Once you’ve gone through the processes of choosing a topic, brainstorming, invention and determining purpose, you will sit down and begin to write. This can be a daunting prospect if you expect a complete polished paper to spin out from under your fingertips in just one sitting. Successful writers know that the best writing comes from the revision process, a process that takes you through multiple drafts before reaching that finished paper and a process that begins with the rough draft.
Writing a well-crafted paper can be compared to creating a fine marble sculpture—neither one can be completed in one step, nor can the detailed work be done before the heavy blasting. Before sculpting a marble bust of Beethoven, for example, one must first blast a chunk of marble out of a mountainside. That chunk becomes the raw material from which the sculpture will emerge in a series of carefully planned steps executed by the sculptor in a specific sequence of actions. For instance, the first work the sculptor does on the chunk of marble won’t be the careful chiseling out of Beethoven’s eyebrows, but the rougher cutting of the approximate shape of the whole head.
Likewise, the actual writing of a paper begins not by fashioning exquisite sentences, but by blasting out a chunk of raw material that can be worked and shaped like a piece of marble. That chunk of raw material for the writer is the rough draft. It’s called a “rough” draft because rough is precisely what it is—unpolished, with raw jagged edges, unpleasing to look at. But that’s OK, because it’s not meant to be looked at and admired. It’s meant to be a collection of related thoughts and ideas about a particular subject (or story line) that’s not concerned with proper spelling or grammar or punctuation. Those details (we call them mechanics) are like eyebrows—important, yes, but of no use unless one first has a face to put them on.
A rough draft is sometimes called a discovery draft, because this is where writers explore their ideas, often discovering new ideas in the process. This is a very exciting stage in the prewriting process, the stage where writers start to find out what they have to say about the various ideas that arose in their brainstorming process. And like the brainstorming process, the writing of a rough draft needs to be uncontrolled—open, free, with no set limitations.
Only by being open, free and generous with your explorations will you generate enough words (your “raw material”) to later cut, shape and fashion into a polished essay. Just like with the sculptor’s chunk of marble, you can expect that much of your rough draft will end up as debris—cut away, chiseled off, sanded down—before the final product takes form. So it’s important to give yourself plenty of time and enough freedom of expression to really generate a hefty chunk of raw material—the rough draft.
written by Brenda Lewis
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