First Draft

Writing the First Draft

Constructing a "Combined Outline"

There are many different ways to write, but outlining your research paper is a good method for collecting and organizing your argument and evidence. In their book, The Craft of Research (p. 152-53), Booth, et. al., make a helpful distinction between a topic-based outline and a point-based outline. Their recommendation is to make a combined point-based and topic-based outline that organizes the various claims of your paper, along with the evidence.

For example, consider what the author's "combined outlined" might have looked like for the book, Tainted Greatness (Philadelphia, 1994):

I. Introduction: Many of Academia's intellectual heroes were cultural bigots.

II. Luther's Anti-Judaism

III. Gerhard Kittel's Nazism

a. Kittel's legacy and the significance of the TWNT

b. Kittel's Nazism evidenced in his work

1. Evidenced in his Address, Die Judenfrage (1933)

2. Evidence in his work for the RGND

c. Authors selected for the TWNT were antisemitic

1. Walter Grundmann

a. Active in the anti-Jewish institute, IEJE

b. Wrote on "the fateful battle against World Jewry.

c. Ariticle on megas demonstrates anti-Judaism

d. Interpreters and Translators attempted to gloss over Kittel's ideology.

IV. Mircea Eliade's Facism

V. Conclusion: The cultural bigotry of many of intellectual heroes is often overlooked in Academia.

Listening to the "Clockwork Muse"

The key to writing a first draft to your research paper is time: leave enough of it and don’t wait until tomorrow to draft what you can draft today. Create a working introduction to your paper with the knowledge that it will be redone later. Again, different writers have different styles, but many agree that it is best to complete a “quick and dirty” draft of your paper that coordinates the major ideas and pieces of evidence that you are presenting. Full quotations, complete citations, proper word choice, spelling, and adequate transitions are left for later drafts. The goal here is an initial coherence, both conceptual and narrative, that will provide a framework for the addition of later details. One of the biggest pitfalls to avoid in drafting is plagiarism, i.e., using someone else’s ideas or words and failing to credit that person.

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Last Updated: 4/11/2006