Writing a First Draft

Drafting and redrafting

For English students

Drafting and editing

Drafting and editing is an important skill for English students. Whether you are writing a creative piece, a descriptive piece, an analytical essay or preparing an oral presentation - being disciplined enough to redraft your work is a part of the process.

This short lesson will show you some suggestions for drafting

Carefully examine the different suggestions. You will be quizzed along the way. You will also be asked open-ended questions.

Open Ended

How do you find drafting and editing your work? What are the main difficulties that you face with drafting and editing (if any)?

A common problem!

When students TYPE their responses, one common problem with drafting is deleting work. You might type a few sentences, press backspace to delete the work, try again, delete the work again... and after 30 long minutes of typing, you only have a sentence or two.

Suggestion 1

Type a rough first draft without fussing too much about making it perfect. Then, to improve that first draft, make multiple copies of it. Edit these multiple copies in different ways, to see what you come up with. Never delete your work. Instead - copy it, paste it, and edit it.

This is an example of Suggestion 1. This example is short, but you can edit complete paragraphs in this way.

Multiple Choice

Suggestion 1 helps you to address a common problem that students face when typing their work. What is that common problem?

• Students often don't have many ideas and cannot think of anything to write about.

• Students who type their work often type a couple of sentences but then delete them. After a long writing session, they have hardly any work written.

• Students often do not save their work with clear labels. This means that they lose the draft they were working on.

A common problem!

Sometimes when students are editing their drafts, they feel overwhelmed by the feedback. When you are given a few things to work on, it can be hard to know how to get started.

Suggestion 2

Focus on one suggested improvement at a time. Copy and paste a section of your first draft multiple times. In each rewrite, focus on improving only one aspect of your first draft with each new rewrite of that section.

Have a look at this example of Suggestion 2. You can use a table like this to focus on one improvement at a time.

Multiple Choice

Suggestion 2 is a way to focus on one improvement at a time. This can be useful for students who...

• Feel overwhelmed when given more than one improvement to focus on.

• Often delete their typed work when editing it and end up with hardly anything.

• Both of the these issues are helped by Suggestion 2!

A common problem!

Often when students type drafts they miss simple typos. This is quite common, because reading on a screen is different to reading from a page.

Suggestion 3

Print a copy of your first draft and edit it by hand. This allows you to see your draft with fresh eyes.

Multiple Choice

Suggestion 3 is a good idea if...

• you tend to miss typos or errors when reading from a screen.

• you tend to get frustrated when you are editing your work and just delete things.

• Suggestion 3 helps with both of these issues!

Which of these suggestions do you think will work best for you?

Have a think.

Open Ended

Which of these drafting and editing suggestions are YOU willing to try? Why do you think it is the best option for you?