4.1 Your Outline Is A Scaffold
Drafting is easy; writing is harder.
Chapter 2 described using index cards to scaffold a manuscript’s outline. Chapter 3 proposed additional scaffolds to help you generate your initial topics. Chapter 4 now discusses steps you take after completing your outline. In the scaffold’s final step, you copy your external scaffold – the sentences written on your index cards – into a word processor. You next convert the word processor version of your outline into a complete first draft.
I believe you can easily convert your outline into your first draft because your outline itself serves as a ready-made scaffold. Your outline establishes logical links between paragraphs, not to mention the two most important sentences for each paragraph. These two sentences place powerful constraints on what sentences you can add to create your first draft. We call the sentences you need to add the supporting sentences (Sarnecka, 2019) or the development (Greene, 2013). The development provides additional details which flesh out the relationship between the topic sentence and the concluding sentence. “One good way to write the development is to lay out well-defined steps that lead to some conclusion [from the topic sentence]” (Green, 2013, p. 68). With topic and concluding sentences in hand, the development seems to write itself as you add flesh to your outline.
You should not expect your first draft to provide a polished, finished, or submittable manuscript (Becker, 2020). “The first draft is the down draft – you just get it down” (Lamott, 1995, p.24). When you fill in your outline, you should pay more attention to the points you make; you should pay less attention to your writing style.
You worry less about writing style when you create your first draft because you expect to revise and polish your draft later. “The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately” (Lamott, 1995, p. 24). However, Chapter 4 argues a scaffold – your first draft – helps you create your ‘up draft’.
When you write your first draft’s sentences, recognize you will later repeatedly work through your manuscript, revising and improving your sentences (Becker, 2020; Elbow, 1981; Germano, 2021; Lamott, 1995; McPhee, 2017; Zinsser, 2006). “The third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy” (Lamott, 1995, p 24). William Zinsser reminds you “very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair” (Zinsser, 2006, p. 9). Zinsser’s reminder makes writing easier, because you realize you don’t need perfect sentences in your first draft; you repair broken sentences later. In Chapter 4, I argue each (better) draft of your paper makes writing easier, too, because each draft scaffolds how you develop the next draft.
When revising ends, you possess a manuscript which satisfies you. For academic writing which reports research, you next submit your manuscript for review by a journal’s editor. When reviews come back, you usually must return to your manuscript to for further revising and polishing — editors or reviewers usually ask for changes. Chapter 4 also shows how comments and suggestions from editors and reviewers provide another scaffold for additional revisions.
