LibGuides: Writing Center: The First Draft (2024)

FAQs

How should a first draft be written? ›

The short answer is it should take around 100 hours to finish your first draft. And when I say around, I mean it could take you anywhere from 50 to literally infinite hours, depending on how you write and how disciplined you are.

According to The Synergy Whisperer, ninety-seven percent of people who start to write a book NEVER finish it. In simpler terms, out of every 1,000 people who start a book, only thirty actually complete it.

Two Reasons Why First Drafts Are Hard

When ideas are in your brain, they're in a giant tangled mass. They're connected to every other idea in your brain. That's a good thing, but it can cause you trouble when you start to write. Your challenge is to take all those ideas and put them in order.

A rough draft example is shown with notations, questions, and revision ideas. A college essay rough draft example should contain an introduction, body, and conclusion. The thesis should be stated and supported, and citations should be included for sources.

The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.

What should it look like? The first draft is where you begin to express your ideas and organise your materials, putting them together under different section headings. It is where you sketch out the main points of your argument and illustrate them with examples.

Should you write a first draft without editing? ›

Addressing bigger picture issues like characters, plot, voice, point of view, and theme will ensure you're creating a stronger base as you move forward. Therefore, letting yourself write and edit in the same pass results in a cleaner first draft which will be easier to revise in the long run.

A draft is a version of your writing in paragraph form. The first draft is when you move from the outline stage and write a complete version of your paper for the first time. A first draft is often called a 'rough draft', and as this suggests, it will be very 'rough' and far from perfect.

Write a messy first-draft…fast

Throw the whole draft down onto the page as fast as you can. Don't worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar, or getting every word perfect. If you realize you need to fill something in, leave a space for it and blitz on. Don't break your momentum.

How fast does Stephen King write? I remember reading in On Writing and Danse Macabre that he tries to write 1000 words a day, meaning he can crank out a first draft in about 30–50 days. Editing and re-writes would take about 30, so, being the machine he is, he writes a book about every 3 months.

In the first draft, you start with nothing—sometimes not even a title—and end up with a 200- or 300-page (maybe even more) draft. Here is where we get it all down. During this draft, it can help to make outlines not only of the novel as a whole but also of each chapter as you go.

Before writing a rough draft, define the topic, do research, and collect necessary information into an outline. Develop a thesis statement stating the purpose of the paper. Then, use the outline and research information to write an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion for the rough draft.

Basic elements of a first draft

Includes several paragraphs with a topic sentence in each paragraph that states the main idea of the paragraph and connects the idea to the thesis statement or the main idea of the paper. Supporting sentences in each paragraph develop or explain the topic sentence.