and proofread, is your essay, ready for your reader's eyes.

A revision is a "re-vision" of your essay--how you see things now, deciding whether your introduction, thesis, body, and conclusion really express your own vision. Revision is global, taking another look at what ideas you have included in your paper and how they are arranged.

Proofreading

Proofreading is checking over a draft to make sure that everything is complete and correct as far as spelling, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and other such matters go. It's a necessary, if somewhat tedious and tricky, job one that a friend or computer Spellcheck can help you perform. Proofreading is polishing, one spot at a time.

Tip: Revision should come before proofreading: why polish what you might be changing anyway?

Hints for revising and proofreading:

• Leave some time--an hour, a day, several day--between writing and revising. You need some distance to switch from writer to editor, some distance between your initial vision and your re-vision.
• Double-check your writing assignment to be sure you haven't gone off course . It is all right if you've shifted from your original plan, if you know why and are happier with this direction.  Make sure that you are actually following your mentor's assignment.
• Read aloud slowly . You need to get your eye and your ear to work together. At any point that something seems awkward, read it over again. If you're not sure what's wrong--or even if something is wrong--make a notation in the margin and come back to it later. Watch out for "padding;" tighten your sentences to eliminate excess words that dilute your ideas.
• Be on the lookout for points that seem vague or incomplete ; these could present opportunities for rethinking, clarifying, and further developing an idea.
• Get to know what your particular quirks are as a writer. Do you give examples without explaining them, or forget links between paragraphs? Leave time for an extra rereading to look for any weak points.
• Get someone else into the act. Have others read your draft, or read it to them. Invite questions and ask questions yourself, to see if your points are clear and well-developed. Remember, though, that some well-meaning readers can be too easy (or too hard) on a piece of writing.

Tip: Never change anything unless you are convinced that it should be changed .

• Keep tools at hand, such as a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a writing handbook.
• While you're using word processing, remember that computers are wonderful resources for editing and revising.
• When you feel you've done everything you can, first by revising and then by proofreading, and have a nice clean, final draft, put it aside and return later to re-see the whole essay. There may be some last minute fine-tuning that can make all the difference.

Don't forget--if you would like help with at this point in your assignment or any other type of writing assignment, learning coaches are available to assist you.  Please contact Academic Support by emailing [email protected] ; calling 1-800-847-3000, ext 3008; or calling the main number of the location in your region (click  here for more information) to schedule an appointment.

Need Assistance?

If you would like assistance with any type of writing assignment, learning coaches are available to assist you. Please contact Academic Support by emailing [email protected].

Questions or feedback about SUNY Empire's Writing Support?

Contact us at [email protected] .

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8.5: Write the Rough Draft

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How Do I Structure My Research Draft?

Research papers generally follow the same basic structure: an introduction that presents the writer’s thesis; a body section that develops the thesis with supporting points and evidence; and a conclusion that revisits the thesis and provides additional insights or suggestions for further research.

Your writing voice will come across most strongly in your introduction and conclusion as you work to attract your readers’ interest and establish your thesis. These sections usually do not cite sources at length. They focus on the big picture, not specific details. In contrast, the body of your paper will cite sources extensively. As you present your ideas, you will support your points with details from your research.

Writing Your Introduction

There are several approaches to writing an introduction, each of which fulfills the same goals. The introduction should get readers’ attention, provide background information, and present the writer’s thesis. Many writers like to begin with one of the following catchy openers:

• A surprising fact
• A thought-provoking question
• An attention-getting quote
• A brief anecdote that illustrates a larger concept
• A connection between your topic and your readers’ experiences

The next few sentences place the opening in context by presenting background information. From there, the writer builds toward a thesis, which is traditionally placed at the end of the introduction. Think of your thesis as a signpost that lets readers know in what direction the paper is headed. If you wrote a problem statement with thesis for your annotated bibliography, this information should be incorporated into your introduction.

Writers often work out of sequence when writing a research paper. If you find yourself struggling to write an engaging introduction, you may wish to write the body of your paper first. Writing the body sections first will help you clarify your main points. Writing the introduction should then be easier. You may have a better sense of how to introduce the paper after you have drafted some or all of the body.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Introduction sample.

The student writing a paper on low-carb diets decided to begin his research paper by connecting his topic to readers’ daily experiences. Read the first draft of his introduction. he introduction progresses from the opening sentences, to background information, to his thesis. The thesis is in bold. Note how the thesis includes a concession to opposing views, "Although following a low-carbohydrate diet can benefit some people," before clearly stating the argumentative stance of the paper.

"Beyond the Hype: Evaluating Low-Carb Diets"

Over the past decade, increasing numbers of Americans have jumped on the low-carb bandwagon. Some studies, such as those conducted by Lisa Sanders and David L. Katz and by Julie Hirsch, estimate that approximately forty million Americans, or about twenty percent of the population, are attempting to restrict their intake of food high in carbohydrates. Proponents of low-carb diets say they are not only the most effective way to lose weight, but they also yield health benefits such as lower blood pressure and improved cholesterol levels. Meanwhile, some doctors claim that low-carb diets are overrated and caution that their long-term effects are unknown. Although following a low-carbohydrate diet can benefit some people, these diets are not necessarily the best option for everyone who wants to lose weight or improve their health.

Writing Your Conclusion

In your introduction, you tell readers where they are headed. In your conclusion, you recap where they have been. For this reason, some writers prefer to write their conclusions soon after they have written their introduction. However, this method may not work for all writers. Other writers prefer to write their conclusion at the end of the paper, after writing the body paragraphs. No process is absolutely right or absolutely wrong; find the one that best suits you.

No matter when you compose the conclusion, it should revisit your thesis and sum up your main ideas. The conclusion should not simply echo the introduction or rely on bland summary statements, such as “In this paper, I have demonstrated that.…” In fact, avoid repeating your thesis verbatim from the introduction. Restate it in different words that reflect the new perspective gained through your research. That helps keep your ideas fresh for your readers. An effective writer might conclude a paper by revisiting an anecdote presented earlier, reminding readers of how the topic relates to their lives, or including a recommendation for readers that ties to your thesis argument.

Tips for Writing Conclusions

• If you're having trouble writing a conclusion, check your working thesis statement. Often students who have a question, statement of fact, or other non-arguable statement in place of a thesis find it hard to draft a conclusion. The conclusion needs a strong argumentative thesis to refer to.
• Remind readers of your argument for recommended action on your controversy.
• Don't raise new questions or topics not previously covered in the paper in the conclusion.

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Cc licensed content.

Information on this page from Applying Your Research (opens in new window) is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kathryn Crowther et al. (opens in new window) ( GALILEO Open Learning Materials (opens in new window) ).

• 8.5.1: Create an Argument with Supporting Evidence
• 8.5.2: Incorporate and Explain Evidence
• 8.5.3: Write Your Research Paper Draft

How to Write a Research Paper

• Step 1. Choose a Topic
• Step 2. Start Brainstorming
• Step 3. Start Your (Initial) Research
• Step 4. Narrow Your Topic
• Step 5. Research, Research, Research!
• Step 6. Write an Outline
• Step 7. Citations & References
• Step 8. Annotated Bibliography (optional?)
• Step 9. Write a Rough Draft
• Step 10. Edit
• Step 11. Rewrite (Repeatable)
• Step 12. Final Draft
• Additional Sites
• Citing Sources [opens a new window] This link opens in a new window

Need assistance? Get in touch!

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 931-540-2560

Write a Rough Draft

Many students hear "rough draft" and they think "final draft." Let me assure you, this is not a good idea. A rough draft is you putting ideas to paper in a semi-logical order that might actually get a D.

A rough draft gives you the opportunity to screw up and fix it before you hand in a paper that sucks. Take that opportunity. The fact that your paper sucks at this point is a good thing. It puts less pressure on you, and you can just let ideas flow. Use it to make your paper better. This means yes, you will actually have to write a rough draft .

But instead of being upset about it, use it as a springboard to a better paper. The rough draft could show you where some holes exist in your research. Just because you're writing a rough draft doesn't mean you're done researching !

• << Previous: Step 8. Annotated Bibliography (optional?)
• Next: Step 10. Edit >>
• Last Updated: Dec 7, 2023 11:04 AM
• URL: https://libguides.columbiastate.edu/research_paper

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8.3 Drafting

Learning objectives.

• Identify drafting strategies that improve writing.
• Use drafting strategies to prepare the first draft of an essay.

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, 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.

Getting Started: Strategies For Drafting

Your objective for this portion of Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” is to draft the body paragraphs of a standard five-paragraph essay. A five-paragraph essay contains an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. 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. In this lesson, Mariah does all her work on the computer, but you may use pen and paper or the computer to write a rough 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:

• 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.

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?

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 that 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.

Writing at Work

Many of the documents you produce at work target a particular audience for a particular purpose. You may find that it is highly advantageous to know as much as you can about your target audience and to prepare your message to reach that audience, even if the audience is a coworker or your boss. Menu language is a common example. Descriptions like “organic romaine” and “free-range chicken” are intended to appeal to a certain type of customer though perhaps not to the same customer who craves a thick steak. Similarly, mail-order companies research the demographics of the people who buy their merchandise. Successful vendors customize product descriptions in catalogs to appeal to their buyers’ tastes. For example, the product descriptions in a skateboarder catalog will differ from the descriptions in a clothing catalog for mature adults.

Using the topic for the essay that you outlined in Section 8.2 “Outlining” , describe your purpose and your audience as specifically as you can. Use your own sheet of paper to record your responses. Then keep these responses near you during future stages of the writing process.

My purpose: ____________________________________________

____________________________________________

My audience: ____________________________________________

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.

Workplace writing in certain environments is done by teams of writers who collaborate on the planning, writing, and revising of documents, such as long reports, technical manuals, and the results of scientific research. Collaborators do not need to be in the same room, the same building, or even the same city. Many collaborations are conducted over the Internet.

In a perfect collaboration, each contributor has the right to add, edit, and delete text. Strong communication skills, in addition to strong writing skills, are important in this kind of writing situation because disagreements over style, content, process, emphasis, and other issues may arise.

The collaborative software, or document management systems, that groups use to work on common projects is sometimes called groupware or workgroup support systems.

The reviewing tool on some word-processing programs also gives you access to a collaborative tool that many smaller workgroups use when they exchange documents. You can also use it to leave comments to yourself.

If you invest some time now to investigate how the reviewing tool in your word processor 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.

Discovering the Basic Elements of a First Draft

If you have been using the information in this chapter step by step to help you develop an assignment, you already have both a formal topic outline and a formal sentence 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:

• An introduction that piques the audience’s interest, tells what the essay is about, and motivates readers to keep reading.
• A thesis statement that presents the main point, or controlling idea, of the entire piece of writing.
• A topic sentence in each paragraph that states the main idea of the paragraph and implies how that main idea connects to the thesis statement.
• Supporting sentences in each paragraph that develop or explain the topic sentence. These can be specific facts, examples, anecdotes, or other details that elaborate on the topic sentence.
• A conclusion that reinforces the thesis statement and leaves the audience with a feeling of completion.

These elements follow the standard five-paragraph essay format, which you probably first encountered in high school. This basic format is valid for most essays you will write in college, even much longer ones. For now, however, Mariah focuses on writing the three body paragraphs from her outline. Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” covers writing introductions and conclusions, and you will read Mariah’s introduction and conclusion in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” .

The Role of Topic Sentences

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.

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. 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.

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 you organize information according to order of importance, the topic sentence may be the final sentence in a 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.

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. For more information on topic sentences, please see Chapter 6 “Writing Paragraphs: Separating Ideas and Shaping Content” .

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

The paragraph is the main structural component of an essay as well as other forms of writing. Each paragraph of an essay adds another related main idea to support the writer’s thesis, or controlling idea. 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.

Paragraph Length

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.

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.

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.

To build your sense of appropriate paragraph length, use the Internet to find examples of the following items. Copy them into a file, identify your sources, and present them to your instructor with your annotations, or notes.

• A news article written in short paragraphs. Take notes on, or annotate, your selection with your observations about the effect of combining paragraphs that develop the same topic idea. Explain how effective those paragraphs would be.
• A long paragraph from a scholarly work that you identify through an academic search engine. Annotate it with your observations about the author’s paragraphing style.

Starting Your First Draft

Now we are finally 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.

Here are the notes that Mariah wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience.

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. You will read her introduction again in Section 8.4 “Revising and Editing” when she revises it.

Remember Mariah’s other options. She could have started directly with any of the body paragraphs.

You will learn more about writing attention-getting introductions and effective conclusions in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” .

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.

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.

If you write your first draft on the computer, consider creating a new file folder for each course with a set of subfolders inside the course folders for each assignment you are given. Label the folders clearly with the course names, and label each assignment folder and word processing document with a title that you will easily recognize. The assignment name is a good choice for the document. Then use that subfolder to store all the drafts you create. When you start each new draft, do not just write over the last one. Instead, save the draft with a new tag after the title—draft 1, draft 2, and so on—so that you will have a complete history of drafts in case your instructor wishes you to submit them.

In your documents, observe any formatting requirements—for margins, headers, placement of page numbers, and other layout matters—that your instructor requires.

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.

Continuing the First Draft

Mariah continued writing her essay, moving to the second and third body paragraphs. She had supporting details but no numbered subpoints in her outline, so she had to consult her prewriting notes for specific information to include.

If you decide to take a break between finishing your first body paragraph and starting the next one, do not start writing immediately when you return to your work. Put yourself back in context and in the mood by rereading what you have already written. This is what Mariah did. If she had stopped writing in the middle of writing the paragraph, she could have jotted down some quick notes to herself about what she would write next.

Preceding each body paragraph that Mariah wrote is the appropriate section of her sentence outline. Notice how she expanded roman numeral III from her outline into a first draft of the second body paragraph. As you read, ask yourself how closely she stayed on purpose and how well she paid attention to the needs of her audience.

Mariah then began her third and final body paragraph using roman numeral IV from her outline.

Reread body paragraphs two and three of the essay that Mariah is writing. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

• In body paragraph two, Mariah decided to develop her paragraph as a nonfiction narrative. Do you agree with her decision? Explain. How else could she have chosen to develop the paragraph? Why is that better?
• Compare the writing styles of paragraphs two and three. What evidence do you have that Mariah was getting tired or running out of steam? What advice would you give her? Why?
• Choose one of these two body paragraphs. Write a version of your own that you think better fits Mariah’s audience and purpose.

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.

Following her outline carefully, Mariah crafted each paragraph of her essay. Moving step by step in the writing process, Mariah finished the draft and even included a brief concluding paragraph (you will read her conclusion in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” ). She then decided, as the final touch for her writing session, to add an engaging title.

Writing Your Own First Draft

Now you may begin your own first draft, if you have not already done so. Follow the suggestions and the guidelines presented in this section.

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, three or more 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. Paragraphs in college-level writing can be a page long, as long as they cover the main topics in your outline.
• Use your topic outline or your sentence outline to guide the development of your paragraphs and the elaboration of your ideas. Each main idea, indicated by a roman numeral in your outline, becomes the topic of a new paragraph. Develop it with the supporting details and the subpoints of those details that you included in your outline.
• Generally speaking, write your introduction and conclusion last, after you have fleshed out the body paragraphs.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Revising Drafts

Rewriting is the essence of writing well—where the game is won or lost. —William Zinsser

What this handout is about

This handout will motivate you to revise your drafts and give you strategies to revise effectively.

What does it mean to revise?

Revision literally means to “see again,” to look at something from a fresh, critical perspective. It is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering your arguments, reviewing your evidence, refining your purpose, reorganizing your presentation, reviving stale prose.

But I thought revision was just fixing the commas and spelling

Nope. That’s called proofreading. It’s an important step before turning your paper in, but if your ideas are predictable, your thesis is weak, and your organization is a mess, then proofreading will just be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. When you finish revising, that’s the time to proofread. For more information on the subject, see our handout on proofreading .

How about if I just reword things: look for better words, avoid repetition, etc.? Is that revision?

Well, that’s a part of revision called editing. It’s another important final step in polishing your work. But if you haven’t thought through your ideas, then rephrasing them won’t make any difference.

Why is revision important?

Writing is a process of discovery, and you don’t always produce your best stuff when you first get started. So revision is a chance for you to look critically at what you have written to see:

• if it’s really worth saying,
• if it says what you wanted to say, and
• if a reader will understand what you’re saying.

The process

What steps should i use when i begin to revise.

Here are several things to do. But don’t try them all at one time. Instead, focus on two or three main areas during each revision session:

• Wait awhile after you’ve finished a draft before looking at it again. The Roman poet Horace thought one should wait nine years, but that’s a bit much. A day—a few hours even—will work. When you do return to the draft, be honest with yourself, and don’t be lazy. Ask yourself what you really think about the paper.
• As The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers puts it, “THINK BIG, don’t tinker” (61). At this stage, you should be concerned with the large issues in the paper, not the commas.
• Check the focus of the paper: Is it appropriate to the assignment? Is the topic too big or too narrow? Do you stay on track through the entire paper?
• Think honestly about your thesis: Do you still agree with it? Should it be modified in light of something you discovered as you wrote the paper? Does it make a sophisticated, provocative point, or does it just say what anyone could say if given the same topic? Does your thesis generalize instead of taking a specific position? Should it be changed altogether? For more information visit our handout on thesis statements .
• Think about your purpose in writing: Does your introduction state clearly what you intend to do? Will your aims be clear to your readers?

What are some other steps I should consider in later stages of the revision process?

• Examine the balance within your paper: Are some parts out of proportion with others? Do you spend too much time on one trivial point and neglect a more important point? Do you give lots of detail early on and then let your points get thinner by the end?
• Check that you have kept your promises to your readers: Does your paper follow through on what the thesis promises? Do you support all the claims in your thesis? Are the tone and formality of the language appropriate for your audience?
• Check the organization: Does your paper follow a pattern that makes sense? Do the transitions move your readers smoothly from one point to the next? Do the topic sentences of each paragraph appropriately introduce what that paragraph is about? Would your paper work better if you moved some things around? For more information visit our handout on reorganizing drafts.
• Check your information: Are all your facts accurate? Are any of your statements misleading? Have you provided enough detail to satisfy readers’ curiosity? Have you cited all your information appropriately?
• Check your conclusion: Does the last paragraph tie the paper together smoothly and end on a stimulating note, or does the paper just die a slow, redundant, lame, or abrupt death?

Whoa! I thought I could just revise in a few minutes

Sorry. You may want to start working on your next paper early so that you have plenty of time for revising. That way you can give yourself some time to come back to look at what you’ve written with a fresh pair of eyes. It’s amazing how something that sounded brilliant the moment you wrote it can prove to be less-than-brilliant when you give it a chance to incubate.

But I don’t want to rewrite my whole paper!

Revision doesn’t necessarily mean rewriting the whole paper. Sometimes it means revising the thesis to match what you’ve discovered while writing. Sometimes it means coming up with stronger arguments to defend your position, or coming up with more vivid examples to illustrate your points. Sometimes it means shifting the order of your paper to help the reader follow your argument, or to change the emphasis of your points. Sometimes it means adding or deleting material for balance or emphasis. And then, sadly, sometimes revision does mean trashing your first draft and starting from scratch. Better that than having the teacher trash your final paper.

But I work so hard on what I write that I can’t afford to throw any of it away

If you want to be a polished writer, then you will eventually find out that you can’t afford NOT to throw stuff away. As writers, we often produce lots of material that needs to be tossed. The idea or metaphor or paragraph that I think is most wonderful and brilliant is often the very thing that confuses my reader or ruins the tone of my piece or interrupts the flow of my argument.Writers must be willing to sacrifice their favorite bits of writing for the good of the piece as a whole. In order to trim things down, though, you first have to have plenty of material on the page. One trick is not to hinder yourself while you are composing the first draft because the more you produce, the more you will have to work with when cutting time comes.

But sometimes I revise as I go

That’s OK. Since writing is a circular process, you don’t do everything in some specific order. Sometimes you write something and then tinker with it before moving on. But be warned: there are two potential problems with revising as you go. One is that if you revise only as you go along, you never get to think of the big picture. The key is still to give yourself enough time to look at the essay as a whole once you’ve finished. Another danger to revising as you go is that you may short-circuit your creativity. If you spend too much time tinkering with what is on the page, you may lose some of what hasn’t yet made it to the page. Here’s a tip: Don’t proofread as you go. You may waste time correcting the commas in a sentence that may end up being cut anyway.

How do I go about the process of revising? Any tips?

• Work from a printed copy; it’s easier on the eyes. Also, problems that seem invisible on the screen somehow tend to show up better on paper.
• Another tip is to read the paper out loud. That’s one way to see how well things flow.
• Remember all those questions listed above? Don’t try to tackle all of them in one draft. Pick a few “agendas” for each draft so that you won’t go mad trying to see, all at once, if you’ve done everything.
• Ask lots of questions and don’t flinch from answering them truthfully. For example, ask if there are opposing viewpoints that you haven’t considered yet.

Whenever I revise, I just make things worse. I do my best work without revising

That’s a common misconception that sometimes arises from fear, sometimes from laziness. The truth is, though, that except for those rare moments of inspiration or genius when the perfect ideas expressed in the perfect words in the perfect order flow gracefully and effortlessly from the mind, all experienced writers revise their work. I wrote six drafts of this handout. Hemingway rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times. If you’re still not convinced, re-read some of your old papers. How do they sound now? What would you revise if you had a chance?

What can get in the way of good revision strategies?

Don’t fall in love with what you have written. If you do, you will be hesitant to change it even if you know it’s not great. Start out with a working thesis, and don’t act like you’re married to it. Instead, act like you’re dating it, seeing if you’re compatible, finding out what it’s like from day to day. If a better thesis comes along, let go of the old one. Also, don’t think of revision as just rewording. It is a chance to look at the entire paper, not just isolated words and sentences.

What happens if I find that I no longer agree with my own point?

If you take revision seriously, sometimes the process will lead you to questions you cannot answer, objections or exceptions to your thesis, cases that don’t fit, loose ends or contradictions that just won’t go away. If this happens (and it will if you think long enough), then you have several choices. You could choose to ignore the loose ends and hope your reader doesn’t notice them, but that’s risky. You could change your thesis completely to fit your new understanding of the issue, or you could adjust your thesis slightly to accommodate the new ideas. Or you could simply acknowledge the contradictions and show why your main point still holds up in spite of them. Most readers know there are no easy answers, so they may be annoyed if you give them a thesis and try to claim that it is always true with no exceptions no matter what.

How do I get really good at revising?

The same way you get really good at golf, piano, or a video game—do it often. Take revision seriously, be disciplined, and set high standards for yourself. Here are three more tips:

• The more you produce, the more you can cut.
• The more you can imagine yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be to spot potential problems.
• The more you demand of yourself in terms of clarity and elegance, the more clear and elegant your writing will be.

How do I revise at the sentence level?

Read your paper out loud, sentence by sentence, and follow Peter Elbow’s advice: “Look for places where you stumble or get lost in the middle of a sentence. These are obvious awkwardness’s that need fixing. Look for places where you get distracted or even bored—where you cannot concentrate. These are places where you probably lost focus or concentration in your writing. Cut through the extra words or vagueness or digression; get back to the energy. Listen even for the tiniest jerk or stumble in your reading, the tiniest lessening of your energy or focus or concentration as you say the words . . . A sentence should be alive” (Writing with Power 135).

Practical advice for ensuring that your sentences are alive:

• Use forceful verbs—replace long verb phrases with a more specific verb. For example, replace “She argues for the importance of the idea” with “She defends the idea.”
• Look for places where you’ve used the same word or phrase twice or more in consecutive sentences and look for alternative ways to say the same thing OR for ways to combine the two sentences.
• Cut as many prepositional phrases as you can without losing your meaning. For instance, the following sentence, “There are several examples of the issue of integrity in Huck Finn,” would be much better this way, “Huck Finn repeatedly addresses the issue of integrity.”
• Check your sentence variety. If more than two sentences in a row start the same way (with a subject followed by a verb, for example), then try using a different sentence pattern.
• Aim for precision in word choice. Don’t settle for the best word you can think of at the moment—use a thesaurus (along with a dictionary) to search for the word that says exactly what you want to say.
• Look for sentences that start with “It is” or “There are” and see if you can revise them to be more active and engaging.
• For more information, please visit our handouts on word choice and style .

How can technology help?

Need some help revising? Take advantage of the revision and versioning features available in modern word processors.

Track your changes. Most word processors and writing tools include a feature that allows you to keep your changes visible until you’re ready to accept them. Using “Track Changes” mode in Word or “Suggesting” mode in Google Docs, for example, allows you to make changes without committing to them.

Compare drafts. Tools that allow you to compare multiple drafts give you the chance to visually track changes over time. Try “File History” or “Compare Documents” modes in Google Doc, Word, and Scrivener to retrieve old drafts, identify changes you’ve made over time, or help you keep a bigger picture in mind as you revise.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Elbow, Peter. 1998. Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process . New York: Oxford University Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

Zinsser, William. 2001. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , 6th ed. New York: Quill.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rough Drafts

In this section of the Excelsior OWL, you have been learning about traditional structures for expository essays (essays that are thesis-based and offer a point-by-point body), but no matter what type of essay you’re writing, the rough draft is going to be an important part of your writing process. It’s important to remember that your rough draft is a long way from your final draft, and you will engage in revision and editing before you have a draft that is ready to submit.

Sometimes, keeping this in mind can help you as you draft. When you draft, you don’t want to feel like “this has to be perfect.” If you put that much pressure on yourself, it can be really difficult to get your ideas down.

The sample rough draft below shows you an example of just how much more work a rough draft can need, even a really solid first draft. Take a look at this example with notes a student wrote on her rough draft. Once you complete your own rough draft, you will want to engage in a revision and editing process that involves feedback, time, and diligence on your part. The steps that follow in this section of the Excelsior OWL will help!

Rough Draft Example

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). Located at:  https://owl.excelsior.edu/  . This site is licensed under a  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/  .

ENG102 Contextualized for Health Sciences - OpenSkill Fellowship Copyright © 2022 by Compiled by Lori Walk. All Rights Reserved.

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So You’ve Finished a Rough Draft. What Now?

by Emily Wenstrom | 10 comments

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Writing a book's rough draft is a big feat, and you’ve just taken the first, most important step toward finishing your book—one that can take a lot of late nights, early mornings, blood, sweat, tears… you name it.

It’s a big deal to finish that rough draft of your book, so give yourself your props.

But then it’s time to get down to business again, because rough drafts are called “rough” for a reason.

Your Rough Draft Is Not Your Final Draft

Now is the time to take a more critical eye to your story and to make the most of all that rich potential it’s holding.

A rough draft can be overwhelming.

If you’re anything like me, your first instinct might be to hide it away in a drawer (or obscure hidden computer folder) and never look at that hot mess again.

Don’t do that! There’s bound to be a lot of good writing in that draft. It just takes work to bring your rough draft to its full, final draft potential.

4 Steps to Take After You Finish Your Rough Draft

Here are four steps you should follow after you finish your rough draft:

1. Read through the full draft

Now that you’ve gotten the words out, you’ve got to suck it up and read through them all.

It can be hard to go back and face your own first stab at a story, but odds are it’s not nearly as bad as you think.

Reading through your draft is important so you can take in the big picture of what you’ve written. As you read, consider what you want to change, and also what you like as is.

2. Find what needs to be developed more

Cut yourself some slack—a full rough draft is already a lot to pound out all at once. But odds are that there’s some room in your setting, characters or plot for some richer development.

Hopefully you identified these elements while re-reading the draft. Delving deeper to flesh them out is a perfect first step for your next draft—understanding these elements will serve as a foundation as you work through everything else.

3. Identify your plot threads

Your main plot is probably mostly ironed out, but what about your supporting plot threads? Are there enough of them? Too many? Do they all have a proper arc of beginning, middle end? Are they all relevant, offering something that drives the core plot of the story forward?

Think through what to cut, add, flesh out in your plot threads. Make the tough calls about what to keep, what to nix and what to change or flesh out more.

4. Back to the beginning

Go back to the beginning of your story again, but this time, bring your writer’s cap with you. Start with the biggest things (the ones we identified in the last two steps) and work your way down to the small.

It can be tempting to start off by changing the easy things that will clean it up quickly, like running spell check or correcting little inconsistencies.

But don’t do that—they may feel satisfying but they’re purely cosmetic, and you’ll likely have to go back through a lot of it with your big changes anyway, so you’re really just procrastinating.

Take your time with this, don’t be afraid to skip around to stay on topic as you address various points. And most of all, don’t be afraid to get messy.

A Rough Draft is What You Make It

A rough draft is a major accomplishment. But once you finally see this first step through, it can be hard to know where to go next

You’ve just got to dive right back in—and remember, the gaps and mistakes you catch when you go back through don’t mean you’re not a good writer. Every rough draft is ugly. It’s because it’s a first  draft, not a final draft. Use it for what it—a foundation—and build from it to get your story to its full potential.

Have you completed a rough draft? What are your next steps to make it the best it can be?  Let me know in the comments .

Find a practice from a previous post or another short piece. Then, follow step one and read it through. What needs to be developed more?

In the comments section , let us know what you learned from reading your rough draft and what changes you'll make in your second draft.

Emily Wenstrom

By day, Emily Wenstrom, is the editor of short story website wordhaus , author social media coach, and freelance content marketing specialist . By early-early morning, she is E. J. Wenstrom , a sci-fi and fantasy author whose first novel Mud will release in March 2016.

10 Comments

Hi Emily, My daughter is an editor and writer and my grandson is a writer and teacher. I handed my second rough draft to them. They both said the same thing–show, don’t tell. This is the hardest for me. Is there a formula for how to do this or how much of it to do? It’s clear that my next draft needs to fix this issue.

Thanks for the ideas. I’m going to look at these factors in the fourth draft.

It’s hard for me too. One thing that’s helped me is the Emotion Thesaurus. It gives external and internal expressions of all kinds of emotions. With the descriptions I can show the emotion as opposed to just say what the emotion is… Another exercise I’ve heard could be watch a movie or TV show clip and write out what you see. Like write out dialogue, body language, facial expressions, voice times, etc.

Yeah, the shortcut (as Crim says) is to take out any emotions, and to describe fear rather than say “she was scared.” Show us that her hands were shaking, her palms clammed up and she could barely breathe. Those are things you can mentally picture: “scared” isn’t detailed enough. This technique just takes practice, and with time it’ll come more naturally. The first time I heard this, it took a while to master!

I picked the practice i did for “Why We Become Writers”. On first read I saw a lot of spring and grammar errors. Joys of being a technical person. In terms of changes, I would expand on how my religious/spiritual experiences affected my development into a writer. I find I glanced at it too much, instead of really focusing on it more since it is a big influence on my writing. Besides those items… Hard to say.

Hi Emily, Your post is just what I need to convince me to take a ‘first’ look at my story. I was wondering where and how to begin revision of my NaNo submisson, and now I have it! I’ll follow your suggested four steps. At the moment I feel as if I’ve written pages of gibberish, and I hope that when I read through them, I’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that what I’ve written in haste, isn’t too bad, after all. Thanks again for your encouraging post, All the best, Lilian

Thanks for this. Very helpful and informative to aspiring authors like me.

My nano rough draft is sitting on my desk top in a nice neat folder just waiting for me to reopen it and seriously work on it again….My dilemma how do I use real live events which recently happened to write fiction. It’s not working out… I have written it as a non fiction – how I did it – type story,,, as well as a fiction here is what my character is dealing with and here is how she found answers. I need to find a way to combine them as I edit it… Nano was the fiction and currently rewriting it using 1st person, I, me, which totally changed the opening – so far….. wait a minute …. I think by writing this here I have figured out a way to combine them and using the I and me …..(yes I wrote this before coffee so it may not make sense)

But seriously I would like to know how to use personal events in fiction writing without turning it back into a nonfiction how to type book….

Check out “Creative Non-Fiction” – lots of good ideas on how to write non-fiction stories with elements / techniques from fiction.

Thanks, I’ll do that… Earlier last night or this morning I was inspired to rewrite a mystery and I am 6 new chapters into the story and still going strong…..

I will look at Creative Non-Fiction and see what I find.

Thank you! I’ve been hiding from my redraft for about 2 years. Tim3 to dust it off because your advice makes sense…. deep breath!

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Basic Guide: Essay Rough Draft Outline

Table of Contents

With a name like “rough draft,” it can be easy to imagine what it entails. It is your chance to play around with ideas and see what works best for your work. An  essay rough draft outline  helps you stay focused and organized.

A writer’s job is to produce a polished piece that flows smoothly and clearly. An outline’s job is to successfully communicate the writer’s intended message in the most precise and efficient way possible.

This article gives quick steps and tips on how to draft a rough essay outline .

What Is a Rough Draft of an Essay?

The rough draft is a crucial part and the first version of a document. It is the first document the professor sees and assesses for details and significant ideas. 

After completing a rough draft, the author will edit it by making any necessary changes. Such changes include adding or removing sections or rearranging and polishing the existing ones.

The rough draft takes the outline and fills it with the researched information to generate a well-structured essay . This is then modified to become the final output.

4 Quick Steps to Writing an Essay Rough Draft Outline

Rough draft writing is a vital ability for school and work. Many careers necessitate written reports that could benefit from a rough draft stage. Students begin their essays with a rough draft, no matter the level of learning.

Several preparatory procedures lead up to the drafting of an essay. The procedures to be followed when drafting a rough outline are as follows:

1. Choosing a Topic

Depending on the instructor, students may be given free rein over what they write about in their essays.

Choose a topic that is narrow in scope. In a sea of data, focusing on a specific topic helps authors pick the most pertinent data from which to craft-focused, powerful writing. 

2. Research

An excellent piece of writing will incorporate elements from many different sources. Verifying the reliability and credibility of a source is crucial.

While researching, take detailed notes and document where you found each valuable piece of data. It’s your job to give each source its due credit by finding its rightful place in the bibliography. While researching, a writer may decide to modify or completely change the topic. 

3. Creating an Outline

An outline is a skeleton used to build an essay or a story. The purpose of an outline is to determine the main points and organize them to give the most coherent message.

Make an outline that details the key points you want to cover in the essay. Also, include the sequence in which you want to discuss them. 

4. Construction of a Thesis

Express your argument or thesis for the paper. Your essay’s thesis is a statement explaining what you want to prove. The thesis of an argumentative or persuasive essay is the author’s main argument. 

This thesis statement introduces the reader to the work that will be discussed. It alludes to the arguments made in the essay and provides context for why the issue is significant.

After these preliminary processes are finished, you can begin composing the essay’s rough draft.

Wrapping Up

When writing an  essay rough draft outline , it is essential to gauge the information you plan to cover in the outline. Then, you’ll be able to organize that information and write it effectively, providing an overview of your essay .

Remember that the purpose of a rough draft is to give you an idea of what you want to write about. It does not seek to create the essay.

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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VII. Researched Writing

7.7 From Annotated Bibliography to Rough Draft: How to Develop your Position

Terri Pantuso

Now that you’ve completed your annotated bibliography, you may find yourself struggling with how to begin the rough draft of the researched position paper assignment. A researched position paper is simply an argumentative essay in which you take a position on a chosen topic and defend it with secondary sources. While it may be easy for you to state your position and reasons for your argument, you may find it difficult to incorporate your secondary sources into your own draft and still maintain your own voice. Now is the time to break out the scissors.

In this exercise, you are becoming part of the academic discussion, or discourse community, on your chosen topic. Now that you have located sources that either agree or disagree with your position, it’s time to see how those sources inform your thesis . If your annotated bibliography is printed on continuous pages, cut the annotations apart making certain to leave the bibliographical information with each annotation. Once you have done this, arrange the annotations on a table in front of you and imagine that each source is a person standing before you speaking. The topic about which they are speaking is the information contained in your annotation.

Now imagine that your best friend just walked up behind you and asked, “Hey, what are you all discussing?” Your one or two sentence answer is your thesis. That response sums up the gist of the argument being discussed and makes clear your position on the topic. Even if you had a working thesis beforehand, it’s okay to revise it at this point to more clearly match the debate being presented by your sources. It’s still your position – after all, you chose the sources.

Next, in selecting how to arrange the sources to create a rough draft, imagine the conversation again. Which one of the sources provides the strongest support for your position? Which one offers a counterargument? Which one(s) provide evidence which gives the argument logos credibility? As you hear the conversation in your head, arrange your annotations to begin to visualize the outline for your rough draft. However, do not copy/paste the annotations into your rough draft. Instead, incorporate the information you’ve identified into your own argument making sure to be cognizant of syntax .

To enter into a dialogue or conversation about a topic; to consider a subject formally in speech or writing. Public discourse refers to the speeches, publications, media attention, social media posts, and other statements that discuss the public good, the function of government, and the role of the individual in society.

A statement, usually one sentence, that summarizes an argument that will later be explained, expanded upon, and developed in a longer essay or research paper. In undergraduate writing, a thesis statement is often found in the introductory paragraph of an essay. The plural of thesis is theses .

Logos is a rhetorical appeal to reason or logic such that the apparent truth of the argument is what is persuasive. It is one of three types of rhetorical appeals described by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

The order, pattern, structure, or arrangement of words in a sentence or phrase that is deliberately used by a writer.

7.7 From Annotated Bibliography to Rough Draft: How to Develop your Position Copyright © 2022 by Terri Pantuso is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.