The Drafting Process
Stage 1 of the Drafting Process - The Zero or First Draft
At this point in the semester, you should be in the zero or first draft stage of working on your conference paper. Your focus in the first draft should solely be on content.
I’d like to take this time to dispel some myths about the first draft:
1) You have to write your draft in order. Not true. You can begin your draft in the middle of your paper. Many people find intros hard and don’t really focus on them until later. (Okay, I may have forced you to work on an intro). But you don’t have to write the rest of your draft in order.
2) You have to complete all your research before you can begin your draft. Also not true. Again, the first draft is all about content. Begin plugging in your content wherever you can.
It’s perfectly fine in a zero draft to have holes in the draft and notes to yourself like I need to find another source to back me up here or I need a better example or I’ll talk about x here later.
One of the advantages of beginning to write right away is that you quickly discover what holes you need to fill and what additional research is required. In any case, at this point of the drafting process, you should not be worrying about structure or style issues. Focus on content. That is why I gave you the Argument assignment, so you would focus on what you’re going to be saying rather than how.
3) You should take your time in writing a first draft. Not true. Write your first draft as quickly as you can. Don’t engage your internal editor. Allow yourself to write a bad first draft. One of the secrets of professional writers (and many of the authors you read in literature) is how bad their initial drafts were. The thing about a quick bad first draft is that it enables you to begin to write a better 2nd draft sooner. And getting to that 2nd draft quickly is a big advantage.
Stage 2 of the Drafting Process — Intermediate Drafts
Stage 2 may entail several drafts as you begin working towards a polished draft.
The object of stage 2 drafts is to continue to add content (if necessary) as you begin to structure your piece of writing. In a researched argument paper (like the one you’re writing), you should be determining the arrangement of your argument and working on transitions between the various sections of your paper to make it easy for the reader to follow along. You’ll also begin working on Intros and Conclusions in a more formal way.
You should get feedback during this stage of the drafting process. Such feedback may tell you that you need more content. Perhaps, you neglected to deal with an important objection. No problem. You’ve still got time. The drafting process is inherently iterative. So for a moment, you shift back to Stage 1 and add content. Or maybe the problem is that you don’t have a good transition at one point in your piece and your reviewer got lost. Time to go back and fix it.
So while Stage 1 focuses on what you’re going to say, Stage 2 focuses on when and where you’ll say it in your paper.
Stage 3 of the Drafting Process — Polished Draft and Final Draft
Stage 3 usually involves, at least, two drafts.
The purpose here is to determine how to communicate your content most effectively.
Here you begin working at the sentence and word level. You begin to take into account things like figurative language, word choice, sentence structure, rhythm, etc.
This is the stage that often separates a good piece of writing from a superior one. Here again, you want feedback between your polished draft and your final draft.
The problems with writing your paper in a single draft are as follows:
1) You make your brain work at cross purposes by trying to do invention and editing simultaneously,
2) You don’t allow time for feedback,
3) You don’t give yourself distance from your writing—how often do you go back later and say to yourself, I could have done much better than that. (For example, how many of you could write a much better Paper 1 today if you had the final draft of your Paper 1 as your intermediate draft—complete with feedback— and could now focus on Stage 3 of the Drafting Process),
4) You simply don’t have time to work at the sentence and word level.