{"id":49433,"date":"2019-09-16T13:20:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T20:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=49433"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:20:39","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T20:20:39","slug":"a-planners-approach-to-the-first-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/a-planners-approach-to-the-first-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"A planner\u2019s approach to the first draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Writing a draft. Mmm. The word \u2018writing\u2019 suggests that all you have to do is sit down and type or scribble away. And lo and behold a text is born.<\/p>\n

But there are different pathways to writing a draft. Some are less freeform than others. As\u00a0Helen Sword suggests<\/a>, academic writers are generally either planners or free writers. And if you are a planner, writing a draft is often as much about assembling and choreographing as it is working with either a pen and paper or on a keyboard and screen.<\/p>\n

For planners, \u2018writing a draft\u2019 is not simply about generating text. That\u2019s necessary of course and you can\u2019t do without all the words. But planners see the real work of drafting as \u2018getting the right stuff in the right order\u2019<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That phrase \u2013\u00a0\u00a0getting the right stuff in the right order \u2013 is important to the planner.<\/p>\n

Planners like to make sure that what is eventually down on the page is roughly the shape of the final text. None of this thousands of words too much that need to be organised. Planners like to write to a word budget. Planners need to make sure that the moves in the paper make sense and are sufficient to make their case. Planners need to see that they don\u2019t have to move huge slabs of text somewhere else. Or get rid of giant bits altogether. Or go and find lots more references. Or add in more data.<\/p>\n

So for a planner, writing a draft text, one that is ready for refining, usually consists of several steps. Some of these steps might be combined. But they are specific activities.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a planner, just in case you hadn\u2019t guessed. I usually set out writing a draft in these five stages:<\/p>\n

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  1. Work out what the text is going to be about \u2013 grasping the big idea<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Most academic texts, be they a journal article, a chapter in a thesis or book, a professional paper or even a blog post, have a big idea. Lots of journal articles and books and chapters are rejected because they don\u2019t have a big idea, or because they try to fit more than one big idea into one paper.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s some strategies you might try to locate your big idea.<\/p>\n