A draft is a great way to organize thoughts and research if you're preparing a speech, essay, novel, or even a study guide. Read on to get started writing your draft!
Sample Draft Slides
Steps
Part 1 of 2: Organizing the Draft
Step 1. Choose a topic
A draft allows you to organize your thoughts before you start writing. What is the topic of your paper or project that you need to develop? You need to pick a general topic at this point. Writing the draft could help you skim the choice until you identify a specific theme.
- For example, the theme of a history report could be about the life of the French during the German occupation in World War II. As you work out your draft, you may be narrowing it down to resistance fighters - the partisans.
- When drafting a creative project, such as a novel, you won't have to develop a theory or deal with a subject area. Rather, the draft will help you structure the work.
Step 2. Decide on the main goal
A paper can try to convince the reader of the validity of the arguments proposed by the author, inform him about a theme or report a personal experience. Choose one of these objectives, along with the arguments, theme or experience the paper is about. If you need to write a compelling and analytical report, develop a thesis to structure your work. Below you will find three types of approaches:
- Compare and contrast two books, two events or two people. This work requires powerful critical analysis skills.
- It presents the cause and effect of a historical event. Describe how it happened, considering both mainstreaming of facts and more convincing alternative arguments. To do this, you will need to do a lot of research.
- Describe how an experience changed you by putting your communication skills to good use.
Step 3. Get the information material to use
You will have to insert it mostly in the final part of the paper, not in the draft. However, by reviewing this documentation, you will have additional help organizing the essay. Note which subtopics contain a large number of citations, statistics or concepts - they will be the main parts of the draft. If there are others you know very little about, list them in a separate section devoted to minor subtopics.
- Skip this step if you are structuring a creative project. The searches will be useful for adding credible details, but will not appear in the draft.
- Write down the number of pages where you find the data you need.
Step 4. Choose that type of draft to develop
You are almost ready to start writing. Just choose one of these two structures:
- A topic-structured draft uses short sentences each containing a few words. If in doubt, use this option.
- A draft structured by sentences uses full-fledged propositions. Use this solution if your paper is based on a lot of details that would take up many pages if they were listed in points.
Part 2 of 2: Writing the Draft
Step 1. Sort the main subtopics
If you have to write a story or present a historical topic, it makes sense to organize the information in chronological order. If not, choose the sub-topic that has the most information material and start developing it. Then put the main subtopics in order so that each naturally flows into the next. Distinguish each subtopic with a Roman numeral. Here is an example of a draft for a short paper:
- Theme: History of the automobile
- I. Beginnings: before the 20th century
- II. Vintage and classic cars: from 1900 to World War II
- III. Modern cars: after the Second World War
Step 2. Think of at least two points for each category
These are sub-points that you will have to select both on the basis of the objective of your paper and on the basis of the information you have collected. They will form the second level of the structure, which traditionally falls within the main body of the list and is distinguished by the letters of the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, etc.).
- I. Beginnings: before the 20th century
- A. Steam Energy
- B. Combustion engine
- II. Vintage and classic cars: from 1900 to World War II
- A. The T model
- B. Standardization of technology
- (continues with each section)
Step 3. Expand the points with sub-points if necessary
If one of the sub-points introduced by the letters represents too large a topic, or you need to enter other information to explain it more clearly, add another level below. Create a third level, reentrant and introduced by cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).
- I. Beginnings: before the 20th century
- A. Steam Energy
- 1. Invention of the combustion engine
- 2. Developments of the 19th century
- B. Combustion engine
- 1. First petrol cars
- 2. Cars as luxury goods
- (etc.)
Step 4. Enter other levels as needed
If you need to add more sub-levels, use the lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, etc.), then the lowercase letters (a, b, c, d, etc.) and finally return to the numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). In most cases, three or four levels are enough. Try combining the points before adding a fifth.
Step 5. Reflect on the conclusion
You don't have to write it yet, but review the draft and think if it matches your goal. If you don't have enough evidence to support your conclusions, add more subtopics. If any of the subtopics have no bearing on the concluding part, delete it from the draft.
Advice
- Be concise and direct when drafting. It doesn't have to be written with perfect language property - you just need it to get right to the point.
- Don't be afraid to delete irrelevant information as you deepen your research and narrow the scope you want to focus your paper on.
- Use the draft as a storage tool. Choose short words to represent a concept.
- You can use specialized software or a text editor to automatically structure a draft. For example, Microsoft Word allows you to distribute text or structure it your way.
- Indent each level of the draft 1.3-2.5 cm from the previous one.
- If you find any evidence that refutes your reasoning, don't ignore it. Include it in your draft and use sub-steps to summarize your counter-argument.
Warnings
- The draft should not be the essay presented in a different form. Report only the main concepts, write down every single detail.
- You should avoid putting only a dot or sub-dot under any level. If there is an A, continue with a B or adapt the concept contained in A into the next level.
