You’ve decided to write a paper or fellowship application, but now it’s time to start drafting. There are almost no sights more intimidating to an academic than a blank page that you hope will soon be filled with brilliant arguments and turns of phrase. However, you don’t need to start with complete sentences and paragraphs. Arranging scattered words and phrases into an outline and gradually filling it in can get you to your goal. In fact, this approach may help you keep the big picture in mind as you write, allowing you to stay focused on your main ideas and overarching argument even as you delve into the weeds.
Here are some steps and strategies for assembling an outline and massaging it into a first draft:
- What are the key points that you must get across? For a thesis, you might start with the headings in a chapter outline; for a research paper introduction, you may write down broad topics constituting the background of your work, gradually zeroing in on your research question. For a personal statement, a key point might be a life experience that sets you apart as a scholar, or for a research proposal, an aim that you mean to accomplish in the lab. Jot down the key stories and their significance as bullet points. Right now, completeness and order don’t matter as long as you’ll be able to understand what you wrote at a later point.
- Use short, concise phrases at this stage. Don’t worry about writing complete sentences. When many ideas are coming to you at once, give yourself permission to use bullet points and write down only the most important words or phrases. In a later writing session, you can round out your sentences and edit for style.
- Organize subtopics as indented bullet points under your main ideas. Later on, these ideas might become body sentences in a paragraph or become their own paragraphs.
- Think about order and transitions. Shift your bullet points into an order that lets your points build and compound upon one another. It’s easier to see issues in the progression of ideas at this stage, when they are in their shorter, undeveloped form, than later on, when they have expanded into full paragraphs. Next, consider how each bullet point connects to the previous one and play with transitions. If it supports the previous point, add phrases such as, “In addition to” or “Not only . . . but also.” If the ideas are contradictory, add “Despite” or “However.”
- Set up citations and use key references as scaffolding. Integrating citation software into your word processor is a beneficial administrative task that is best to complete during the outline stage. Despite the initial time investment and technical hiccups you may have to work through, this step will save you many hours in the future. Do this task toward the end of an early writing session, or on a day when you’re perhaps stuck or waiting for feedback. Whether you use Mendeley, EndNote, PaperPile, Zotero, or another citation manager, having the scaffolding of key literature in place can help you stay organized and save you from scrambling for sources during a later stage. Important references can also serve as landmarks as you go.
- Ask for feedback early. If writing collaboratively, get your coauthors’ or advisor’s feedback on your outline so that you can agree on the big picture. What order should the ideas follow? Do they have ideas to add or subtract to the piece? This practice doesn’t guarantee that you won’t need to make large, structural edits later, but it will kick off this piece in an organized, logical manner.
There are many ways to begin a first draft. Gradually fleshing out a rough outline was what worked best for me when writing research reports and my dissertation. It isn’t pretty—few first draft strategies are—but it helped me bypass the initial feeling of being overwhelmed as well as overcome instances of writer’s block. Try it, and whether you love it or hate it, you’ve come closer to figuring out a writing practice that works for you.
