Writing Focus – Drafting

Elements of a First Draft

When you create an outline for a paper, your focus is on the essence of your arguments. You need to consider the order that you want to present your ideas and the relationships among those ideas. However, when you compose your first draft, you will pay closer attention to some of the finer details of your paper, such as transitions and warrants. If your outline is to breadlike portion of a cake, then the rough draft is your first chance to decorate your cake with icing so that it is as appealing as can be to your audience.

Before you begin, take a moment to explore some details to keep in as you write your first draft. During the drafting process, you will probably refer frequently to your rough outline to make sure that you stay on track in developing your planned paper, but you may also add notes to your rough outline should an idea come to you while you explore transitions, warrants, clinchers, and more.

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Transitions

To ensure coherence and flow in your paper, you should not only include transitions between paragraphs but also transitions between sentences. Transitional words and phrases help to make your ideas organized and clear to the reader. Take a moment to look at common transitional words and phrases that can link sentences and paragraphs. Each of the notes in this interactivity lists one of the ways in which information or ideas can be related. Click the player button to begin.

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Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Directly Quoting

As you compose your first draft, recall that there are generally three ways you can present the supporting evidence from your research: You can summarize, paraphrase, or directly quote information. In this interactivity, click each of the tabs to explore summaries, paraphrases, and direct quotations in greater detail. Click the player button to begin.

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Avoiding Plagiarism

Have you ever heard of someone being sued for copyright infringement? Have you ever heard of anyone getting permission to use a song, graphic, work of art, or video, even for only a portion of the work? These situations deal with plagiarism, an important topic to understand for anyone who is interested in publishing an original work. Even for students in an academic setting, plagiarism can have serious consequences. In this interactivity, you will explore what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid plagiarizing information. Click the player button to begin.

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Writing Your First Draft

The first draft of a written work is called the rough draft. Do not let the name fool you. The rough draft of a paper is written after most of the hard work has been completed: You have sufficiently narrowed down a topic, conducted adequate research, and carefully chosen the direction you want to take in supporting your point of view. The rough draft is the part of the writing process that allows you to freely write your ideas about your topic. View this presentation for a brief overview of helpful tips to keep in mind while composing your first draft. Click the player button to begin.

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Drafting Review

Now that you have explored how to compose your first draft as well as how to avoid plagiarism, it is time to review your knowledge and practice what you have learned. In this non-graded activity, read the statements and decide whether they are true or false. Click the player button to get started.