Prepare a Draft

Drafting involves expressing your thoughts in written form. That process begins with defining your main point and organizing the relationships among the information, ideas, and arguments you’ve located in sources and formed on your own. In general, writers use all the initial work they’ve done — collecting sources, reading critically, and developing ideas — as the basis for a first rough draft. Each chapter in Part Two guides you through the process of preparing a draft for a given writing project, and Part Four offers strategies for specific elements of drafting — such as forming a thesis, crafting paragraphs, integrating sources, writing introductions and conclusions, outlining, and writing with style.

Preparing your draft also involves planning its design. By understanding and applying the principles of document design — the use of visual elements such as fonts, color, page layout, and illustrations — you can make your writing project more effective and easier to understand. You can also ensure that any document you create is consistent with the conventions of a particular genre. Chapters 16, 17, and 18 offer strategies for using design effectively in several important genres.