Once you’ve gathering ideas and organized your argument, it’s time to begin drafting. The first thing to remember is that unlike, for instance, an e-mail, you won’t be writing your research paper from start to finish. Instead, a draft tends to grow from the inside out; the first part of the paper tends to be written last.

The way you write your first draft will depend on a number of factors, including:

• the kind of essay you’re writing
  • Personal narrative might work best with fast drafting
  • Argument essays might respond best to an inside-out approach
  • Exploratory essays often find their shape with the connect-the-dots method
• the kind of evidence your argument relies on
• the scope and complexity of the project
• the amount of time you have to complete the paper
• any instructions or process specified by your instructor
• your personal preference

All of these drafting strategies assume that you have already performed several prior steps: performed preliminary research, articulated a research question, located and read appropriate sources, and brainstormed ideas for an argument.

Fast Drafting

Many instructors recommend a practice that is referred to as fast drafting, in which you write under the pressure of a time limit, much like freewriting. This allows you to create without your inner critic undermining your momentum. It empowers the “creator hand” to work with agency, while silencing the “editor hand.”

To do fast drafting, you first need to set up the conditions that will create ideal focus. The following are easy steps many writers follow:

• Create a block of time in which there are no interruptions. This should be a realistic length, given your ability to focus, from 10 minutes at a time to 75 minutes or longer.
• Decide on the goal: Write a paragraph in 10 minutes, 2 pages in 1 hour, or a complete essay in 1 hour and 15 minutes.

For some, 75 minutes is a good length, but some writers find that after 30 minutes they can no longer concentrate. If that is the case for you, you should plan on several shorter sessions of distraction-free time.

During this time, you should turn off your phone and social media, let the dog outside, and ensure that it’s time for children to be asleep or at school. This needs to be quiet, concentrated time.

You need to let go of your worries about good and bad ideas. There will be time to rethink, rephrase, and rework during the revision process.

Inside-Out Drafting

Even if you have a good sense of the argument you want to make in your paper, it’s usually not a good idea to start from the beginning. If you start your writing process by working on the body paragraphs, you’ll develop a much stronger sense of the nuances of your thesis claim. This, in turn, gives you a better idea of how to set the stage for your thesis with your introduction.

Connect-the-Dots Drafting

This kind of drafting works well for exploratory essays that lean on a lot of outside evidence, whether textual passages in a literature paper or research findings in the sciences or social sciences. To write this kind of draft, follow these steps:

1. Collect your main pieces of evidence (quotations, paraphrases, or summaries) into one document. Remember, this evidence will be connected to your research question; ignore notes or evidence that don’t connect to your main question.
2. Sort this textual evidence into groups based on themes or claims (essentially, sub-questions of your research question). You can cut and paste passages in a digital document, although some writers prefer to print out their quotes and physically move them around on a desk. The thematic groups may already be defined based on your research and prewriting activities, or they may only become clear during this process. If you have more than three or four thematic groups, you may need to narrow your focus.
3. Choose a promising group or piece of evidence and build around it:
   • Explanation of the context of the evidence
   • The evidence itself (whether quotation, paraphrase, or summary)
   • Significance of the evidence in light of the overall argument
4. After repeating step 3 a few times, you should have chunks of draft ready to go. These pieces, anchored by evidence from other sources, will become the moves in your argument. Spend some time thinking about the ideal order in which to make your argument. How might these moves flow into each other?
5. Now it’s just a matter of connecting the dots by building up the connections between the pieces of your argument.