As with most definitions, this tells you what a draft is, but not why it’s important. If you didn’t know anything about drafting and read this definition, you still wouldn’t know much because the important bits are left out, such as what drafting is for and how you go about it.
That’s why this month’s blog is dedicated to the art of intentional drafting and why it matters when you’re writing your literature review.
The Three Phases of Drafting
In what is still one of the best accounts of academic writing I’ve ever read, Roland Huff points out that drafting has three main phases. The first phase is generating, where you just get things down – thoughts, ideas, topics, reading notes, bits of analysis, quotes, questions – it all just gets thrown down on page or screen, in whatever order and without worrying too much about grammar, punctuation or spelling.
The second phase is the much more disciplined problem-solving phase, where you consciously wrestle with what you’ve generated. What, ultimately, do you have? What is it telling you? What is your argument? What is the evidence for that argument? What order should you put it in?
The third phase is editing, dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, checking the spell check, making sure you’ve quoted accurately, and so on.
Are You Skipping the Problem-Solving Phase?
In my experience – doing my own writing, mentoring others, and reading thousands of drafts – I find that we are very good at phase one, the free-form unmonitored generating phase of drafting. It fits well with the ricocheting way our thoughts work, pin-balling from one thing to another in a seemingly random fashion.
"Have you confronted your biases? Or have you only included work that supports what you already believe?"
We also tend to be very good at the third phase of drafting, editing. That can feel very satisfying. We merrily go through our draft, ticking things off our list. Completed that sentence, fixed that footnote, corrected that quote, sorted all the places I said ‘their’ when it should have been ‘there’. (Homophones! They get me every time!).
So when we are writing, there is a tendency, perhaps even a temptation, to generate ideas in phase one, edit those in phase three, and then think the job is done.
Do the Writerly Heavy Lifting – Your Literature Review Will Thank You
And that’s where the problem starts, because it skips phase two, the heavy-lifting phase. That’s why you
The second phase is the hardest, and the most frustrating, and the most time consuming. But it is crucial.
It is in this second phase of drafting that you face and resolve the questions that matter, the questions that will decide whether your literature review does its job or just rehashes stuff that’s already been said.
- Can you answer the ‘so what’ question for what you’ve read? If not, why not?
- Is your evidence solid, or do you need to do more reading?
- Have you done a fair assessment of work that disagrees with your position?
- If something you’ve read requires you to change your position, have you?
- Have you skipped over things simply because you didn’t understand them?
- Have you confronted your biases?
- Or have you just included work that supports what you already believe?
When you embrace it and let it do its work, the second phase of drafting will also reveal to you errors in your thinking as you wrestle with your argument. And we all make these errors. It is part of the process of growing and learning as you write.
Here's an example from my own work. When I was writing my book on science fiction (sf), I encountered a lot of literary critics who argued that sf produced flat characters. I was determined to argue the opposite and show that there were plenty of round characters. And I realised, during the second phase of drafting, that I was flouncing around like a spoiled child, taking what were essentially flat characters and trying to force them into being round simply because I wanted to make an oppositional argument.
"As if by magic, the new path through my chapter laid itself out before me."
Crestfallen, I took myself in hand and confronted the hard question: Were the critics right? Did sf produce mostly flat characters? Would I have to scrap this chapter or write something weak and concessionary? And then it hit me: well yes, sf did produce flat characters. But are flat characters necessarily uninteresting? Or worse than round ones? Those were the questions I needed to explore. The issue wasn’t flat characters in sf; it was the assumption that they were necessarily unliterary that needed to be tackled. As if by magic, the new path through the chapter laid itself out before me. If I had run away from the hard questions that the second phase of drafting revealed to me, I would never have seen that path.
And finally, it is in this second phase of drafting where you do the work of greatest consequence for your literature review: you nail down your argument and put together a rock-solid case for why your research question needs to be asked. You establish why your research is going to make an original contribution to knowledge.
So by all means, generate excellent ideas. Be a thorough editor. But don’t skip the hard part.
References
Huff, Roland. 1983. ‘Teaching Revision: A Model of the Drafting Process’. College English 45 (6): 800-16.
Mandala, S. 2010. Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Question of Style. London: Continuum.
Your Blog Author
A specialist in the study of language, writing, and style, Susan has 30 years’ experience as a teacher, trainer, and workshop facilitator and is dedicated to helping people turn great ideas into results with impact through clearer writing, sharper thinking, and more strategic use of language.
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