what is a first draft for an essay

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Writing a first draft.

Steps for Writing a First Draft of an Essay

• Take a closer look at your assignment and the topic if it was given to you by your instructor. Revise your outline as well. This is needed for your clearer understanding of the tasks you must accomplish within the draft, and to make sure you meet the requirements of the assignment.
• Sketch out the introduction of your essay. At this point, don’t get stalled on form; introductory part should inform readers about what the topic is, and state your point of view according to this topic. The introduction should also be interesting to read to capture readers’ attention, but this task has more to do with thoughtful and scrupulous writing, and thus should be left for later.
• Based on your outline, start transferring your ideas to paper. The main task here is to give them the initial form and set a general direction for their further development, and not to write a full paper.
• Chalk out the summarizing paragraph of your essay. It should not contain any new ideas, but briefly reintroduce those from the main body, and restate your thesis statement.
• Read through the draft to see if you have included the information you wanted to, but without making any further corrections, since this is a task for the second and final drafts.
• If you are not sure that you checked everything, send it out for proofreading. Searching through the best essay service reviews, you can get some recommendations of where to look.

Key Points to Consider

• While an outline is needed to decide on what to write, the first draft is more about answering a question: “How to write?” In the first draft, you shape your ideas out, and not simply name and list them, as you did in an outline.
• When you start writing your thoughts down, it may happen that one idea or concept sparks new connections, memories, or associations. Be attentive to such sidetracks; choose those of them that might be useful for your writing, and don’t delve in those that are undesirable in terms of the purpose of your paper (academic, showing opinion). A successful piece of writing is focused on its topic, and doesn’t include everything you have to say on a subject.
• Making notes for yourself in the margins or even in the middle of the text is a useful practice. This can save you time and keep you focused on the essence of your essay without being distracted by secondary details. For example, such notes could look like this: “As documented, the Vietnam War cost the United States about … (search for the exact sum of money and interpret it in terms of modern exchange rates) U. S. dollars.”
• When you finish crafting your first draft, it is useful to put it aside and completely quit thinking about writing for a certain period of time. Time away will allow you to have a fresh look at your draft when you decide to revise it.

Do and Don’t

Common mistakes when writing a first draft of an essay.

– Editing and revising a draft in process of writing. If you stop after each sentence to think it over, you will most likely lose your flow; besides, many people have an internal editor  or critic  who can’t stand it if the material is written imperfectly. Therefore, first you should deal with the whole draft, and only after that proofread and edit it.

– Paying too much attention to secondary arguments, factual material, and other minor peculiarities. The main goal of the first draft is to sketch out your main ideas; you can fill it with details later. If you think you will forget about an important fact or remark, make brief notes in margins.

– Ignoring the role of a first draft in the essay writing process. Though it may seem you are wasting time working on a draft, you are working on the essay itself. You need to understand how your outline works in full written form.

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More from Stages of the Writing Process

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Samples for writing a first draft, parental control as a necessary measure in the upbringing of modern children (part 1) essay sample, example.

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After writing an outline , the next stage of the writing process is to write the first draft. This page explains what a first draft is and how to write one . There is also a checklist at the end of the page that you can use to check your own first draft.

What is a first draft?

A draft is a version of your writing in paragraph form. The first draft is when you move from the outline stage and write a complete version of your paper for the first time. A first draft is often called a 'rough draft', and as this suggests, it will be very 'rough' and far from perfect. The first draft will lead on to a second draft, third draft, fourth draft and so on as you refine your ideas and perhaps conduct more research . The paper you submit at the end is often called the 'final draft', and emphasises the fact that writing is a process without a definite end (as even the final draft will not be perfect). It should be stressed that a first draft is only suitable for writing where you have some time to complete it, such as longer, researched essays, rather than an exam essay where there will only be a single draft.

How to write a first draft?

As you write your initial draft, you should try to follow your outline as closely as possible. Writing, however, is a continuous, creative process and as you are writing you may think of new ideas which are not in your outline or brainstorm list, and these can be added if they are relevant. Your outline will probably contain a thesis , which is essentially a plan for the whole paper, and you should keep this in mind to decide whether ideas are relevant. It is possible to begin the drafting process at any stage, and some people recommend writing the main body first and the introduction and conclusion later. This makes sense as it can be difficult to introduce something you have not yet finished, though if your outline is detailed enough it is possible to begin at the beginning. When writing the first draft, the main focus will be the ideas and content, meaning you should not worry about grammar, punctuation or spelling. You may end up abandoning whole sections before the final draft, and slowing down to check grammar or spelling at this stage would be a waste of time. It is useful for the first draft to use double-spacing and wide margins on both sides of the paper so that you can add more details and information when you redraft your work.

In short, when writing a first draft, you should do the following:

• try to follow your outline as closely as possible;
• add new ideas if they are relevant;
• keep your thesis in mind while writing;
• begin where you think is best (e.g. main body before introduction);
• focus on ideas and content;
• do not worry about grammar, punctuation or spelling;
• use double-spacing and wide margins for easier redrafting.

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Below is a checklist for your first draft.

Oshima, A. and Hogue, A. (1999) Writing Academic English . New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

University of Arizona (n.d.) The Structure of an Essay Draft . Available at: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~atinkham/Essay_Structure.htm (Access date 1/4/18).

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Read more about checking your work in the next section.

Previous section

Read the previous article about writing an outline .

Author: Sheldon Smith    ‖    Last modified: 02 March 2020.

Sheldon Smith is the founder and editor of EAPFoundation.com. He has been teaching English for Academic Purposes since 2004. Find out more about him in the about section and connect with him on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn .

Compare & contrast essays examine the similarities of two or more objects, and the differences.

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Discussion essays require you to examine both sides of a situation and to conclude by saying which side you favour.

Problem-solution essays are a sub-type of SPSE essays (Situation, Problem, Solution, Evaluation).

Transition signals are useful in achieving good cohesion and coherence in your writing.

Reporting verbs are used to link your in-text citations to the information cited.

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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 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a First Draft: 10 Tips for Reaching “The End”

The first draft is the most important phase of your project. Here’s how to keep it fast and fun.

By Natasha Khullar Relph

Do you know why so many writers freeze up the moment they sit down to write? The reason that the fear, the anxiety, and the uncertainty bubbles up and causes an otherwise articulate person to resist putting a single word on the page?

It’s perfectionism.

It’s the idea that what you’re writing now will be what the reader will see later.

This is almost never the case. Which is why, when it comes to writing, it’s important to begin simply: by thinking of any piece of work you’re doing as a first draft.

JUMP TO SECTION

What qualifies as a first draft How to write a first draft

• Make time for your writing
• Know your story before you start writing
• Write out of order
• Allow for imperfection
• Keep yourself accountable with goals and deadlines
• Eliminate distractions
• Practice writing in sprints
• Use the TK placeholder
• Don’t go back and fix things you’re changing
• Know your next step

Finish your first draft the easy way

What qualifies as a first draft?

A first draft or rough draft is the initial version of a piece of writing, whether it’s an essay, article, short story, or chapter in a nonfiction book or novel. The first draft is the initial output you create, with no extensive editing, revision, or proofreading.

First drafts are essential because they serve as the foundation upon which you can build and refine your work. They allow you to get your ideas down on the page without getting bogged down by perfectionism or self-criticism. Once you’ve completed a rough draft , you can review, revise, or edit your work to improve clarity, coherence, style, and overall quality.

Generally, a piece of writing can be considered a first draft if:

• It captures the writer’s initial thoughts and ideas.
• It covers the main points or themes, but lacks completeness.
• It may be rough and unpolished, with errors in grammar and style.
• The organization and structure might be loose or imperfect.
• Annotations and comments for self-improvement may be present.
• It may contain inconsistencies, both in content and style.
• The primary focus is on getting ideas down rather than perfection.

How to write a first draft

“I believe the first draft of a book —even a long one—should take no more than three months,” says New York Times bestselling author Stephen King , and we tend to agree. A first draft is nothing but a way of taking the ideas in your head and putting them on the page. We’ll give them shape later. Right now, for the first draft, the goal is simply to have them exist as fast as possible .

Here are some strategies, techniques and writing tips that will make it easier to transform your ideas into words on the page.

1. Make time for your writing

No one—and I do mean no one—writes the first draft of anything without some serious arse in chair time . (Yes, that’s the technical term.)

Want to write more? Want to write faster? Put your arse in the chair as often as you can, for as long as you can.

Now, this might not always be possible. You might have a full-time job, kids, and other responsibilities that come in the way of your writing. Regardless, if you want to finish your first draft, you’re going to have to schedule writing time . Establish a routine that aligns with your goals and guard that time fiercely. Some ideas for how to do that:

• Set clear priorities: Recognize the importance of your writing and prioritize it in your daily life. Create a regular writing routine, whether it’s daily, weekly, or on specific days.
• Wake up early or stay up late: Consider waking up an hour earlier in the morning or, if you’re like me, staying up after everyone’s gone to bed, to get a few uninterrupted hours of writing time.
• Use your lunch breaks: If you have a full-time job, see if you can use part of your lunch break for writing. If you work from home , treat the time you may have spent commuting as “found time” and use it to put some words on the page.
• Weekend retreats: If time and budget allow, consider going on a weekend retreat for a solid block of writing time. If going away isn’t an option, perhaps you can have a makeshift retreat of your own at home.
• Plan ahead: Try to schedule writing time in advance to ensure it doesn’t get overshadowed by other commitments. If you have children , arrange childcare during your writing hours. The more you can delegate non-essential tasks or chores, the more writing time you can free up.

2. Know your story before you start writing

While it’s tempting to just open a blank page and start writing, this is the most difficult and inefficient way to write a first draft. That’s not to say that you can’t be a pantser—someone who writes without an outline and by the seat of their pants (hence the name)—but knowing what you want to say makes it infinitely easier for you to actually say it.

It’s crucial to have a clear understanding of your story , no matter whether you’re a novelist, a screenwriter, a short story writer, or journalist. And knowing your story, including your main characters, is essential for a successful drafting process , especially if this is your first book or first novel.

Here are some aspects of your work that are helpful to know before you begin writing:

• Purpose and message: Knowing your story’s purpose and central message provides you with a compass to navigate the writing process. Are you aiming to entertain, inform, persuade, or provoke thought? This clarity guides your decisions throughout the first draft stage.
• Characters: Understanding your characters’ backgrounds, motivations, and arcs allows you to breathe life into them on the page. It enables you to craft multidimensional characters with authentic reactions and growth.
• Plot structure: Knowing the overarching plot and its key events helps you maintain a cohesive and engaging narrative, whether you’re brainstorming or world building. You can create foreshadowing, build tension, and ensure that each scene contributes to the story’s progress when you know where you’re heading.
• Themes: Identifying the themes and vibes you want to explore allows you to weave them into your narrative seamlessly. Themes add depth to your story and provide readers with thought-provoking ideas.

3. Write out of order

The conventional approach to writing a first draft involves starting at the beginning and progressing sequentially to the end. While this method works well for many writers, it’s not the only path to a successful final product. In fact, you may find that it might work better for your writing process to write out of order.

Here’s why this unconventional approach works:

• Overcoming writer’s block: The frustration of staring at a blank page can be paralyzing. Writing out of order allows you to sidestep this roadblock. If you’re feeling stuck on an introduction or a particular chapter, don’t let it hinder your progress. Instead, jump to a body paragraph or different section of your work that excites you. By doing this, you keep your creative juices flowing and maintain momentum.
• Capturing ideas as they come: Inspiration often strikes at unpredictable moments. You might have a brilliant idea for the conclusion of your podcast episode, the climax of your novel, or the final argument in your thesis statement long before you reach that point in your rough draft. By writing out of order, you can capture these ideas while they’re fresh and vivid, ensuring you don’t forget them.
• Building the core of your work: Sometimes, you may have a clear vision of the central themes, arguments, or emotional arcs of your work before you have all the details in place. In such cases, writing these pivotal sections first can provide a strong foundation upon which you can build the rest of your narrative.
• Flexibility and experimentation: Writing out of order gives you the freedom to experiment with different writing styles, tones, or perspectives. Whether you’re a screenwriter exploring various character interactions or a novelist tackling non-linear storytelling, this approach allows you to explore diverse creative avenues without feeling confined by chronological constraints.
• Maintaining enthusiasm: The creative writing process can be a long and demanding journey. Writing out of order allows you to maintain enthusiasm by working on the parts of your work that excite you the most. This enthusiasm can get you through the messy middle when you’re in the thick of it and questions about why you’re even doing this begin to surface.

4. Allow for imperfection

Listen, you’re not going to get it right the first time. So stop expecting that of yourself.

The first draft, as I mentioned before, is the draft whose sole purpose is to take something out of your head and make it exist on the page. Typos are fine! Your word choices will change! There is no bad thing you can do in this draft that cannot be changed, revised, or edited out.

Your only goal when writing the first draft is to take those ideas from your head and turn them into words on the page. There will be other drafts—a second draft, a third draft, a final draft—that will start bringing order to this material and mould it into shape. But you can’t give shape to something that doesn’t exist.

So use this draft to get everything out of your head and on to the page. Then you can either self-edit or work with beta readers or professional editors to take it further.

5. Keep yourself accountable with goals and deadlines

I’m willing to bet my favorite writing pen that half the writing that exists in the world today wouldn’t have been committed to page if there wasn’t a frustrated editor breathing down a writer’s neck with a can’t-be-missed deadline. While it’s unlikely you’ll have an editor for your fiction writing, at least at first, you can keep yourself accountable by setting your own deadlines . Here’s what you need to keep in mind when doing so:

• Define clear goals: Set specific, measurable, and achievable writing goals . These could include word count targets, chapter outlines, research milestones, or deadlines for submitting work to editors or publishers.
• Break down larger goals: For larger projects, like novel writing or research papers, break them down into smaller chunks. Set deadlines for completing each section or chapter. This will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed and can help you make steady progress.
• Set and honor deadlines: Give yourself deadlines for completing specific writing tasks. These deadlines can be self-imposed or align with external submission requirements. However, it’s imperative that you treat these deadlines with the same seriousness that you would a deadline from an editor or publisher.
• Track progress: Regularly review your progress. Make sure to celebrate your achievements, even small ones, to stay motivated and keep writing.

6. Eliminate distractions

You can’t write if you can’t concentrate. And you can’t concentrate if you have notifications going off every two minutes, a child knocking on your door because they’re hungry and need a snack, or you can’t resist the urge to see what Taylor Swift’s been up to Instagram.

The very first thing you need to do once you’ve committed to finishing your first draft is to create space in your life for your writing to happen and minimize or eliminate any distractions. Here’s how:

• Turn off notifications: Silence your phone, mute social media notifications, and close irrelevant tabs or apps on your computer. These constant pings and alerts can pull you away from your writing flow.
• Set clear boundaries: If you share your writing space with others, communicate your need for uninterrupted time. Let family members, roommates, or colleagues know when you’ll be writing and request their cooperation.
• Use website blockers: If you find yourself succumbing to the temptation of browsing the Internet during writing sessions, consider using website blockers or productivity apps that restrict access to distracting websites for a set period.
• Declutter your workspace: A clutter-free environment can lead to a clutter-free mind. Organize your writing area and keep it tidy to minimize visual distractions.
• Use noise-cancelling headphones: If you’re in a noisy environment, invest in noise-cancelling headphones to block out external sounds and create a more serene writing atmosphere.

7. Practice writing in sprints

Writing sprints or word sprints are short, focused bursts of writing where you set a timer and write as much as you can during that specific timeframe. These sprints can vary in length, but common durations include 10, 15, or 20 minutes.

The key is to commit to uninterrupted writing during the sprint, without editing or revising as you go. Writing sprints are about getting words on the page, not perfecting them.

Writing sprints work for a few reasons:

• They create a sense of urgency, reducing the temptation to procrastinate or endlessly revise.
• The time constraint of a sprint encourages heightened concentration, leading to increased productivity.
• Sprints break writing tasks into manageable chunks, allowing for consistent and measurable progress.
• They make the process of writing more time-efficient by emphasizing output over perfection.
• Practicing writing in sprints provides a structured approach to improving writing skills and becoming a better writer.

8. Use the TK placeholder

Using the “TK” placeholder is a technique that English-language journalists often use to maintain their writing flow and avoid getting stuck when they can’t immediately recall a specific detail or need to insert additional information. TK, which stands for to come , is an acknowledgement that there’s a gap or missing content that requires attention.

Once your initial draft is complete, you can revisit these TK placeholders and add in all relevant or missing information.

9. Don’t go back and fix things you’re changing

Resist, I repeat, resist the temptation to go back and fix things as you write. This urge to rewrite is especially strong in new writers, who feel they must make what they’ve written perfect, or even legible, before they can move on to the next section.

Here’s the thing: What you’re writing will change. And if you’re making big changes, like renaming a character, changing the point of view, or expanding the time period, they will affect the parts of the book you’ve already written. However, by going back and making those changes now, you’re creating extra work for yourself for two reasons:

• You may implement the changes and write in a new point of view or a different period of time only to find that it doesn’t really work. If you decide to revert changes, you’ll have to go back and fix your entire novel again .
• There are still many decisions you’ll make as your story moves forward that will continue to impact the beginning. It’s far better to write the first draft all the way through and see how it ends before going back to implement any changes. There may be far more—or less—than what you expected.

That’s a job for the editing process. For the phase you’re in right now, the goal is simply to get to The End. So turn off track changes, focus on your own first draft, and keep writing and moving forward step by step until you get there.

10. Know your next step

You don’t—and can’t—know how the whole thing will end. The best you can do at any point during the writing of the first draft is to know the next step.

Much like a hiker navigating through dense woods, you can’t see the entire trail from the starting point, but you can identify the next marker or landmark. Similarly, in writing, you may not have the entire plot or structure of your story mapped out, but you can always figure out the next sentence, paragraph, or scene that needs to be written.

And when you’re writing the first draft? That’s all you need to know.

Learn how to finish your first draft the easy way

The first draft of a book should take no more than three months to finish, as the great Stephen King suggests, but for most authors, it can end up being a multi-year challenge.

If you’re tired of the struggle and eager to finish that writing project you’ve poured your heart and soul into, we’re here to show you an easier way. Learn how you can finish your first draft in just 90 days with Finish That Damn Book, one of the 20+ courses available through Wordling Plus. Get started here with a 7-day free trial.

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Natasha Khullar Relph is an award-winning journalist and author with bylines in  The New York Times, TIME CNN, BBC, ABC News, Ms. Marie Claire, Vogue,  and more. She is the founder of  The Wordling , a weekly business newsletter for journalists, authors, and content creators. Natasha has  mentored over 1,000 writers , helping them break into dream publications and build six-figure careers. She is the author of  Shut Up and Write: The No-Nonsense, No B.S. Guide to Getting Words on the Page  and  several other books .

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Writing a First Draft

Now that you have a topic and/or a working thesis, you have several options for how to begin writing a more complete draft.

Just write. You already have at least one focusing idea. Start there. What do you want to say about it? What connections can you make with it? If you have a working thesis, what points might you make that support that thesis?

Make an outline. Write your topic or thesis down and then jot down what points you might make that will flesh out that topic or support that thesis. These don’t have to be detailed. In fact, they don’t even have to be complete sentences (yet)!

Begin with research. If this is an assignment that asks you to do research to support your points or to learn more about your topic, doing that research is an important early step (see the section on “ Finding Quality Texts ” in the “Information Literacy” section). This might include a range of things, such as conducting an interview, creating and administering a survey, or locating articles on the Internet and in library databases.

Research is a great early step because learning what information is available from credible sources about your topic can sometimes lead to shifting your thesis. Saving the research for a later step in the drafting process can mean making this change after already committing sometimes significant amounts of work to a thesis that existing credible research doesn’t support. Research is also useful because learning what information is available about your topic can help you flesh out what you might want to say about it.

Essay Structure

You might already be familiar with the five-paragraph essay structure, in which you spend the first paragraph introducing your topic, culminating in a thesis that has three distinct parts. That introduction paragraph is followed by three body paragraphs, each one of those going into some detail about one of the parts of the thesis. Finally, the conclusion paragraph summarizes the main ideas discussed in the essay and states the thesis (or a slightly re-worded version of the thesis) again.

This structure is commonly taught in high schools, and it has some pros and some cons.

• It helps get your thoughts organized.
• It is a good introduction to a simple way of structuring an essay that lets students focus on content rather than wrestling with a more complex structure.
• It familiarizes students with the general shape and components of many essays—a broader introductory conversation giving readers context for this discussion, followed by a more detailed supporting discussion in the body of the essay, and ending with a sense of wrapping up the discussion and refocusing on the main idea.
• It is an effective structure for in-class essays or timed written exams.
• It can be formulaic—essays structured this way sound a lot alike.
• It isn’t very flexible—often, topics don’t lend themselves easily to this structure.
• It doesn’t encourage research and discussion at the depth college-level work tends to ask for. Quite often, a paragraph is simply not enough space to have a conversation on paper that is thorough enough to support a stance presented in your thesis.

So, if the five-paragraph essay isn’t the golden ticket in college work, what is?

That is a trickier question! There isn’t really one prescribed structure that written college-level work adheres to—audience, purpose, length, and other considerations all help dictate what that structure will be for any given piece of writing you are doing. Instead, this text offers you some guidelines and best practices.

Things to Keep in Mind about Structure in College-Level Writing

Avoid the three-point structure.

Aim for a thesis that addresses a single issue rather than the three-point structure. Take a look at our example from the previous section, “ Finding the Thesis ”:

“Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of The Hunger Games, creates as much danger for herself as she faces from others over the course of the film.”

This thesis allows you to cover your single, narrow topic in greater depth, so you can examine multiple sides of a single angle of the topic rather than having to quickly and briefly address a broader main idea.

There’s No “Right” Number of Supporting Points

There is no prescribed number of supporting points. You don’t have to have three! Maybe you have two in great depth, or maybe four that explore that one element from the most salient angles. Depending on the length of your paper, you may even have more than that.

There’s More than One Good Spot for a Thesis

Depending on the goals of the assignment, your thesis may no longer sit at the end of the first paragraph, so let’s discuss a few places it can commonly be found in college writing.

It may end up at the end of your introductory information—once you’ve introduced your topic, given readers some reasonable context around it, and narrowed your focus to one area of that topic. This might put your thesis in the predictable end-of-the-first-paragraph spot, but it might also put that thesis several paragraphs into the paper

Some college work, particularly work that asks you to consider multiple sides of an issue fully, lends itself well to an end-of-paper thesis (sometimes called a “delayed thesis”). This thesis often appears a paragraph or so before the conclusion, which allows you to have a thorough discussion about multiple sides of a question and let that discussion guide you to your stance rather than having to spend the paper defending a stance you’ve already stated.

These are some common places you may find your thesis landing in your paper, but a thesis truly can be anywhere in a text.

Writing Beginnings

Beginnings have a few jobs. These will depend somewhat on the purpose of the writing, but here are some of the things the first couple of paragraphs do for your text:

• They establish the tone and primary audience of your text—is it casual? Academic? Geared toward a professional audience already versed in the topic? An interested audience that doesn’t know much about this topic yet?
• They introduce your audience to your topic.
• They give you an opportunity to provide context around that topic—what current conversations are happening around it? Why is it important? If it’s a topic your audience isn’t likely to know much about, you may find you need to define what the topic itself is.
• They let you show your audience what piece of that bigger topic you are going to be working with in this text and how you will be working with it.
• They might introduce a narrative, if appropriate, or a related story that provides an example of the topic being discussed.

Take a look at the thesis about Katniss once more. There are a number of discussions that you could have about this film, and almost as many that you could have about this film and its intersections with the concept of danger (such as corruption in government, the hazards of power, risks of love or other personal attachments, etc.). Your introduction moving toward this thesis will shift our attention to the prevalence of self-imposed danger in this film, which will narrow your reader’s focus in a way that prepares us for your thesis.

The most important thing at this point in the drafting process is to just get started, but when you’re ready, if you want to learn more about formulas and methods for writing introductions, see “ Writing Introductions ,” presented later in this section of the text.

Writing Middles

Middles tend to have a clearer job—they provide the meat of the discussion! Here are some ways that might happen:

• If you state a thesis early in the paper, the middle of the paper will likely provide support for that thesis.
• The middle might explore multiple sides of an issue.
• It might look at opposing views—ones other than the one you are supporting—and discuss why those don’t address the issue as well as the view you are supporting does.

Let’s think about the “multiple sides of the issue” approach to building support with our Hunger Games example. Perhaps Katniss may not see a particular dangerous situation she ends up in as being one she’s created, but another character or the viewers may disagree. It might be worth exploring both versions of this specific danger to give the most complete, balanced discussion to support your thesis.

Writing Endings

Endings, like beginnings, tend to have more than one job. Here are some things they often need to do for a text to feel complete:

• Reconnect to the main idea/thesis. However, note that this is different than a simple copy/paste of the thesis from earlier in the text. We’ve likely had a whole conversation in the text since we first encountered that thesis. Simply repeating it, or even replacing a few key words with synonyms, doesn’t acknowledge that bigger conversation. Instead, try pointing us back to the main idea in a new way.
• Tie up loose ends. If you opened the text with the beginning of a story to demonstrate how the topic applies to average daily life, the end of your text is a good time to share the end of that story with readers. If several ideas in the text tie together in a relevant way that didn’t fit neatly into the original discussion of those ideas, the end may be the place to do that.
• Keep the focus clear—this is your last chance to leave an impression on the reader. What do you want them to leave this text thinking about? What action do you want them to take? It’s often a good idea to be direct about this in the ending paragraph(s).

How might we reconnect with the main idea in our  Hunger Games example? We might say something like, “In many ways, Katniss Everdeen is her own greatest obstacle to the safe and peaceful life she seems to wish for.” It echoes, strongly, the original thesis, but also takes into account the more robust exploration that has happened in the middle parts of the paper.

As mentioned about writing introductions above, the most important thing at this point in the drafting process is to just get started (or in this case, to get started concluding), but when you’re ready, if you want to learn more about formulas and methods for writing conclusions, see “ Writing Conclusions ,” presented later in this section of the text.

The Word on College Reading and Writing Copyright © by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write the First Draft

Part 4: How to Write the First Draft

Introduction

By this stage, you will have a final essay plan and a research document that presents your findings from the research stage in an organised and easy-to-use way. Together, these documents provide a clear map and all the information you need to write a well-structured essay , in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take. 

This timesaving comes from the fact that you have already made all the big decisions about your essay during the research phase: 

• You have a clear idea of your answer to the essay question.
• You know the main topics you will discuss to support your answer.
• You know the best order in which to discuss these topics. 
• You know how many words should be spent on these topics, based on their importance to supporting your answer.
• You know what points you will make under each topic and will discuss each of these in a new paragraph. 
• You know exactly what information each paragraph of your essay should contain. 

You have already compiled your list of references or bibliography, and have easy access to all the details you need to correctly cite and reference your work. 

Formal academic language

Before starting to write your essay, you must understand that using formal academic language is essential when writing at university. Formal academic language is clear and concise. You should never use 20 words when 10 will do; and your writing should leave no room for misunderstanding or confusion.

First person should almost always be avoided when writing an essay; however, it is recommended that you check with your tutor or lecturer about their attitude towards the first person and when it should be used, if ever. Conversely, contractions (e.g. shouldn’t, could’ve, he’s and hasn’t) are always inappropriate in academic writing. The only time you should see a contraction in academic text is in a direct quotation, usually taken from informal or spoken text. 

Care should be taken to craft grammatically correct sentences, with no errors of spelling or punctuation. Colloquialisms and idiomatic language should be avoided. (These are characteristics of informal or spoken language.) It is also important to avoid racist, sexist and gender-specific language in your writing. Instead, use inclusive and gender-neutral vocabulary. For more information, please see our blog article ‘ Simplicity in Academic Writing ’.

Introductions

As you already have a clear idea of what your essay will include, you can write your introduction first. Of course, you should always come back to your introduction at the end of writing your essay to make sure that it definitely introduces all the topics you discussed. (You should not discuss any topics in the body of your essay that you have not mentioned in the introduction.) 

Some other points to remember when writing your introduction are that you need to clearly state your answer to the essay question (your thesis statement), not just introduce the question. Also, your introduction should include no information that is not directly relevant to your topic. Including irrelevant background information in the introduction is a common mistake made by novice academic writers. 

See the following example of a poor introduction. Then, compare it with the example of a good introduction below that. These example introductions are for the same 1,000-word essay used for the examples given in earlier stages of this guide, ‘How to Begin’ and ‘How to Organise Your Research’.

This is an example of a poor introduction: In 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain on a quest to find a new trade route to Asia. Despite the fact that he believed he had landed in the East Indies, Columbus had found another continent entirely. This essay will examine the issue of whether or not indigenous culture was completely decimated in the Americas as a result of Spain’s colonisation in the 16th century. It will look at the areas of family, religion and language.

This is an example of a good introduction:  Beginning in the sixteenth century, Spanish colonisation of the Americas had a significantly negative effect on the cultural practices of the indigenous population. In particular, the introduction of new diseases and the consequent demographic collapse dramatically weakened indigenous culture and their ability to resist Spanish domination. However, aspects of the culture of some indigenous groups survived and even thrived—it was not completely decimated. Through an examination of the evidence related to religion, family and language, including the effects of colonisation on these areas of society, this essay will demonstrate aspects of indigenous beliefs, customs and practices that managed to endure.

In the example of a poor introduction, background information is included that is not directly relevant to the topic. Also, it does not answer the question, it only introduces it. Finally, it does not introduce all the topics to be discussed (as outlined in the final essay plan), and for those it does introduce, it does not mention them in the order they will be discussed in the essay (as outlined in the final essay plan). 

By contrast, the good introduction provides a clear thesis statement; introduces, in order, all the topics to be discussed; and only includes information that is directly relevant to the essay question. 

Topic sentences

As explained in ‘How to Begin’, every paragraph needs a topic sentence. The topic sentence introduces the new topic about to be discussed. It also links the topic back to the essay question, to make it clear why it is relevant and how it advances your argument. 

The following are examples of topic sentences for Topic 1 ‘Disease and demographic impact’, Topic 2 ‘Religion’ and Topic 4 ‘Language’, as outlined in the final essay plan in ‘How to Finalise Your Essay Plan’. Notice how they link back to the thesis statement: ‘Spain’s colonisation had a significantly negative effect on the indigenous population of the Americas but some aspects of the culture of some indigenous groups survived and even thrived—it was not completely decimated’.

Topic 1: One of the most obvious negative effects of colonisation was the introduction of diseases that caused rapid demographic collapse among the indigenous population. Topic 2: Missionaries arrived to preach Catholicism to the Native Americans, but they allowed the Native Americans to keep parts of their culture and religion that did not clash with Catholic value and traditions.   Topic 4: The Spanish did not force their language on the Native Americans, but there were nonetheless cases of indigenous languages fading out of use and being replaced with Spanish.

A common misconception is that your paragraphs need a concluding sentence for each topic. This is not true, and in fact results in unnecessary repetition, especially in a short essay. 

If you have carefully followed the steps outlined in the articles on organising your research and finalising your essay plan, your final essay plan should clearly indicate what information will go in each paragraph of your essay. Each paragraph should contain only one main idea. Care should also be taken to only spend as many words as planned on each paragraph. If you decided in your research and planning stages that 150 words were enough to discuss a certain topic, then stick as closely to that plan as possible. Likewise, unless you have a very good reason for doing otherwise, follow your planned order of paragraphs, as that order should reflect the most logical arrangement and help your essay to flow well.

When writing your paragraphs, you want to choose the best supporting evidence and examples from your research to use. You must also ensure that you are inserting the necessary in-text citations and compiling your final reference list as you are writing, rather than leaving this until the end. This should be easy to do, as all these details are readily available in your research document (see ‘How to Organise Your Research’). 

Conclusions

As explained in ‘How to Begin’, a conclusion should restate the thesis statement and summarise the points that were made in the body of the essay in the order in which they were made. The conclusion offers an important opportunity to synthesise the points you have made to support your argument and to reinforce how these points prove that your argument is correct. In many ways, the conclusion is a reflection of the introduction, but it is important that it is not an exact repeat of it. A key point of difference is that you have already provided ample evidence and support for your answer to the essay question, so the purpose of your conclusion is not to introduce what you will say, but rather to reiterate what you have said. Further, your conclusion absolutely must not contain any new material not already discussed in detail in the body of your text.  

Referencing

It is important that you acknowledge your sources of information in your academic writing. This allows you to clearly show how the ideas of others have influenced your own work. You should provide a citation (and matching reference) in your essay every time you use words, ideas or information from other sources. In this way, you can avoid accidental plagiarism. 

Referencing also serves other purposes. It allows you to demonstrate the depth and breadth of your research, to show that you have read and engaged with the ideas of experts in your field. It also allows you to give credit to the writers from whom you have borrowed words or ideas. For your reader, referencing allows them to trace the sources of information you have used, to verify the validity of your work. Your referencing must be accurate and provide all necessary details to allow your reader to locate the source.

Whether you have been provided referencing guidelines to follow, or have selected guidelines that you consider appropriate for your field, these must be followed closely, correctly and consistently. All work that is not 100% your own should be referenced, including page numbers where necessary (see ‘How, When and Why to Reference’). Your referencing should be checked carefully at the end of writing to ensure that everything that should have been referenced has been referenced, all in-text citations have corresponding reference list entries and the reference list or bibliography is correctly ordered.

Your document should be neatly and consistently formatted, following any guidelines provided by your tutor or lecturer. Neat formatting shows that you have taken pride in your work and that you understand the importance of following convention. 

If no guidelines have been provided to you, we recommend you use the following formatting guidelines: 

• normal page margins
• 12 pt Times New Roman or Arial font for the body (10 pt for footnotes)
• bold for headings
• 1.5 or double line spacing for the body (single spacing for footnotes)
• a line between each paragraph (or a first line indent of 1.27 cm for each paragraph).

These are the guidelines most commonly preferred by Australian and New Zealand universities. 

Learning how to write your first draft can feel overwhelming. To solidify your knowledge, you might like to watch Dr Lisa Lines' video on the topic on our YouTube channel . If you need any further assistance, you can read more about our professional editing service . Capstone Editing is always here to help.

Related Guides

Essay writing: everything you need to know and nothing you don’t—part 1: how to begin.

This guide will explain everything you need to know about how to organise, research and write an argumentative essay.

Essay Writing Part 2: How to Organise Your Research

Organising your research effectively is a crucial and often overlooked step to successful essay writing.

Essay Writing Part 3: How to Finalise Your Essay Plan

The key to successful essay writing is to finalise a detailed essay plan, carefully refined during the research stage, before beginning to write your essay.

Part 5: How to Finalise and Polish Your Essay

Before handing in any assignment, you must take the time to carefully edit and proofread it. This article explains exactly how to do so effectively.

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• Usage & Styles
• Resources for ESL Students
• How to Set up an APA Paper
• How to Set up an MLA Paper
• Adapt to Academic Learning
• Audience Awareness
• Learn Touch Typing
• Getting Started
• Thesis Statement
• The First Draft
• Proofreading
• Writing Introductions
• Writing Conclusions
• Chicago / Turabian Style
• CSE / CBE Style
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Cross-Cultural Understanding
• Writing Resources
• Research Paper - General Guidelines
• Annotated Bibliographies
• History Papers
• Science Papers
• Experimental Research Papers
• Exegetical Papers
• FAQs About Creative Writing
• Tips For Creative Writing
• Exercises To Develop Creative Writing Skills
• Checklist For Creative Writing
• Additional Resources For Creative Writing
• FAQs About Creating PowerPoints
• Tips For Creating PowerPoints
• Exercises to Improve PowerPoint Skills
• Checklist For PowerPoints
• Structure For GRE Essay
• Additional Resources For PowerPoints
• Additional Resources For GRE Essay Writing
• FAQs About Multimodal Assignments
• Tips For Creating Multimodal Assignments
• Checklist For Multimodal Assignments
• Additional Resources For Multimodal Assignments
• GRE Essay Writing FAQ
• Tips for GRE Essay Writing
• Sample GRE Essay Prompts
• Checklist For GRE Essays
• Cover Letter
• Personal Statements
• Resources for Tutors
• Chapter 2: Theoretical Perspectives on Learning a Second Language
• Chapter 4: Reading an ESL Writer's Text
• Chapter 5: Avoiding Appropriation
• Chapter 6: 'Earth Aches by Midnight': Helping ESL Writers Clarify Their Intended Meaning
• Chapter 7: Looking at the Whole Text
• Chapter 8: Meeting in the Middle: Bridging the Construction of Meaning with Generation 1.5 Learners
• Chapter 9: A(n)/The/Ø Article About Articles
• Chapter 10: Editing Line by Line
• Chapter 14: Writing Activities for ESL Writers
• Resources for Faculty
• Writing Center Newsletter
• Writing Center Survey

First Draft

T he importance of the first draft is to test your outline and structure to see if they work. As you start your first draft, do not get caught up on the details just yet. Do not worry about having the most creative Introduction or a fully developed argument. It is very rare that a writer will write the perfect draft on the first try. The importance of the first draft is to try to get your ideas out based on the outline you have created. It serves as a reference point to build off of for your later drafts.

The Introduction

For most writers, the Introduction is the most difficult part of the whole essay. For the first draft, it is perfectly acceptable to only have a two sentence long Introduction and to dive more immediately into the argument. It is simply difficult to know how to set up your argument if you have not started it. So, in the first draft, do not give the Introduction priority. After the first draft, you will have a feel for your argument and can start to develop the Introduction. The Introduction should included:

• An grabbing first sentence (a quote, statistic, or shocking revelation)
• An explanation of what your paper is about
• An introduction to your argument
• A Thesis Statement

Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs are the meat of your argument. Body paragraphs are the explanations behind your thesis statement. It is important that your body paragraphs support your main idea and thesis. Each paragraph should argue one main idea and have supporting details to back the main idea. A body paragraph's structure may look like this.

Topic Sectence (a main idea of your argument)

• Supporting detail

Another example:

I like dogs (topic sentence)

• I like the fact that they are so loyal.
• They make great companions for people of all ages.

    In the pargraph, one main idea will be discussed, and the topic sentence will introduce the main idea of that paragraph. After the topic sentence, the supporting details will reinforce the main idea of the paragraph.

The Conclusion has to serve many purposes for your essay. A conclusion restates your introduction and thesis, but it does not repeat it explicitly. The Conclusion also serves to put your argument into a big picture. At the beginning of the essay, in your introduction, you tell the reader what to expect in your paper. Then, in your body paragraphs, you provide your argument and the supporting details. In the Conclusion, you are putting the final touch on the overall argument by summing up the entirety of your argument. This is not the time to introduce any new material. It is a time to restate your argument and thesis.

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19 More About 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 may already have a topic 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.

The Role of Topic Sentences

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.

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.

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

The Role of Paragraphs

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.

Students often ask the question: “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 your 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.

Starting Your First Draft

Now we are finally ready to look over Tuyet’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 Tuyet in the proper mind-set to start.

The following is Tuyet’s thesis statement:

Everyone wants the newest and the best digital technology, but the choices are many, and the specifications are often confusing.

Here are the notes that Tuyet wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience:

Purpose: My purpose is to inform readers about the wider variety of consumer digital technology available in stores and to explain why the specification for these products, expressed in numbers that average consumers don’t understand, often cause bad or misinformed buying decisions.

Audience: My audience is my instructor and members of this class. most of them are not heavy into technology except for the usual laptops, cell phones, and MP3 players, which are not topics I’m writing about. I’ll have to be as exact and precise as I can be when I explain possibly unfamiliar product specification. At the same time, they’re more with it electronically than my grandparents’ VCR flummoxed generation, so I won’t have to explain every last detail.

Tuyet 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 the chapter on “Revising and Editing” when she revises it.

With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Tuyet then looked at her outline. She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline of one of her body paragraphs. The roman numeral II identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and Arabic numerals label subpoints.

II. eBook readers are changing the way people read.

A. eBook readers make books easy to access and to carry.

1. Books can be downloaded electronically.

2. Devices can store hundreds of books in memory.

B. The market expands as a variety of companies enter it.

1. Booksellers sell their own eBook readers.

2. Electronics and computer companies also sell eBook readers.

C. Current eBook readers have significant limitations.

1. The devices are owned by different brands and may not be compatible.

2. Few programs have been made to fit the other way Americans read: by borrowing books from libraries.

Tuyet then began to expand the ideas in her outline into a paragraph. Notice how the outline helped her guarantee that all her sentences in the body of the paragraph develop the topic sentence.

eBook readers are changing the way people read, or so eBook developer hope. The main selling point for these handheld devices, which are sort of the size of a paperback book, is that they make books easy to access and carry. Electronic versions of printed books can be downloaded online for a few bucks or directly from your cell phone. These devices can store hundreds of books in memory and, with not-to-speech features, can even read the texts. The market for eBooks and eBook readers keeps expanding as a lot of companies enter it. online and traditional booksellers have been the first to market eBook readers to the public, but computer companies, especially the ones already involved in cell phone, online music, and notepad computer technology, will also enter the market. The problem for consumers, however, is which device to choose.

Incompatibility is the norm. eBooks can be read only on the devices they were intended for. Furthermore, use is restricted n the same kind of DRM systems that restrict the copying of music and videos. So, book buyers are often unable to lend books to other readers, as they can with a real book. Few accommodations have been made to fit the other way Americans read: by borrowing books from libraries. What is a buyer to do?

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

Continuing the First Draft

Tuyet 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. Then she began to write the conclusion of her paper.

College ESL Writers: Mohawk College Edition Copyright © 2018 by Barbara Hall and Elizabeth Wallace is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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4b. Drafting

Drafting is the point in the writing process at which you compose a complete first version of an essay. There are as many ways to write a first draft as there are essays in the world. Some academic writers begin their drafts with body paragraphs and work backwards to their introduction while others feel the need to develop a solid introduction before launching into the body of the essay.  The best advice offered by most professional writers is to try not to worry too much about how unprepared, disorganized, repetitive, or uninspired a first draft might feel because relatively few of us can sit down and compose an entire essay (or even email) that is ready to be published in a single draft.  As students, it can be easy to overlook the fact that the books and articles we read for class have been revised and edited many times and with the support of many people prior to publication. Your instructors will expect you to perform the role of both writer and editor before turning in your final draft.

As you dive into the drafting stage of the writing process, the following advice may come in handy when you are facing the pressure of deadlines and grades:

Begin with the part of your essay you know the most about or feel least nervous about.

• Having an outline allows you to start with the third, fifth, or second paragraph of an essay without worrying how it will flow with the rest. Your initial paragraphs may vary in length or contain insufficient reasoning or evidence as you draft. Topic sentences, transitions, and other details can be cleaned up later. Be sure to cite sources even if you’re unsure what quotation or other evidence you might include to reduce your formatting time later (and help you avoid unintentional plagiarism).

Just do it!

• Hesitation can be a writer’s worst enemy. Facing a blank page can feel like a climbing to the top of a diving platform and being too wary to jump or being unable to choose a restaurant for dinner.  Although every good writer should be self-critical at times, try to remember that a first draft can be terrible and still be very useful. Try not to look back or doubt your ideas – there will be time for that later. Treat your drafting sessions like freewriting and do not worry about transitions, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics.

Leave yourself a short note or comment at the end of each writing session .

• Every writer has picked up something they wrote a day or week ago and wondered what the heck they were thinking. Take an extra minute at the end of a writing session to leave yourself a short note or comment to remind yourself where you hope to pick up or anything you need to look up. Notes and comments can also be useful if you feel a sentence in your paragraph may be tangential or incomplete and you want to come back to it later.

Pace yourself and take breaks .

• Essays take time to develop. Hopefully, you can find a place to write where you are comfortable and able to avoid distractions. Turn off your phone and try not to have an internet browser open unless citing evidence.

Be reasonable with your goals .

• Begin each writing session by taking a moment to consider how long you plan to write and what you hope to accomplish. Plan breaks to stretch and rehydrate. Holding yourself to a goal for each session will help you stay on track toward your deadlines and give you a sense of achievement. Rewarding yourself after each successful writing session can be useful motivation as well.

Keep your audience, purpose, and task requirements in mind .

• By the time we get several paragraphs or hours into a writing task, we can become so attached to our own ideas and writing style that we lose track of our audience and purpose. Asking yourself “who will be reading this essay?” and “how will it be assessed?” or “what is my overall purpose?” can help you keep an eye on the big picture. Checking assignment guidelines will help guide your work and help you ensure that your draft meets an instructor or editor’s expectations.

The Value of First Drafts

A first draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is certainly not expected to be the final version. During the revision stage, you will have the opportunity to make all kinds of changes to your first draft before you put the final touches on it during the editing stage. A first draft gives you a complete working version of an essay that is ready to share with peers, writing coaches, instructors, and/or editors that can be improved with revision and editing.

Writing as Inquiry Copyright © 2021 by Kara Clevinger and Stephen Rust is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

How to Write the First Draft of an Academic Research Paper

Actually making a start and putting together a first draft can certainly be the biggest stumbling block to getting a paper submitted. Unless you make a start, it’ll never progress! Drafting your first paper is even more difficult when you don’t yet have experience writing papers and submitting them to journals.

I know from experience how daunting the prospect can be and just how easy it is to unnecessarily procrastinate for months. But it doesn’t have to be difficult and the main thing is making a start. I’m here to try and help making the process less daunting for you!

This guide to drafting your first academic paper forms part of the publishing series . I suggest reading these associated posts in particular:

• What to publish
• When to publish
• Where to publish

What to include in your first draft of an academic research paper

Let me start by saying that no one should be expecting for your first draft to be perfect! I wasted months of time on my first paper because I wanted to perfect everything, down to the wording, before sharing it with my supervisor. This is completely the wrong approach!

Instead of perfecting your first draft, just work to form the rough structure of your paper around whatever you want your key message to be. We discussed this further in the separate post: Deciding what to publish from your PhD work . Simply try to ensure your first draft roughly tells the story of what you want your main message to be.

It is absolutely fine for your first draft to be a rough cut, it should simply serve as a starting point. Therefore for example you can include extra figures you’re not sure about to be able to discuss with your co-authors whether or not they should be included. Throughout the drafting process you want to aiming to make your key message as clear and robust as possible but for now it’s fine to not be sure on the finer details. It may help to look at your favourite papers from the literature to get an idea what papers in your field typically include.

For now, don’t worry the quality of the written text, or finalising your figures. You want to use the first draft to form the rough structure and be a starting point for discussion with co-authors.

Let’s now discuss how to structure your first draft.

Structuring your first draft

If you already have a certain journal in mind to submit your paper to, how you structure your draft may slightly depend upon the format that the journal asks for. It’s a good idea to check their Author Instructions page which should include a “Guide for Authors”: a walkthrough of each section of the paper. Oftentimes there may even be a template you can download including section titles and advice for structuring your text.

If you don’t yet have a journal in mind, don’t worry. For the most part all journals follow the same format. For an original research paper, usually you’ll include sections as follows:

• Abstract – typically around 200-250 words or less.
• Introduction
• Conclusions – sometimes appears as the final paragraph of the discussion section.

Then followed by Author Contributions, Funding sources, Acknowledgments, Conflicts of Interest, any Supplementary files or Appendix and finally the list of References. None of these sections you really have to worry about at this stage.

Let’s go through roughly what to include in each section:

Introduction:

• A brief review of previous literature to set the scene;
• The motivation for the study;
• The aims of your study;
• Sometimes you may include a very brief overview of your main findings. See what other papers in the journal do.

Always include enough detail for someone else to be able to repeat your experiments, including:

• How many samples did you test? How did you process them? Were there inclusion/exclusion criteria?
• If you synthesised or processed physical samples, what materials have you used? Include processing temperatures, durations of each step etc.
• What equipment and consumables did you use? Include the item code, model number and manufacturer.
• How did you process the data? Name the software package, version and operations you performed.
• Details of any statistical analysis: software packages, models, methods, inclusion/exclusion criteria and so forth.

In all instances where you followed a method developed in another paper, include a reference to that paper. Not only is it good practice to give credit where it is due but you’ll have an easier time with peer review demonstrating you’re following the convention.

Remember, you shouldn’t be discussing findings in your results section, simply presenting them. Therefore there shouldn’t really be any suggesting why the results are a certain way. The exception is where the journal specifically allows results and discussion sections to be combined. Further on in this post is a section about choosing figures and results to include in your paper, and most of these will appear in your results section.

• Your results should aim to convince the reader of your key message.
• Be conscious that when first looking at your paper, most readers will go straight to looking at your figures.
• Cite every figure you include, in the order you include them. Clearly explain what is being presented.

Discussion:

The way I was taught to write a discussion was to simply use four paragraphs/sections covering:

• Your key finding . You can even start it with the sentence “The most important finding of this work was”
• Comparison to previous literature . How do your findings compare to other papers? What was the same? What was different? How do your findings progress the field? What would you recommend next?
• Limitations . Every study has limitations, don’t try and hide them. Be honest with what wasn’t ideal during your study. Examples may be: small sample size, imperfect analysis, impractical sample processing. If you can, cite other papers which relate to these limitations: either in regards to why it’s not such a big problem, how it is common problem, or potential solutions or improvements for future studies. In any case, be honest. You can recommend future work to overcome these limitations if appropriate.
• Conclusions . Give a brief set of conclusions with reference to the potential impact of your work for future studies.

You can see how I used exactly this format for a recent paper available here .

Eager to learn more about the steps involved in publishing your first paper? My academic publishing series is now available as a free eBook which you can read offline. Click the button below for access.

In which order should you write the sections of the first draft?

Everyone writes papers differently, so what works for me may not work well for you. Personally once I start a document for a new paper, I typically write notes for each section as I think of them but go with the following strategy to get the text written.

Generally it is acknowledged that the methods section is an easy section to write, so I would suggest starting there. Even if you’ve got writer’s block, writing your methods is pretty robotic and shouldn’t require much thought. It simply involves writing down the process you went through to collect all your data. Writing the methods is an easy starting point which should give you confidence to dive into the other sections. In the above graphic I’ve separated the conclusions from the discussion but often the conclusions will simply be the final paragraph of the discussion section.

After the methods you can start drafting your key results and your discussion will naturally follow from there. If you follow the structure for the discussion as outlined in the section above, it should also be formulaic and pretty easy to write if you’ve got a clear message.

By all means crack on with the introduction whenever you fancy. If you’re in the mood to write it, don’t stop yourself! I personally like to write notes for it and include key references as I’m going along, but write the bulk of it after the methods, results and the bulk of the discussion.

Usually it is recommended to write the abstract last once everything else is finalised.

Choosing which figures to present

Remember you’re creating a story around your key message. As such all your figures should be helping to convince your reader of your key message.

• Be aware that there are sometimes limits on the maximum number of figures you’re allowed to include (around 8) in the main text of your paper. Usually you can move figures to a supplementary section if necessary. Prioritise the most impactful figures to illustrate your main point.
• Each figure should aim to address a certain point around your key message to convince readers. You can combine figures as panels within a larger figure but only do so if they address the same overall point. Don’t confuse readers by combining loads of unrelated things just because you’re running out of space!
• Always make sure the caption fully describes what the figure is showing. The figure and caption should explain what is going on without the reader having to read any of the main text. What type of equipment generated the data? How many samples were tested? What do the error bars show? What is the scale? For stats: what is the p-value?

You may need a figure to describe your methods but after that usually you’ll try to include figures in an order which tells a story. Importantly: this order may not be the one in which experiments actually took place. You’re trying to tell a story to get a message across, not write a diary! It’s no problem to move sections of results around if it makes for a more convincing message, especially for readers who may only have a quick glance through your paper.

For example you may wish to start with your key finding, then follow with any validation work, then finally include more details to convince the reader. It will really depend on what suits the work you’re doing, but remember that you have full control and your aim should be to make a clear story.

My top tips for putting together your first draft of the paper

Iterate quickly.

My main bit of advice is to get a first draft put together pretty quickly otherwise you risking wasting lots of time like I did! I wish I had sent the initial drafts of my first paper to my supervisor sooner. I spent far too long trying to perfect it down to the exact phrasing of sentences. There is no point getting to this level of detail if there is potentially an improved completely different direction to take the paper in!

What I’ve found to work really well is to set deadlines with your supervisor to ensure you are making progress to submission. You don’t have to have the full paper available all at once. I have had calendar invites set up saying by a certain date I’d have sections of the paper sent across, and to limit procrastination no date was more than four weeks away.

After your supervisor(s) has had a look, send it across to any co-authors. It may take a few iterations until everyone is happy. Once you have the backing of your coauthors, don’t be scared to submit your manuscript slightly sooner than you feel comfortable.

A reviewer is pretty unlikely to outright reject your paper if they want more experiments to be carried out: they’ll ask for what they want in the review process.

Always think about the next publication

Once you start writing, you may struggle deciding what to include and what not to. Remember though that this doesn’t mean you need to delay publishing if you already have a clear story. Unless all your work sits together very neatly, please resist the urge to include everything in a single paper.

If you’ve got results you’d like to publish but they don’t sit nicely with the main message of this paper, you can always consider publishing them separately later. It is much more important to create a clear message with a coherent story than to include extra work just because you did it!

Although some academics shun the “salami slice” connotations of having many smaller papers, it doesn’t always make sense to force different experiments together in to one paper. I recently published two different papers in the same special issue of a journal, both were related but had very different messages:

• Quantifying 3D Strain in Scaffold Implants for Regenerative Medicine
• Exploratory Full-Field Mechanical Analysis across the Osteochondral Tissue—Biomaterial Interface in an Ovine Model

It wouldn’t have made for a stronger paper to combine them because in essence they were telling separate stories.

It’s fine for your first draft if you’re not exactly sure what to include. Once you’ve got the rough form of the paper sorted, you can add or reduce bits as necessary. The key thing is to get a first draft done to get the framework for the paper. No one is expecting it to be perfect!

Word vs LaTex

I know some people enjoy using LaTex for their documents, but I’ve never used it. Everyone I’ve always worked with uses Word, so even if I was keen to use LaTex I’m not sure that it would be that easy to collaborate on documents to track changes etc. Journals will often request the paper to be submitted as a Word document so probably save using LaTex for your own internal reports or theses.

Keep your data, files and figures organised

This point extends far beyond your first draft of a paper! Once you start iterating on papers, it becomes more important than ever to know where all your key files are. Ensure you keep different version of documents clearly labelled.

Be prepared for reviewers to ask for modifications to figures or data to be reanalysed.

What I do is keep a folder for the paper and include the main working draft plus other relevant documents like notes or draft of the cover letter. I then have subfolders for data, figures and old drafts.

Aim to present figures with a clear message which are easy to “get”

Making figures is the focus of a whole other post which will follow this one. In short:

A lot of readers will initially flick through your paper and skip straight to your figures. It’s really important that the figures tell the story clearly and can be understood by just looking at the figure and caption. Also, if the readers don’t like the look of your figures, or can’t understand them, they’re less likely to bother reading the rest of the paper. Again, have a look at how published papers present their work to get some ideas.

You’ll want to make your figures in such a way that they can be amended easily to account for any adjustments suggested by co-authors or reviewers. I use a combination of Excel and Photoshop for most of my figures. There are lots of alternatives depending on what you’re presenting, GIMP is a free alternative to Photoshop.

If you make them in Paint and someone suggests making some alterations, it could take you ages. Instead if you make them in a non-binding software like Photoshop you can easily make non-destructive changes element by element.

It is worth spending time creating nice figures. Having polished figures makes your submission look more professional, ensuring the underlying science is easy to understand is critical too. Plus you can use them elsewhere, such as in presentations or other documents.

Got a draft? What happens next

The hard work is far from over once you have your first draft but you’ve overcome a really big hurdle in the journey to getting your work published. Now it’s time to discuss your draft with co-authors, incorporating feedback and changes into subsequent drafts.

There is no certain number of drafts you should expect to go through before submission, just know that you could endlessly spend time finding things to add (discussed here ) and you should be very conscious to avoid doing! For my papers I think it took around four drafts until we felt happy enough to submit. Not all of your co-authors have to give feedback for every draft, I’d suggest the main people you’ll be liaising with will be your supervisor(s) though it’s certainly important that everyone has an opportunity to help.

Once all of the authors, including yourself, are happy with the paper, speak to your supervisor for how to proceed with submission. Some supervisors like to lead the submission whereas others prefer for the student to do so, and then to transfer “corresponding authorship” at the final stages before publication.

In any case, be prepared to feel vulnerable when you do eventually submit the research paper to a journal. This can be completely normal, your work is going to get critiqued! But remember that you’ve done great and rather than leave the data on a computer you’re motivated to pursue publication in turn helping progress your field. Well done!

I hope this post has helped with your first draft of a paper! Remember that you can find the other posts in the series here: Writing an academic journal paper series. Next we’ll be covering creating figures and dealing with reviewers.

Please let me know what you thought of it or if there are any other details of publishing which you’d like help with .

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What Should Be Included in Your First Draft?

by J. D. Edwin | 3 comments

What should be included in your first draft? Writing the first draft of a book is incredibly difficult. So much so that you don't even finish their first draft. Why is this? And how can we prevent this from stopping us from writing our first drafts?

Every writer who has ever written a book wrote a first draft for that story—and it's highly unlikely that the first draft was also the final draft.

Of course, it's hard to remember this when you're reading a published book. Writers don't often see the first, or even second (maybe more!) drafts of a book. Just the final product.

However, behind every great story there is a beginning—and in every beginning there are elements we, as writers, need to care about accomplishing. There are also elements that will only hold us back.

In this post, I will cover the three elements you need to include in your first draft, and the three elements that will only slow down or stop your writing process.

A Story is Ugly Before It is Made Beautiful

Writers are all perfectionists underneath.

Have you ever sat down at your desk to start a book and found yourself dreaming of the perfect, final project? Do you see it shiny and bound, sitting on the shelves of your favorite bookstore? You've probably imagined bringing that book to life, writing it out in all its glory. I'm sure you've dreamed of it hitting the stores.

I have some news for you—that perfect book is not the book you’ll be writing.

You see, there is a misconception, especially in new writers, that the book of your hopes and dreams is the one that will materialize when you write.

Often this dream is dashed quickly when a writer starts putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and realizes the story isn’t going quite as they envisioned. Maybe those dramatic scenes are coming out dry and dull. Maybe the beautiful language that came to them in the shower turns out to be stilted and awkward. 

This, as you can imagine, can be pretty discouraging.

However, it doesn't need to be that way. Many new writers have walked away from perfectly promising books because that first draft didn’t magically turn into the perfect best seller they wanted. But the truth of the matter is, the first draft was never meant to be the final project.

The first draft is just that—a first draft. The initial attempt, the ugly before the beautiful.

The stepping stone that brings you closer to that shining manuscript. 

In this post, we are going to take a look at three things you should expect to accomplish in your first draft—and three things you shouldn’t. All of this will help you complete your first draft fast, so that you can start working on the revisions that will make it what it needs to be before you burn out. 

What is a First Draft? A Visual Example

Before we get started, I’d like to show you something. A few years ago I participated in a Studio Ghibli themed art show at a small art shop/gallery. It was a lot of work but great fun. Here they are hanging on the gallery wall:

I was very proud of how these pieces turned out. They looked great and received quite a few compliments. I even sold three of the four pieces at the show.

While that didn’t amount to any significant profit, I was still glad to be able to claim I was an artist who has sold art. However, what you see here is the final product, the equivalent of a shiny new book on the shelf. A few weeks before the show, they looked like this:

As you can see, there are nothing here but general shapes and ideas. The arrangement of the four pieces weren’t even in the same order I wound up putting them in because I originally thought the large shapes could sit in a diamond formation.

Two of them eventually wound up being flipped to mirror image versions. I had no idea what the color scheme would be at this point and wasn’t even sure these were the four designs I would stick with.

From this rough image, you can sort of glimpse an idea of what the final product could be, but with only the basic essential elements intact. It offers a glimpse of the final version, but by the end of the process, it could look completely different. 

That, my friends, is a first draft of a manuscript. 

You might have a plan—but that initial idea might change, even if the skeleton of the story remains constant.

But how do you know when you've written a solid first draft? What should a first draft accomplish, and what should be included in a first draft to do this? These three elements.

3 Elements You Should Include in Your First Draft 

Now that we understand what a first draft should be, let’s look at what you should really aim to accomplish when writing one. To do this, we can distill your first draft goals down to three basic elements.

1. Tell the Story

The most important accomplishment for your first draft is that it tells your story. A story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Three main ideas that illustrate a plot-effective beginning, middle, and end include:

• Beginning: You know how and why the protagonist is called on some sort of adventure (or there is an inciting incident in the beginning of the book)
• Middle: There are conflicts that challenge the protagonist in the middle of the book (and these raise the story's stakes)
• End: There is a climatic moment in the end of the book that shows how the protagonist gets or fails to get their object of desire—or their wants and needs—by the end of the book

To put it simply, get you from point A to point B. 

Structure matters more than beautiful language. Even if you wrote your first draft entirely in short, simple sentences like “See Jane run,” finishing a first draft that moves a beginning, middle, and end with plot events that cause a character to make decisions—which raise the stakes—is a success. 

A simple way to do this is by creating an event list for each of your books. Start with one major event each, then distill down to smaller events. For example, round one could be as simple as:

Beginning: Hero, who thought she was always a peasant, finds out she was actually a hidden royal. Middle: Hero goes through the difficult process to prove her royalty to the rest of the royal family in order to gain power and make life better for the poor. End: Through a brilliant move, she is able to prove her identity and the queen accepts her as a true royal.

Notice this list does not include any kind of detail. There's nothing about how the hero rounds out about her identity, what the challenges she faces are, or how she finally proves herself. However, as a first step, this is enough.

Once you've made a basic plot list like this, you can go back and add to the events in each section. For example:

Beginning: Hero is a farmer. Her parents' friends, other farmers, often complain about taxes. Hero notices her parents do not seem to complain. One day, she overhears her parents talk about the fact that they are grateful they don't pay taxes. Hero is confused. Hero digs further. Hero finds out someone in the royal family is excusing her parents from taxes as reward for her parents helping raise her in secret.

Now you have a more detailed list of events.

You can delve even further on these tasks, and we will cover this process in more detail in the future, when we talk about first stage planning. But for now, think of this as the “rough sketch” that lays under your finished book. It's only a simple list, but without it, there is no way of moving forward.

There is no way around a first, rough draft. It's okay if you don't know all the “perfect” details yet.

2. Establish the Tone

Tone is something that is difficult to plan. You can make all the scene lists (a topic we will cover later) and character bios you want, but once you start writing, the story often takes on a life of its own.

Perhaps what started out as melancholy becomes irony, tragedy becomes comedy, light and funny becomes dark and moody, and a cowardly character suddenly finds the strength to become brave.

A good way to identify what the tone of your book is is to observe how your characters react to tense situations and challenges. For example, let's say our main character's love interest has found a new lover. What is your MC's reaction to this news?

If their instinct is to go home, lock themselves up, weep, and stare out at the rain, the tone of your book might be dramatic and tragic .

By contrast, if their instinct is to go get a revenge makover and end up dying their hair a funny color, which they then try to pass off with feigned confidence, then your tone might be a comedic one.

Without the physical act of writing the book down, you will never quite grasp what the tone of it will be. This is a major reason that it is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect to write a first draft that’s publish-perfect.

Much like a theme, by simply telling your story from beginning to end, you will find the tone you want to strike in future drafts.

3. Get to Know Your Characters

There’s no better way to know your character than with that first draft.

Trying to get to know your character through a pre-written bio sheet versus writing the first draft is like trying to know someone by looking at their Facebook profile instead of taking a long, adventurous trip with them. You can only get to know someone so much by looking at a list of facts.

However, when you travel alongside a friend—even one you don't know well before the trip (especially this kind of friend)—you will learn how they live, what they eat, how they celebrate their achievements, how they mourn their loss, how reliable they are, and how they react in times of danger. 

The same goes for learning more about your characters when writing your first draft.

I learned this lesson when creating Donna “Astra” Ching, the protagonist of my upcoming novel Headspace .

I went into the first draft with an image of her as a competent, independent young professional being in complete charge of her life. She had bought and set up a lovely new house, was doing well in her field of work, and excited to start her new life.

The story opened in her living room, which she had just finished cleaning and decorating. 

But as I kept writing, I realized this was not quite who Astra was. She was certainly competent and independent, but this neat, primped lifestyle wasn’t her. She enjoyed privacy and comfort, and her comfort didn’t necessarily come from a Martha Stewart-style home.

By the end of the book, Astra had become a slightly different person.

She became someone who was comfortable with her messy home, who prioritized setting up her library while the rest of her house went neglected in the chaos of moving, and who made well-meaning to-do lists in her head, most of which she still hasn’t gotten to by the end of the book. 

Looking back on it, Astra’s characterization was off by quite a bit in the first draft. But without writing the first draft, I never would’ve gotten to know her well enough to properly tell her story.

All this to say, the more time you spend with your characters, the more you'll learn about them. This means you probably don't need to burn time outlining every detail of your entire cast before writing, and even if you do, some of these details might change as you write your book.

As you write, try asking yourself these questions:

• Is the way this characters acts realistic? In my case, it seemed that while some 20-something-year-olds could set up a new house neatly as soon as they moved in, most are probably OK with leaving it a mess for a while.
• Is the way this character acts relatable? Same as the answer above—by giving herself some leeway on her organization, Astra is a more relatable young woman.
• Is this character acting this way out of instinct or out of some sort of social or perceived obligation? The neat home felt more like an unrealistic expectation, and Astra was not one who catered to expectations.
• Does it make me happy to write the character this way? I was much happier to see Astra rearranging her neat little library while the rest of house laid in disarray, as it's something I and a number of people close to me would do.
• Is this behavior consistent with how the character makes decisions for the rest of the story? Astra does not care for the expectation of others and did what she felt was right for her. This carries on through the rest of the book.

It can feel scary to dive into the story and hope your characters unfold with it, but this might be the exact conversation starter you need to really get to know them. 

3 Things Not To Worry About in Your First Draft

Believe it or not, it’s equally important to understand elements you shouldn’t focus on in your first draft. Trying to achieve these elements will only frustrate you and lead you to believe your story will never be as good as you imagined it. You'll get ahead of yourself in the writing process, and because of this you might suffer low self esteem or burnout.  

Let’s take a look at what not to do so you do finish your first draft.

Mainly, this includes letting go of three “perfect” elements in your story:

1. Language and Detail

The first draft is not where you should try to exercise your inner Shakespeare. This is not the time or place for you to write beautiful sentences, use big words, or experiment with flowery language.

Remember, the goal of the first draft is to tell your story, and excessive attention to pretty words will only distract and frustrate you, especially since a lot of it will likely be cut in the editing and rewriting process. 

If you find yourself struggling with a sentence as you write, ask yourself—does this sentence progress the story or develop a character?

If it does, write it down as simply as you can.

For example:

John lost his father's watch which was the only thing left from when his father was in the war.

This is enough to explain the importance of the watch without going into any in-depth description of what kind of watch it was, which war his father fought in, or how he lost it. These details can be explored in future, in vivid scenes and beautiful details.

If you find you are trying to fill out an intricate detail, such as which kind of watch was used by soldiers during WWII when writing a first draft, chances are it's not something you need to write.

2. Character Development

This may sound strange because I just said that the first draft is the place to get to know your character, but hear me out: you need to get to know your characters. You don’t need to force their development.

To avoid obsessing over this, write the story and let it go where it may. By doing this, you are more likely to develop your characters based on your instincts rather than tick off boxes you feel they should fill.

Don’t try to force your characters to develop a certain way or force certain personality traits or back stories. Let's go back to the example of your character's love interest having found a new lover to understand why.

Considering this example, perhaps you initially intended for them to have a lonely episode of mourning with a bottle of vodka, but as they approach the liquor store, you felt like there's a nightclub next door they'd rather go into. Follow that instinct and see where it takes you.

If the scene doesn't work out, you can always backtrack to the liquor store later.

Overall, the first draft is where your characters should be free to lead. Allow yourself to be free and explore where your characters take you.

Rather than trying to stuff your characters into a box, write the story you want to write—even if some details turn out to be wild and self-indulgent.

Don't be afraid to ask a character what they really want.

And if they give you an answer, don't be afraid to listen.

3. Fixing Plot Holes

Why shouldn't you focus on fixing plot holes in the first draft? Because plugging plot holes can be frustrating, and the effort that goes into them can really derail a train of thought when you’re on a roll.

Imagine you’re writing a big, action-packed scene, your heroes are running from their enemies toward their ship when suddenly a huge chasm appears in the ground. They’re running and running—but how do they get across?

You’re not not sure.

You pause to think about it. Now everyone in the scene stands around waiting for you to come to a decision. Do they jump? Do they find a bridge? Does one of the heroes have a secret gadget?

How did they even get that gadget?

But you’ve never mentioned the gadget, and now it’s going to sound like it’s appeared out of the blue. To avoid this, you have to go back and add the gadget somewhere else in the story before you forget it exists, and now all the heroes and villains are twiddling their thumbs in front of this chasm, waiting for you to finish the scene.

You need set ups that pay off in big ways in your story, but sometimes the best ones are discovered in draft two instead of draft one. You might know some of your set ups before the story starts, and you probably include these in your first draft plot.

But there will also probably be times that you recognize a plot hole and just need to let them go—until draft two. Pausing to fix them will take up too much of your time, and this will distract your creative process.

You don't want this.

Instead of focusing on plot holes, make a note in a bright color or bold font. “ They get over this chasm. ” Or, maybe even place a note in brackets [Like this].

You can also add it to your revision list (which we will discuss in a future post) for later. In fact, I encourage this. Make a note and then move on with the story. Finish the scene. You will probably feel better getting that problem down in a place it won't be forgotten—but also so you can forget about it now and get on with your draft.

You will thank yourself for it later.

Plot holes can be filled in future drafts. Even better, progressing your story may even help you come up with better solutions to those problems.

It will also probably save you time, since your plot (and other details) will likely change as your story changes. Wasting your time on a plot hole that might not even exist in the long run won't be worth your time fixing until later in you writing process.

You First Draft Won't Be Perfect

Your first draft will probably come out ugly. It’s imperfect, it’s messy, and chances are it’s full of spelling mistakes and grammar errors and every writing “don’t” that exists.

But that’s okay because that’s exactly what a first draft should look like. Even better, no one has to see your first draft unless you ask them to read it. There's nothing to be embarrassed about if it's not your best draft.

It won't be your best draft, but it is your first step to constructing your future polished draft.

In truth, I have never let anyone see my first drafts. If I can help it, the first draft of Headspace will never see the light of day.

But if you can accept that this is the nature of the first draft, then you will have overcome your first block. Instead of focusing on perfection, you now know that all you have to do is focus on what’s in front of you: the story, the tone, and getting to know your characters.

Once you make it over this hurdle, you will be able to use the tools I give you throughout this series with greater efficiency. And all of these steps will get easier the more you practice applying them to your first draft process.

In the next post in this series, we will take a first look at these tools and get ready to start planning that ugly first draft. 

Planning is a great next step—now that you understand what you should care about in your first draft, and what you shouldn't bother with (yet).

Which of the three elements do you struggle to accomplish in your first draft? Why do you think you struggle with this? Let us know in the comments .

Today is about some quick planning.

For fifteen minutes , write the big ideas for the beginning, middle, and end of the story idea you've been working on with this series ( how to write faster ). This will help you develop a small plan for your first draft, and give you a goal to work with until you've finished it.

Completing your first draft will also help you focus on the other two elements needed in your first draft—but that are best discovered while writing your manuscript—tone and characters.

When you're done, don't forget to share your beginning, middle, and end in the comments for feedback. And be sure to comment on someone else's post, too!

J. D. Edwin

J. D. Edwin is a daydreamer and writer of fiction both long and short, usually in soft sci-fi or urban fantasy. Sign up for her newsletter for free articles on the writer life and updates on her novel, find her on Facebook and Twitter ( @JDEdwinAuthor ), or read one of her many short stories on Short Fiction Break literary magazine .

I get hung up on the details and language. I think of the scenes in this story in vivid vignettes where everything is just so. I have no idea what the characters are saying, or how it moves the story forward, but I can spend a paragraph detailing the cigarette burning down to the butt and falling off the lip of the Tab can.

of course, my biggest challenge is writing the story. I’ve written so many “details in past years, that it hindered me from just telling an Entire story from beginning to end. Thanks JD! After reading your clear process, I’m Finally In My Way!

Writing a synopsis of the story really helped me regain a sense of momentum. I love the idea of a revision list and not getting stalled over plot holes.

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7 Methods for Writing Your First Draft

Ross raisin on how to get to the end of the beginning.

Introduction The Seed

Every story is—at the beginning— the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space. –Margaret Atwood

Every work of fiction grows from something. A thought. An image. A conversation in the supermarket. A fact. Sometimes, simply, the indefinable yearning to write something, even if you have no grasp of what it might be, or where that yearning is coming from.

From this seed, anything might grow—the realization of which can be daunting, and feel contrary to the way in which you perhaps plan and control your work, your life. But if you open yourself up to the unpredictability of what you might create, then it can also be liberating—and one of the most important skills that a writer learns is to embrace and use the potential of the unknown. You would be unlikely to start reading a book if you already knew every little thing about it, and the experiences of reading and writing are not so very far apart. They are entwined, in fact. It is important to remember that.

There are no rules. It is important to remember that, too. Every narrative is as individual as the person writing it. One of the quiet pleasures of writing fiction is that each project spawns its own storytelling rulebook—of language and style, of point of view, of character—which nobody but the author can impose.

There are, nonetheless, certain elements of craft to discover and to practice—to reject, sometimes—but, firstly, to understand.

First Steps Method

As much as we might enjoy hearing apocryphal stories of famous authors’ quirks—that Joyce wrote in bed in a white coat; that Joan Didion sleeps beside her manuscript so that it doesn’t leave her; that Dan Brown hangs upside down in anti-gravity boots—they make no difference to the reader’s enjoyment of that author’s book. The important thing, as an author, is to know what ritual, eccentric or not, works for you.

If this means that you do your best writing when you are naked in the bathtub is for you to discover. As is, crucially, the method by which you develop an idea into a finished piece of writing. Every writer has their own process. I have put down some of the main ways in which writers go about creating a piece of fiction. You will notice, however diverse they may at first appear, that there is a lot of crossover, and that most of them involve some kind of milling process.

The relative weight I have given to the first method is because it contains many of the basic principles, and, possibly, because it is the way in which I work myself. I should add that I work in the same way for both novels and short stories. But it is not for me to prescribe the most effective process, and you will inevitably consider some of these methods barmy; others may strike a chord, or you might take titbits from all of them. The only way for you to discover your own method is to experiment, and to write—and complete—as much as you can. And to remember, always, that there is no correct way to write but your own.

The Refinery Method

With a formative idea and a loose plan, embark on a linear first draft. Work from some semblance of a beginning—without stopping to doubt yourself, make improvements, or judge the writing—to an end. The only judgements you should make are instinctive creative ones: Is this character starting to feel more significant than I had envisaged? The storyline seems to have deviated from my plan . . . but what might happen if I go down this new path? Is the point of view serving the story I want to tell? How does it feel if I change it for a chapter or two?

Rough exploratory drafting is an antidote to the anxiety of the blank page. You are generating momentum, a rhythm to your thoughts and your accumulating scenes, even if the actual text you are producing is—or would be if this was going to be the finished manuscript—a hilarious piece of crap. Overwritten in most places, underwritten in others; a tense change halfway through; plot lines and characters abandoned, or appearing from nowhere. But, by the end of it (which will probably not be the right ending), you will have a very good idea of what works and what doesn’t, because you have learned these things through experimentation.

And this is the point at which to write it again.

The second draft begins on a clean page. Very possibly in a different place to where the first draft began, because it is quite likely that you wrote a scene partway through the first draft that suggested itself to you later as an appropriate opening. The process of redrafting is not one of simply copying out the best bits from the first-draft material (although it will sometimes involve doing that). It is a new piece of writing; one that you are commencing with a deep understanding, now, of your idea, style, characters, plot, and with at least some decent lines and scenes in the bank.

“One of the quiet pleasures of writing fiction is that each project spawns its own storytelling rulebook—of language and style, of point of view, of character—which nobody but the author can impose.”

How you make use of the first-draft material is for you to decide: whether you have written a mess of longhand that you now take a highlighter or a number of colored pens to; whether you refer to it closely, chapter by chapter, or barely refer to it at all; whether you complete two full drafts, or more, or redraft certain areas of it more than others.

Whatever way you go about it, the process does not end here. The redraft does not produce the finished piece of writing, so, still, you should not feel the pressure of it being a finished piece of writing. The final part of this method is the edit.

If you have not yet thoroughly worked out your method, then this may all feel rather painstaking to you, but it is a question of care. Ask yourself: “How much do I care about my writing?” And consider too, that the more defined your method, the more defined the final product is likely to be.

The Jigsaw Method

If you are stumped for the point at which to enter the narrative it may be helpful to forego, for now, an adherence to writing it in a linear way, from beginning to end. Instead, if you do have an idea for one or two scenes that feel pertinent, even though you don’t know where exactly they fit, then start with those. The more you write, the better you will understand the project at large. And you may, eventually, understand that the finished narrative will not be linear. It might, for example, be episodic.

So, by writing a big scene that eventually ends up at the core of the narrative, you will be growing your understanding of the fictional world and the characters who inhabit it—and this, in turn, is likely to spawn other ideas, other scenes, character through-lines, plot events. Once you free yourself from the constraint of putting it down in the right order, you may well find that before very long you have gathered enough fragments that you are beginning to get a perception of the whole.

The Nugget in the Dump Method

This is another variation on the first, and a further relinquishing of control. You cannot know for sure, before you have amassed any words, whether this thing you are writing is worthwhile. Which is why it is so tempting to plan it into an impressive shape, to convince yourself that it is. Your first draft is an exploration. During that exploration you might unearth a completely unexpected idea, character, sentence that causes you to think: actually, this is the thing that has legs.

So the first draft of one book might be what instigates the first draft of a different book.

Maybe the idea of discarding a whole draft sounds demoralizing—and so it might be, for a while—but is it as demoralizing as knowing that you have spent years writing something that is not as good, as impassioned, as the idea that you left behind?

The Spurt Method

Some writers sit at a desk for hours and work without pause until their designated time to punch the clock. I am one of these. Others, like Nick Hornby, write in spurts. A few sentences at a time, then a short break to get up and stretch their limbs before returning to it, refreshed. If you feel that you work best by keeping office hours, keep office hours, but don’t do so just to make your writing feel more legitimate.

Plenty of writers set themselves word targets, and you might find it helpful to have a number to aim for each day. However, don’t let yourself be crippled by it—either your own target, or another writer’s. Anthony Trollope made himself write 250 words every 15 minutes, timing himself with a stopwatch. Fair enough. You don’t have to. The reader is not bothered about how long it took you.

The Sessional Method

In order to create momentum, you might find it helpful to vary what you do, session by session. So, you might spend one session drafting a scene, and the next session rewriting that scene. Furthermore—and this is a useful thing to bear in mind, whatever your method—you might grease the wheels of your stopping-and-starting routine by drawing a close to your writing session at a point where you know what is going to come next on the page. As Hemingway put it: “As long as you can start, you are alright. The juice will come.”

You might, furthermore, heed Hemingway’s advice on rereading what you have done so far, to get into the flow of the material. There are, believe it or not, plenty of writers who will reread the whole draft up to the point they’ve got to, each time they sit down to write. Or, if you are Hemingway, stand.

The Perfectionist Method

At the opposite end of the spectrum from the process of generating momentum through drafting is the process of refining each individual page, over and over, before you move on to the next page. In this way, every existing page is in its final state as the narrative continues, and the end of the work really does mean the end of the work. It is a practice of constant revision, rather than redrafting. Anthony Burgess worked in this way, in part because he believed that over time the intention and technique of a writer is liable to change, with the result that the unity of the work will be affected.

The Incubation Method

Although I have been advocating getting pen to paper as early as possible, there are writers who let an idea remain in their heads for a long time. They will ruminate at length, letting the subconscious stay constantly engaged with the subject so that characters, plot and atmosphere form without any forced deliberation. In this way, seemingly incongruent observations and encounters from the author’s day-to-day life feed into the thought process.

All the while, it will be important to keep a notebook, to write down any scraps that occur to you—until, eventually, you have what is in effect a first draft in the imagination. It will be amorphous, but the putting together of all your notes (maybe even writing them down on record cards that you can then lay out on a table) will create a vague shape for you to use when you do sit down to write.

It has a resemblance, this method, to the act of reading: you immerse yourself inside a dreamed world, in which you are capable of imagining characters doing more than simply what is written down. The trick, I suppose, is knowing when to stop dreaming and get down to it.

__________________________________

From Read This if You Want to Be a Great Writer . Used with permission of Laurence King Publishing Ltd. Copyright © 2018 by Ross Raisin.

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An Overview of First Draft Examples: What You Need To Know

Are you curious about how to go from your first draft to your final draft during the writing process? Learn more about how to polish first draft examples below!

After all of your ideas are on paper, it can be a challenge to take your work and move it from a blank page all the way to the publication stage. Even best-selling authors and non-fiction writers have to revise their work before they finish it. They need to fix their point of view, fill in potholes, and they may even have to proofread sentence structure. This is even an opportunity to eliminate areas of unintentional plagiarism.

Whether you are on your second track or third draft, you need to take a closer look at your initial statement and make sure it matches your ideas. This is also an opportunity for you to correct typos and commas, further polishing your draft.

Whether you are a non-fiction writer or a blogger doing some brainstorming and creative writing, you need to appreciate and respect the editing process. Make sure you have your word choice down and learn more about moving from the first draft to the final draft!

The First Draft Is More Abstract

The final draft is more focused, the final draft is more about the audience than yourself, 1. on writing: a memoir of the craft, by stephen king.

• 2. Ernest Hemingway on Writing, by Ernest Hemingway and Larry W. Phillips

3. The Simple Guide to the Writing Process, by Patricia Martin

4. the writing process: a step by step approach for everyday writers, by david hatcher and lane goddard, final word on first draft examples, how do you write your first draft , what are the benefits of writing a first draft , the differences between a first draft and a final draft.

When you are writing a story , there are a lot of differences between your first draft and your final draft. In general, your first draft is going to contain everything you want to say. In contrast, your final draft will include everything you need to say. If you keep these differences in mind, you should be able to produce a beautiful, professional, finished product. 

One of the first differences between a first draft and a final draft is that the first draft will be more abstract. In contrast, the details of the final draft are going to be more significant.

In general, your final draft should not contain everything that you think is clever or interesting; however, it should include details that are relevant to the main purpose and that add meaning. Even though the first draft may contain a lot more abstractions, the final draft is going to focus on the details that are most important to the rest of the story.

It is not unusual for the final draft of your story to be significantly longer or shorter than your first draft; however, it does not need to be. It needs to be more focused on your first draft.

Even though this often means that the final draft gets shorter as you remove unnecessary information, it is also entirely possible that you have produced a skeleton first draft that you will fill in later. In this case, the final draft may get longer. Again, there is no length requirement. Instead, you simply need to make sure that your final draft is focused and to the point. 

Finally, you may notice that the first draft is written more for yourself while the final draft is written more for your audience. When you produce your first draft, you should write from the heart.

You may feel like your words are flowing from your fingers or your pain, creating a beautiful essay that is entirely about things you find interesting. Eventually, you will have to make a concession that not all this information is needed. Therefore, your final draft will likely be more about what you think the audience has to know. In this manner, your final draft is more about your audience than yourself.

Whether you are writing an essay , a research paper, or a short story, you need to keep these differences in mind. That way, you can keep your story on track and on point.

Top Works on First Draft Examples

If you are curious about the writing process, you may want to look at the information published by some of the best-selling authors of all time. Fortunately, a lot of these books are available on Amazon. Some of the top examples of books you may want to use to help you produce your first draft include:

Stephen King is one of the best-selling authors of all time. He is known for his Illuminating work, his meticulous attention to detail, and his thought-provoking works. As a result, many people have taken a close look at his writing style , trying to figure out what makes it tick. Now, people no longer have to wonder, as he has published a memoir that focuses on his writing style.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft  is a helpful book for any aspiring author. This book will provide people with an insight into his experiences, habits, and tactics that allow him to produce such notable works of literature.

In addition, writers can learn more about the challenges that Stephen King encounters during his own writing process that they may be able to apply to their own work. That way, new writers may be able to develop new ideas, overcome writer’s block, and figure out what they have to do to produce a finished product. 

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story, he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

2.  Ernest Hemingway on Writing, by Ernest Hemingway and Larry W. Phillips

If you are interested in producing a good first draft of a book, then you may want to take a closer look at this collection of memoirs from Ernest Heminway. Without a doubt, Ernest Hemingway is one of the greatest writers of all time. A prolific writer who produced a wide variety of works during his career, he serves as a testament to all other writers who want to improve the quality of their work. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that many people are looking to learn more about his writing process. 

This book represents a collection of reflections from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He shares his thoughts on what has made his writing so profound, and he gives advice to those who would like to follow in his footsteps. He talks about one of the biggest challenges that he encountered during the course of his career, and he discusses what he needed to do to overcome them. 

One interesting point is that during the course of his career, Ernest Hemingway believed that it was bad luck to talk about writing. Despite that, he realized that he had a duty to share his thoughts with other people. So he talked about writing in his novels, stories, letters, and interviews. In many ways, he wrote just as much about writing as he did stories. Now, this book provides individuals with an opportunity to learn more about work habits, discipline, and the skills required to become a good writer. 

“All you need to write is the blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck, you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket.”

If you are concerned about the quality of your paper, another book you may want to take a look at is called The Simple Guide to the Writing Process by Patrician Martin. This book is a guide to the basics of the writing process. In particular, it is particularly useful for those who are trying to overcome writer’s block. Some people may not have enough information to write, while others might be confused about the organization of their work.

The book covers many important topics for people writing a wide variety of works, ranging from essays to short stories and even social media posts. Individuals who read this book will learn about the writing process, figure out how to brainstorm enough information to write, and even learn about graphic organizers to keep their information straight.

If you are interested in becoming a better writer, you may want to take a closer look at this book. It might help you overcome some of the biggest challenges during the editing process between the first draft and your final draft.

“Education is one of the only ways that we can improve ourselves at a low cost.” 

The Writing Process: A Step by Step Approach  is another book that may help you improve the quality of your work. Even though a lot of people believe that writing is a way to record sentences we have in our heads, it is also a way for us to share our ideas. This is a book that will help you change your approach to writing. With a simple, straightforward set of steps, you can figure out how to organize your ideas, what to do first, and how to improve your word choice.

Furthermore, you can also figure out when you have said enough in your writing. As you go from your first to your final draft, you may have difficulty figuring out which words to include, which words to cut out, and what ideas you need to elaborate on. This is a book that can help you do that. You can learn the basics of writing, figure out how to proofread your work, and learn how to do so much more than simply write a five-paragraph essay. 

“Readability is hard to define. Some writing can be clearly understood in one smooth, easy reading. But other writing is hard, unpleasant work, putting the reader through loop-backs, head-scratching, and displeasure.”

Ultimately, it can be challenging to move from your first to your final draft. Your first draft is everything that you want to say. If you think you want to include it in your work, then you should write it down.

At the same time, remember that not everything you want to say has to be included in your work. Eventually, you will have to fine-tune your ideas to help your work stay on track. That is where you need to move through multiple drafts until you have your final, finished work.

If you are having a difficult time with the writing process, you may want to look at a few books that can help you improve your work. Whether you want to learn from a teacher or one of the best-selling authors of all time, there are options available that can help you improve the quality of your work. 

FAQs About First Draft Examples

There is no single way to write a first draft. You simply need to make sure you get all of your ideas down on paper. Some people prefer to write too much and then cut later. Other people prefer to write a skeleton draft and then fill it out at the end.

You probably have a lot of ideas in your head that you want to get down on paper. Even if you do not know how to organize them, you should write them down. This will be your first draft. Then, you can figure out how to reorganize and rearrange your ideas into a professional, polished product.

Bryan Collins is the owner of Become a Writer Today. He's an author from Ireland who helps writers build authority and earn a living from their creative work. He's also a former Forbes columnist and his work has appeared in publications like Lifehacker and Fast Company.

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O.J Simpon's complicated legacy; Ukraine passes new draft law

Suzanne Nuyen

Good morning. You're reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today's top stories

Orenthal James Simpson, known as O.J., died yesterday at 76 after a battle with cancer. Before his infamy in the so-called "trial of the century " of the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, Simpson was a football star and Hollywood actor.

O.J. Simpson, pictured in September 2008 in Las Vegas, died Wednesday, according to a statement from his family. Isaac Brekken/Getty Images hide caption

O.J. Simpson, pictured in September 2008 in Las Vegas, died Wednesday, according to a statement from his family.

• NPR's Mandalit del Barco covered his murder trial in Los Angeles in the '90s.  "Audiences loved him," she tells  Up First . "And that's why it was  so shocking what came next ." Del Barco says that the reaction to the verdict back then was somewhat divided along racial lines. Some White Angelenos she spoke to were outraged. But some Black Angelenos felt conflicted, saying that whether or not Simpson committed the murder, for once, justice was on the side of a Black man. 

After months of deliberation, Ukraine's parliament yesterday passed a law to mobilize hundreds of thousands of new soldiers. Under the new law, military-age men are required to carry draft registration documents with them at all times, making it easier for the government to find conscripts. In one controversial move, the law also allows convicts — previously banned from the military — to serve in return for a suspended sentence. Current Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted, as Russian troops are now on the offensive, two years into its full-scale invasion.

• NPR's Joanna Kakissis speaks with soldiers' families, who tell her they're most upset about "long deployments with no end."  Some Ukrainian soldiers have been on the front line since the invasion began, with some fighting while injured. Kakissis says the new law  doesn't address long deployments , but officials are considering a separate law on the issue. 

We, The Voters

This essay was written by Eric Marrapodi, vice president of news programming and Eva Rodriguez, vice president and executive editor. We, The Voters — The Left. The Right. The Disillusioned is a special series from NPR exploring the issues most important to you when choosing your next leader. Join NPR next week as we dive into how gun violence affects different communities.

What do you want from your government?

It's a question that speaks to the core of our country. In a presidential election year, it comes up a lot.

For the next three months we'll dig into the matters you've signaled are most important to you when choosing a leader with outsized power to shape the issues and the results. Consistently top of mind for NPR listeners and readers are the often complicated questions related to gun violence, the economy, immigration, reproductive rights, healthcare, and U.S. foreign policy.

NPR's special sauce is our ability to deliver local, national and international perspectives in partnership with member stations in cities and towns, large and small and across the political spectrum. We work hard to fairly present differing viewpoints that provide a complete picture.

Our hope? That our rigorous and respectful reporting spurs meaningful conversations within our broadcast programs, on our site and podcasts and at dinner tables across the land that help you decide what's right for you, your family and your community.

Starting Monday, NPR is going to dive deep on gun violence and its impact on communities. We hope you will check out the reporting and join the conversation.

Weekend picks

Kirsten Dunst as Lee in Civil War. A24 hide caption

Kirsten Dunst as Lee in Civil War.

Check out what NPR is watching, reading and listening to this weekend:

Movies: In Civil War , Kirsten Dunst plays a jaded war photographer who embarks on a harrowing journey to document a military conflict between the federal government and an alliance of secessionist states. On Morning Edition , director Alex Garland says he wanted to make reporters the heroes. "I think they're very necessary, and I admire them."

TV: Netflix's new adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley is shot in black and white. NPR's Linda Holmes says the series is so much better for it.

Books: Leigh Bardugo's The Familiar is a coming-of-age tale full of secrets and tension, "wrapped in historical fiction and delivered with heavy doses of magic and wit," critic Gabino Iglesias says.

Music: "Weird Al" Yankovic joins All Things Considered to curate a playlist of songs to make you laugh in celebration of National Humor Month.

Quiz: Would you qualify to serve on the jury for former President Donald Trump's hush money trial? Find out — and test your news knowledge — here .

3 things to know before you go

The 'HELP' sign made from palm fronds is shown on the Pikelot atoll. U.S. Coast Guard/U.S. Coast Guard hide caption

The 'HELP' sign made from palm fronds is shown on the Pikelot atoll.

• The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have rescued three men  who were trapped on a small Pacific Island for more than a week. The men used palm tree leaves to  spell "help " in the sand.
• It's official: skinny jeans are out.  Keeping up with clothing trends can feel dizzying, but  there is some logic  to how it works.
• Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet.  Housing costs have forced them to  make hours-long commutes  to work or live with roommates.

This newsletter was edited by  Majd Al-Waheidi .

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If the 2024 Election Is So Important, Why Does It Feel So Boring?

Josh Barro and Derek Thompson talk about the roots of voter ambivalence, what Trump’s second administration could look like, and the biggest differences between a Biden and Trump White House

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”This presidential election is not very interesting, but it is important,” the political commentator Josh Barro wrote in his newsletter, Very Serious . Americans certainly seem to agree with the first part. Engagement with political news has been in the dumps, and many Americans seem to be tuning out the Biden-Trump II rematch. But the conundrum of this election is that it is both numbingly overfamiliar for many voters and also profoundly important for America and the world. The differences between a Biden and a Trump presidency for America’s domestic and foreign policy are huge. Too often, these differences are ignored in horse-race coverage—and, sometimes, they even go underemphasized by the campaigns and their own advocates. If you turn on a news segment or read a long article, you’ll probably hear about the dangers that Trump poses to democracy, or the rule of law, or the administrative state. All worthy concerns. But what is at stake for our most basic bread-and-butter issues: abortion, inflation, economic growth, government spending, entitlements, immigration, and foreign policy? Josh and Derek talk about the roots of voter ambivalence, what Trump’s second administration could look like, and the biggest differences between a Biden and Trump White House.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected] .

In the following excerpt, Derek and Josh Barro discuss why so many voters are apathetic about this year’s presidential election.

Derek Thompson: So in January, the author Kat Rosenfield tweeted that “Voting in the upcoming 2024 election would be like dining at a restaurant whose menu offered two meals. One was a large bowl of lukewarm, watery gruel, and the other was a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto someone dropped under the couch in 2014 that had been slightly nibbled on by mice.” That’s completely disgusting, but it’s not clear to me that it’s entirely wrong as far as it represents the average American’s attitude toward this election. You and I are going to talk about policy for most of this show, but I want to start with a more general non-policy observation that a feeling of desperate, heavy voter exhaustion seems to hang over everything in 2024. Why? How did it come to this?

Josh Barro: Yeah, it’s funny you start with that Kat Rosenfield tweet because people got real mad at her for that, and I think a lot of them didn’t really understand or think through the tweet very well. If you went to that literal restaurant and those were the two options on the menu, the obvious play is to order the gruel.

The options are both very unappealing, but they are not equivalent, and it is not even a difficult choice. It’s just an unpleasant choice. And so I think that is the point that she was making about this election. I fully expect that Kat Rosenfield is going to vote for Joe Biden, but it’s not very fun for her and it’s not fun to think about. It’s not an interesting, enjoyable election to engage with, and that I think is a theme that really runs through for a lot of voters—that this election is sort of deadening in a way that I can’t remember any election feeling like in my lifetime. It’s important, but it’s really not fun to follow or engage with.

Thompson: I think you put your finger right on it. My other general observation before we get into policy specifics was going to be that I think a paradoxical tension at play in this election is that 2024 does not seem like it’s about anything in the policy space, but at the same time, it still has very important policy implications. I might be misremembering, but most of the elections in my time, I remember being about a clear policy theme. To just quickly run through the last 20 years, the 2004 election, Kerry-Bush, was about the war on terror. The 2008 Democratic primary was absolutely about health-care policy, and the election ended up being about the impending recession and health care. 2012, Obama’s reelection campaign against Mitt Romney, was a referendum on Obamacare. It was a debate about economic growth. It was a debate about economic redistribution more broadly.

That’s why Romney’s makers versus takers comment played so directly into that theme. 2016 was of course about Trump’s character and Hillary’s emails, but it was also about trade and the economy and immigration. 2020 was the COVID election, in addition to being a referendum on the Trump years. And I think one of the stranger things about 2024 and this election is that it is nominally about the economy and inflation, but I don’t think any normal voter has any idea what Trump’s economic plan to reduce, say, grocery prices is. The policy focus of this election is incredibly muddy. So muddy, in fact, that your sentence about the policy stakes, excuse me, your essay about the policy stakes that we’re going to be drawing from and talking about for the next 30 minutes begins with the sentence “This presidential election is not very interesting, but it is important.” Why? Why do you think that the policy arena feels so abandoned in this moment?

Barro: I think, first of all, one of the biggest reasons this election is not very interesting is that it’s a rematch. It’s the first rematch we’ve had since 1956, and it’s between two candidates about whom people have spent years forming opinions. And it’s like, you can talk about Donald Trump, but people have spent so much time thinking about him for the last nine years, in some ways, there’s not very much that’s new to say. We’ll talk in this show about the way that some of the things he’s actually said he’s going to do on policy will influence inflation and that sort of thing. But I think for most voters, it’s like they don’t need more information about these candidates. They already know them.

And in some ways we’re answering questions that we already answered four years ago. So I think that’s the biggest reason that it just doesn’t feel very engaging. And then the other thing is I think people all around the world are dissatisfied with economic results over the last few years. You look around at other rich countries, and the incumbent leaders in those places aren’t down one point or tied or down two points. They’re down 15, 20 points.

Justin Trudeau and Rishi Sunak are going to get absolutely creamed when they come up for reelection. And there are differences in the U.S. Our economy is doing better than the economy in Canada and in the U.K., so that’s, I think, one of the reasons that Biden is running better. He’s also running better because he’s running against a deeply flawed candidate about whom people already have a lot of negative opinions. And you can see in the polling, there’s some conflicting data on the extent to which people have rosier views looking back on Donald Trump in terms of his performance. I think certainly people look favorably back on the economy during much of the Trump administration, but his favorable, unfavorable numbers haven’t really moved. It’s that Biden’s are worse than they were four years ago, but people are facing a choice between two candidates about whom they’ve already thought a lot, and neither of them is a very exciting choice for a lot of the voters, especially for the swing voters who are going to decide this election.

This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.

Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Josh Barro Producer: Devon Baroldi

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Michael Douglas bets a benjamin on 'Franklin' TV series: How actor turned Founding Father

LOS ANGELES – Even Michael Douglas had doubts about portraying Benjamin Franklin in the Oscar-winning actor's first period drama.

Douglas, 79, who famously proclaimed "Greed is Good" in his iconic 1987 "Wall Street" role, just had to glance at Franklin's ubiquitous portrait on the $100 bill to see there wasn't much resemblance to the Founding Father.

"There was a lot of hesitancy from top to bottom. I'd take a look at a $100 bill and I was like, 'Hmm, I don't know,'" Douglas says of the role.

So he leaned into Michael Douglas – from the hair to the laugh and the signature gravelly voice – to play the 18th-century giant, who lived from 1706-1790. "As well as people have known me over so many years, that persona was needed to lead this story through," says Douglas.

Here's how Douglas pulled off "Franklin" (streaming Fridays on AppleTV+), based on Stacy Schiff’s 2005 historical novel “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, And The Birth of America."

Michael Douglas on playing Ben Franklin ‘I wanted to see how I looked in tights’

Why is Benjamin Franklin in France during 'Franklin'?

The 18th-century intellectual giant, most recently the subject of a 2022 Ken Burns documentary , is famous for helping Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence, his lightning storm experiments on electricity and as the publisher whose wise sayings were chronicled in his annual Poor Richard's Almanack.

Yet Douglas was surprised to learn the critical role Franklin, who was 70 in 1776, played in secretly courting crucial French assistance for the floundering American Revolution against the two countries' mutual rival, England.

"I thought back to my high school history classes, and this crucial chapter of Franklin going to France wasn't even spoken of," says Douglas, who believes the series highlights the still-fragile state of American democracy. "We were in trouble in America and Franklin was the last hope. He improvised and because he was so smart, pulled it off."

Franklin, with his teenage grandson Temple (Noah Jupe), navigates British spies and the French court in the series shot throughout France, including at the famed Palace of Versailles.

Douglas brought the real long hair, bad French

Douglas has shown his transformational powers with his Emmy-winning performance as Liberace in 2013's HBO project "Behind the Candelabra."

But the actor decided to forgo the arduous daily makeup and prosthetics to become Franklin, which would have added physical changes such as the bald forehead, as well as heavier neck and body seen in portraits.

"It would have been 2 1/2 hours of makeup and then 40 minutes to take it off. That's a big part of your shooting day sitting in the chair," says Douglas. "When you're talking 160 shooting days, it made me nervous."

Douglas earned Franklin's likeness naturally by growing out his hair. The wilder look led to tabloid headlines but went down just fine with his wife of 23 years, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.

"Catherine loves me any way she can get me," says Douglas. "And I had long hair in the '60s when I was a hippie. So it saved me from wearing a wig."

He donned the period outfit, embracing the tights , the custom-made shoes, the famed Franklin spectacles, and the marten fur hat that was the talk of France at the time. Voila! Ben Franklin by way of Michael Douglas.

"Within minutes of the series you're all in with him," insists director Tim Van Patten.

Same deal with Franklin's accent, which does not deviate much from the famous actor's distinctive voice. Even Douglas' poor French worked since written history shows Franklin also struggled with the language.

"I speak a little bit of French and thought I was pretty good until I saw the series," says Douglas. "I realized I was as bad as every American tourist in France."

Douglas insisted on the Franklin proud farting scenes

There are moments of joyous Founding Father flatulence in "Franklin."

"I have to take responsibility for that. I just thought he should fart a couple of times," says Douglas. "I mean he's in his 70s, he's not well, and passing wind can be funny."

It's also historically accurate and relevant since Franklin trumpeted the joys of tooting in France. In the 1781 satirical essay "Fart Proudly," Franklin proclaimed the joys of "discharging freely the wind from (the) Bowels" seven times a day.

"I read the fart essay and thought it was fabulous," says Douglas, who pushed to have it included. "At first they were like, 'Nah!' But I said, read this, it's one of the joys of life."

Franklin invented the glass armonica, Douglas never mastered it

Douglas was also impressed to learn that Franklin invented an instrument that makes music through water-filled glass bottles, the glass armonica.

"He had all the tricks, bells and whistles to make himself a universal man," says Douglas. The actor plays the instrument in "Franklin," but never mastered it. "I was able to get sounds out of it, but let's just say that scene was recorded," says Douglas.

Douglas eventually got used to seeing himself as Franklin, especially during a scene where the French celebrity is feted at a gallery filled with paintings and statutes of his likeness. "I laughed my ass off when I walked into that room filled with portraits," says Douglas. "I had to keep at least one of them. So I took one of the more over-the-top paintings."

He confesses the framed Douglas-Franklin watercolor is not yet in the New York home he shares with Zeta-Jones.

"It's in storage," says Douglas. "We haven't quite found the proper place to hang it up."

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4.6: More About the Basic Elements of a First Draft

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• Barbara Hall & Elizabeth Wallace
• Georgia State University - Perimeter College via GALILEO Open Learning Materials

If you have been using the information in this chapter step by step to help you develop an assignment, you may already have a topic 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.

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.

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.

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.

As you read critically throughout the writing process, keep topic sentences in mind. Developing topic sentences and thinking about their placement in a paragraph will prepare you to write the rest of the paragraph.

The Role of Paragraphs

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.

Students often ask the question:“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 your 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.

Starting Your First Draft

Now we are finally ready to look over Tuyet’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 Tuyet in the proper mind-set to start.

The following is Tuyet’s thesis statement:

Everyone wants the newest and the best digital technology, but the choices are many, and the specifications are often confusing

Here are the notes that Tuyet wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience:

Tuyet 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 the chapter on "Revising and Editing" when she revises it.

With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Tuyet then looked at her outline. She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline of one of her body paragraphs. The roman numeral II identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and Arabic numerals label subpoints.

Tuyet 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.

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

Continuing the First Draft

Tuyet 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. Then she began to write the conclusion of her paper.

Should Jets take Brock Bowers in first round of NFL Draft, or would it be a huge mistake?

• Updated: Apr. 12, 2024, 9:40 a.m. |
• Published: Apr. 12, 2024, 9:15 a.m.

Georgia tight end Brock Bowers is an intriguing option for the Jets at No. 10. But would he be the right option? AP

• Andy Vasquez | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The NFL Draft is less than two weeks away, and Jets general manager Joe Douglas is facing a difficult challenge with the No. 10 overall pick .

He needs to find a player who can contribute right away, and one who can give them some cover in case one of the injury-prone players at a key position misses time this season.

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Ukraine desperately needs to replenish its depleted forces in the face of relentless Russian attacks.

So it has lowered the draft age from 27 to 25.

That means that more young people will have to leave their jobs to join the army.

And face an almost certain future of violence and tragedy.

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‘Waiting for My Time to Come’: Ukraine’s New Draft Law Unsettles the Young

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Photographs by David Guttenfelder

By Yurii Shyvala and Thomas Gibbons-Neff

David Guttenfelder and Yurii Shyvala traveled across Ukraine to talk to young people about the country’s conscription law.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine probably changed the fates of thousands of Ukrainian men when he signed a law lowering the draft age to 25 from 27 this month , more than two years after Russia began its full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold back the far larger Russian Army, and desperately need their ranks replenished. Now many of the young men who remain in Ukraine — thousands of others have illegally fled the country — worry about their future.

Reporters from The New York Times spoke to Ukrainian men who could be affected by the change.

‘I am worried, even a little scared’

Yegor Khomchenko, the owner of a communal bakery in eastern Ukraine who turns 25 next month, said he had many friends who had gone to war.

But he said that his wife, Amelia, had told him that she would “do everything possible to prevent me from being taken away” if he were to be drafted.

“I am worried, even a little scared,” Mr. Khomchenko said. “But everything will be as God intended.”

Mr. Khomchenko lives in Druzhkivka, an industrial town in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Russia has shelled the town with missiles and artillery, but life goes on, even though on most nights you can still hear the rumble of fighting on the front line nearby. At the beginning of the war, his wife, then pregnant, traveled to the central Ukraine city of Dnipro. She returned home after giving birth to their son.

“She feels quite calm here because our family is together. We can’t imagine living separately, and don’t know how people separated by war for months and years can cope with this ordeal,” he said. “Of course, when there is shelling in Druzhkivka, Amelia is scared, but we are strong together,” he added.

‘I was terrified at the thought of going to war’

Nestor Babskyi, 23, a physical therapist at a rehabilitation center in western Ukraine, sees several Ukrainian soldiers a day who have been wounded and maimed by the war. He said he felt guilt about not having served himself and a sense of dread for what lay ahead.

“At first,” Mr. Babskyi said, “I was terrified at the thought of going to war, but now I am calm about it.”

The wounded soldiers “have played their role and returned to live their lives, so I’m waiting for my time to come.” He added: “I realize that I will definitely be more useful there than here. This thought calms me down.”

‘Young people are the future'

Oleksandr Manchenko, 26, a journalist from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, who has covered the war, noted the tough calculation that President Zelensky had probably faced in lowering the draft age.

“Young people are the future, no matter how trite it may sound,” Mr. Manchenko said.

“Perhaps he thought that Ukraine could do without mobilizing young people, but apparently the military situation does not allow us to have such a luxury,” he said.

Mr. Manchenko said he respected the bravery of those who enlisted in the early days of the war. “It is thanks to them that we survived,” he said, adding that he doubted his own courage and did not want to fight.

“Furthermore, I want to continue doing what I am doing because I think my work is also important,” he said. “But I’m not going to run away from mobilization and hide. So we’ll see how my fate unfolds.”

‘I need to be as professional as possible’

Maksym Sukhyi, 27, a dental technician in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, had already reached the minimum conscription age when the new law was signed on April 3. He said he had been training to go to war since August 2022 but had yet to enlist.

He has been looking for a unit to join while learning about weapons and tactics at a camp on the weekends and going to the gym.

Training in Ukrainian military units is often uneven at best, and those men who are drafted — rather than the ones who join voluntarily — are often assigned to the infantry. Those ground troops usually pull the hardest duty: sitting in trenches under heavy shelling and attacking enemy lines if need be.

Mr. Sukhyi said he was bracing for such possibilities.

“I need to be as professional as possible. If I go to war, I also want to be a professional there,” he said. “Therefore, I prepare for possible mobilization as much as time and financial resources allow. If I end up at war, I don’t want to be someone who knows nothing.”

‘My parents are more worried’

Vasyl Vanzhurak, 24, is a sawmill worker in western Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains. He said that he had wanted to enlist but his father went off to fight, leaving him to take care of his mother and other relatives in the war’s early months.

“Am I worried? Yes and no,” Mr. Vanzhurak said. “My parents are more worried about me going to the army than I am.”

He said he realized that with such a brutal war going on, “they still need people there.”

‘This war, unfortunately, will last a long time’

Denys Yemets, an electrician at a steel plant in southern Ukraine, turned 25 last month. He said he was not too worried about the change in the draft age since he believed he was needed more at the steel plant than in the army. But, if called up, he would go fight, he said.

“I’ve already gotten used to the idea that this war, unfortunately, will last a long time,” he said. “At first, we all hoped that it would be over quickly, but later it turned out that reality is much harsher.”

Mr. Demets said that his uncle and stepfather, who had already fought in the war, had discouraged him from fighting. “They really did not want me to follow in their footsteps and serve in the army,” he said.

“I am the only male descendant left in the family, and they are very worried that I won’t be OK,” he said. “They would definitely want me to stay at the plant and continue to support my mother, aunt and grandmother.”

Generations of Ukrainians were upended when Russia invaded. As the war continues with no end in sight, Ukraine’s youngest are in increasing peril, at risk of being dragged toward the carnage of ground combat as they defend their homeland.

On the front lines, their fate will be decided by, as the English World War I poet Wilfred Owen once wrote, “chance’s strange arithmetic.”

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

The top American military commander in Europe warned that Ukraine could lose the war with Russia  if the United States did not send more ammunition to Ukrainian forces, and fast.

Ukrainian lawmakers passed a mobilization law aimed at replenishing the nation’s exhausted and depleted fighting forces .

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, met in Beijing . The visit came days after the United States threatened new sanctions against Chinese companies if they aided Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Hollowing Out a Generation:  Ukraine desperately needs new recruits, but it is running up against a critical demographic constraint long in the making: It has very few young men .

Conditional Support: Ukraine wants a formal invitation to join NATO, but the alliance has no appetite for taking on a new member  that would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945.

‘Shell Hunger’: A desperate shortage of munitions in Ukraine  is warping tactics and the types of weapons employed, and what few munitions remain are often mismatched with battlefield needs.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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• Knowledge Base
• How to write an essay introduction | 4 steps & examples

How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on February 4, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A good introduction paragraph is an essential part of any academic essay . It sets up your argument and tells the reader what to expect.

The main goals of an introduction are to:

• Catch your reader’s attention.
• Give background on your topic.
• Present your thesis statement —the central point of your essay.

This introduction example is taken from our interactive essay example on the history of Braille.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

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Table of contents

Step 1: hook your reader, step 2: give background information, step 3: present your thesis statement, step 4: map your essay’s structure, step 5: check and revise, more examples of essay introductions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.

Your first sentence sets the tone for the whole essay, so spend some time on writing an effective hook.

Avoid long, dense sentences—start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

The hook should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of the topic you’re writing about and why it’s interesting. Avoid overly broad claims or plain statements of fact.

Examples: Writing a good hook

Take a look at these examples of weak hooks and learn how to improve them.

• Braille was an extremely important invention.
• The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

The first sentence is a dry fact; the second sentence is more interesting, making a bold claim about exactly  why the topic is important.

• The internet is defined as “a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities.”
• The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education.

Avoid using a dictionary definition as your hook, especially if it’s an obvious term that everyone knows. The improved example here is still broad, but it gives us a much clearer sense of what the essay will be about.

• Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein is a famous book from the nineteenth century.
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement.

Instead of just stating a fact that the reader already knows, the improved hook here tells us about the mainstream interpretation of the book, implying that this essay will offer a different interpretation.

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Next, give your reader the context they need to understand your topic and argument. Depending on the subject of your essay, this might include:

• Historical, geographical, or social context
• An outline of the debate you’re addressing
• A summary of relevant theories or research about the topic
• Definitions of key terms

The information here should be broad but clearly focused and relevant to your argument. Don’t give too much detail—you can mention points that you will return to later, but save your evidence and interpretation for the main body of the essay.

How much space you need for background depends on your topic and the scope of your essay. In our Braille example, we take a few sentences to introduce the topic and sketch the social context that the essay will address:

Now it’s time to narrow your focus and show exactly what you want to say about the topic. This is your thesis statement —a sentence or two that sums up your overall argument.

This is the most important part of your introduction. A  good thesis isn’t just a statement of fact, but a claim that requires evidence and explanation.

The goal is to clearly convey your own position in a debate or your central point about a topic.

Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.

As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.

For this reason, it’s often a good idea to wait until later in the writing process before you write the introduction paragraph—it can even be the very last thing you write.

When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion , you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.

It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.

To polish your writing, you can use something like a paraphrasing tool .

You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.

Checklist: Essay introduction

My first sentence is engaging and relevant.

I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.

I have defined any important terms.

My thesis statement clearly presents my main point or argument.

Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.

You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.

• Argumentative
• Literary analysis

This introduction to an argumentative essay sets up the debate about the internet and education, and then clearly states the position the essay will argue for.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

This introduction to a short expository essay leads into the topic (the invention of the printing press) and states the main point the essay will explain (the effect of this invention on European society).

In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.

This introduction to a literary analysis essay , about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.

To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

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