6.3: Write

Write

Writing is our next step to powerful writing. Use the work you did during the organizational phase as you write your first draft. If you have a full outline, you’ll easily be able to connect the ideas you’ve already laid out. Keep in mind that you may need to do this phase several times.

Once you’ve got an idea of how you want to organize your paper, you can write your first draft. Do not expect this draft to be the one you turn in; it should and likely will be, very rough and messy. When you start with a messy first draft, you do not worry about making it sound good, about sentence structure, or grammar. The goal is to just start by putting down ideas and slowly add to your essay. Once you get some sort of draft, start revising by organizing the ideas, writing a thesis statement, developing paragraphs, and smoothing out sentences. You might need to write several drafts or to throw out large chunks of your first draft to improve your final draft. 

As you’re drafting, be sure to add your sourced information with the citations. Don’t forget the page numbers! Use signal phrases for direct quotations. You may use parenthetical citations for paraphrases. As you add a citation, add that source to your works cited page. If the citations or works page aren’t perfect, that’s okay. You’ll format and polish them up later.

Start with the body paragraphs.

Many people try to start by writing the introduction, but consider a more efficient way. Write your paragraphs first. Until you do so, you really don’t know the content of your essay. Remember, we write to discover what we know or what we think. As we write, you may completely change what you thought you were going to write. Don’t let this throw you as it’s completely normal. In the long run, you’ll get a better final draft for it.

Find your thesis.

Up to now, you’ve had a good idea of your main message. Now you want to write it into a formal thesis statement. Make sure you review what you’ve written so far as it may be a little different that’s what you thought. There are a number of ways you can format your thesis, but the most often used in college writing is topic + position + reasons.

Write the conclusion.

This may seem like a weird next step, but it really makes a lot of sense. Remember, you don’t really know what you want to say until you say it. If you write your conclusion after your body paragraphs, you can just continue your ideas. Include your summary of the essay body and then explain why what you’d said is important and relevant to your reader. Remember, you’re writing to them, so you want to keep them in mind as you write. Once you’ve written your conclusion, read it as objectively as you can. Then look back at your draft. Does what you’ve concluded match your thesis and content? You’d be surprised how often what you’ve written in your conclusion is really what you wanted to say all along. Now you have a choice. You can re-write your conclusion to reflect what you’re written or you can change what you’ve written to match your conclusion.

Once you’ve written your conclusion, you’ll have a better idea of what you want to say. It may or may not match what you thought you were writing about. You’re ready to introduce your paper. Include sufficient information so that your reader understands your topic and where you are in the entire conversation about that topic. You see, a topic or issue does not exist in a vacuum. Instead, there are many different perspectives and ideas floating around regarding that topic. Think of an issue that’s important to you. How many different opinions, sides, angles, causes or effects do people discuss? How many solutions are there?

Your job as a writer is to help your reader understand the general conversation around your topic before you can present your opinion or position on the topic. We call this context. To do this, you can think about the five W’s and an H. Consider Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How regarding your topic.