Drafting
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For more on outlining, see Organizing Your Ideas in Ch. 20.
An outline is only a skeleton until you flesh it out with details. Use yours as a working plan, but change the subdivisions or sequence if you discover a better way as you draft. Even if everything isn’t in perfect order, get something down on paper. Start at the beginning or wherever you feel most comfortable.
Launching and Citing Your Sources as You Draft
For more on launching source material, see Learning by Writing in Ch. 12 and Launching and Citing Source Material in Ch. 34.
Citing sources as you draft saves time when you put your paper into final form. And it prevents unintentional plagiarism. Right after every idea, fact, quotation, paraphrase, or summary captured from your reading or field research, refer your readers to the exact source of your material. In MLA style, name the author and give the page of the source. (In APA style, add the date.) If you quote a field source, name the speaker, if possible.
When you add a quotation into your draft, copy and paste the passage from your note file, setting it off with quotation marks. Then include the words to launch or introduce the source to show why you’ve quoted it or what authority it lends to your paper.
If no transition occurs to you as you place a quotation or borrowed idea in your draft, don’t sit around waiting for one. A series of slapped-in summaries and quotations makes rough reading, but you can add connective tissue later. Highlight these spots so it’s easy to return to them.
Beginning and Ending
Perhaps you will think of a good beginning and conclusion only after you have written the body of your paper. The head and tail of your paper might simply make clear your answer to your initial question. But that is not the only way to begin and end a research paper.
Build to Your Finish. You might start out slowly with a clear account of an event to draw your readers into the paper. You could then build up to a strong finish, saving your strongest argument for the end—after you have presented the evidence to support your thesis. Suppose your paper argues that American children are harmed by the national obsession with sports:
For more strategies for opening and concluding, see Writing an Opening and Writing a Conclusion in Ch. 21.
Begin with a real event so you and your reader are on the same footing.
Explore that event’s implications to prepare your reader for your view.
State your thesis: “The national obsession with sports must end.”
Present each assertion, and support it with evidence captured from well-chosen sources, moving to your strongest argument.
End with a rousing call to action to stop sports mania.
For more on transitions, see Adding Cues and Connections in Ch. 21.
Sum Up the Findings of Others. Another way to begin a research paper is to summarize the work of other scholars. One research biologist, Edgar F. Warner, has reduced this time-tested opening to a formula.
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First, in one or two paragraphs, you review everything that has been said about your topic, naming the most prominent earlier commentators. Next you declare why all of them are wrong. Then you set forth your own claim, and you spend the rest of your paper supporting it.
That pattern may seem cut-and-dried, but it is useful because it places your research and ideas into a historical and conceptual framework. If you browse in specialized journals, you may be surprised to see how many articles begin this way. Of course, one or two other writers may be enough to argue with. For example, a student writing on the American poet Charles Olson starts her research paper by disputing two views of him.
To Cid Corman, Charles Olson of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is “the one dynamic and original epic poet twentieth-century America has produced” (116). To Allen Tate, Olson is “a loquacious charlatan” (McFinnery 92). The truth lies between these two extremes, nearer to Corman’s view.
Whether or not you fully stated your view at the beginning, you will certainly need to make it clear in your closing paragraph. A suggestion: before writing the last lines of your paper, read over what you have written. Then, without referring to your paper, try to put your view into writing.
Learning by Doing Focusing with a Reverse Outline
Learning by Doing
Focusing with a Reverse Outline
We often think of an outline as something writers make before writing a paper. However, a reverse outline can be created using a piece that has already been written. Using the rough or current draft of your research paper, create a reverse outline. Strip away most of the writing to reveal the structure of the essay itself: central points, main ideas, topic sentences, and important pieces of evidence or support. What do you notice about the overall outline form? Do the paragraphs seem balanced? Do you see any gaps in logic or supporting evidence? Can you identify areas that might benefit from a different organization? Would your argument be improved if information was organized from least important to most important or vice versa?