How to Do a Rough Draft of a Research Paper

Get some notebook paper and pencils; it's brainstorming time.

You've gathered your research, and you're staring at the stack of books and Internet print-outs with a sense of foreboding. Now what? How do you go through all of that STUFF you've collected and manage to create a coherent paper before the deadline? What was your instructor thinking, that you only had ONE class? Well, first of all, most instructors don't care how many classes you have. They want you to write well in THEIR class. So let's get started;time waits for no one, especially for students with impatient instructors!

Things You'll Need

• Research materials that you've gathered
• Notebook or writing tablet
• Highlighting pens
• Pencils and pens
• Your computer or laptop
• Water and healthy snacks for nutritional fortification

Instructions

1. 

   Take several deep breaths and do some stretches or whatever helps you feel better physically. Tension and anxiety is the sworn enemy of every writer. It's difficult to do when you have a deadline that you are worried about, but it's imperative to relax as much as possible.

2. 

   Forget about sentence structure, punctuation, spelling, logical arguments and rhetorical devices. The rough draft is not the place to worry about any of that. Focus ONLY getting ideas from your research, and writing them down in any manner, even if it seems messy and out of order.

3. This is a critical next step. Educational research has shown that writer's block can be minimized by putting the pen or pencil to paper and writing ANYTHING, even if it is nothing but gobbledygook. The same rule applies if the writer is working on a computer or a laptop. The brain switches to active writing mode when you start physically writing instead of sitting and staring into space. It doesn't have to make sense or relate to the research paper. Just start writing something!

   Example: listening to music like music don't like writing want some brownies and milk heroes comes on tonight

   It works. The research and a certain former college instructor can attest to the technique's effectiveness. Set a timer for five minutes and write down anything that comes to mind.

4. 

   Review your index cards, books and Internet research, highlighting and underlining everything that seems to remotely pertain to your subject. Now it's time to put an imaginative spin on the writing process. Going back to the subject of the first article, visualize yourself as a colonist who has a large farm that is dependent upon supplies coming in from England in order to make profit. All the talk about revolution is threatening your livelihood. You are going to argue against the potential war at a convention of local leaders, and you need to have all of the facts lined up in a logical order. What facts do you need to make a strong case? Search for those facts in your research as if your own life is depending on finding them. This attitude will also help you interject energy and focus into your writing.

5. Now you are ready to start brainstorming. There are many methods of doing this--making lists of all the facts involved and after seeing which ones are related, drawing lines to connect together. Or you can do "clustering" which involves drawing a circle around a fact that seems very important, and drawing lines connecting the main fact (or idea) to other related ideas. Simply free writing anything that comes to mind pertaining to the subject is also helpful.

6. 

   Now you are ready to start forming your thesis statement, which is the controlling idea of the paper. One of the easiest ways to do this is to consider your fact review and brainstorm writing, and extract one idea that seems to be more important than all other facts. Then put the idea to a test: "Some colonists objected to the Revolutionary War because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to make a living."

7. Ask yourself if your controlling idea is true according to the information you've gathered. Then subject the thesis statement to the 5Ws and an H test: Who were the colonists, and who were they arguing with within the colonial government? What was their greatest fear? Why did they feel that they would lose their income if America went to war with England. Your answer to the 5ws and an h will provide you a strong basis for your thesis statement.

8. Now you are ready to outline your paper. Using your newly discovered thesis statement as the basis for the opening paragraphs, you can create consecutive topic sentences that would provide supporting evidence for your controlling idea using any outlining form that is easy for you work with.
   (See examples of outlines on the following pages:
   http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/outlines.shtml
   http://www.ipl.org/div/aplus/step6.htm#sec1.2)

   Read over each topic sentence, and apply the 5Ws and an H test to them. Write down the answers to these questions; you will be able to add more information from your research to form the body paragraphs.

Tips & Warnings

• Again, do not worry about grammar, punctuation or spelling while writing the rough draft. Getting the ideas down on paper is the focus of the rough draft.

• Read the paper out loud to yourself, but remember the purpose is to generate ideas. When you read it out loud, you can tell if you left out some important information.

• Put the draft down for two - four hours after working on it for a considerable time. Go for a walk, play with your dog, dance to some music, get something to eat that doesn't have a lot of sugar or fat (it will make you sleepy).

• DO NOT copy any information from your research and use it for the body paragraphs of your rough draft.

• Even if you are paraphrasing or re-phrasing the information, you must attribute the work to the original authors.

• Do not try to get the rough draft "perfect". Perfection comes in the revising process.

Resources

• On-Line Writing Lab (OWL)
• A Guide for Writing Research Papers
• Research and Writing for High School and College Students