Thoughts on Drafting

Thoughts on Drafting

In the previous week I completed the first draft of my QRG. Drafting is a very important process for me as I prefer to get all of my thoughts and ideas down and then I will be able to revise them in a future draft. I am not concerned with having perfection in my first draft. I reviewed the Student's Guide writing my draft and this blog reflect on the advice from the book.

The guide discusses five topics: drafting a thesis statement, writing paragraphs in PIE format, writing introduction, organizing information, writing conclusions.

• Writing paragraphs in PIE format is helpful for this genre as long as it is brief because it allows for the point to be made, with an illustration to back up the point and an explanation of how the illustration backups the point. The book however, asks for more illustrations and explanations than would fit into a QRG because it is supposed to be scannable.
• An introduction is important as well in this genre because the topic the guide is on needs to introduced. It would not make sense to just start jumping into describing a the topic so it needs to be introduced. While an introduction for an essay and a QRG will be different an introduction is still needed in both.
• Organization is very important in a QRG because all the information should come after a subtitle so that the reader know what is about to be discussed. It is also important because the writer does not want to put the conclusion of the topic right after the introduction, but there should be a progression to the end. The book says that transition words should be used but in a QRG transition words are not really necessary.
• The books advice on conclusion about answering the "so what" and circling back to wrap up the topic was helpful because it allows the topic to be wrapped up nicely. I do not think that in  a QRG it is necessary to say what needs to be done as the book suggested.
• Regarding the thesis statement, the book suggested to narrow the thesis which I thought was a helpful tip because you can't have too much going on in a thesis statement. The book says to connect the thesis to all of the central ideas but that is difficult in a QRG because there is so much that needs to be written about.

Gerome Ferris, Jean Leon. "Writing the Declaration of Independence 1776".https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Writing_the_Declaration_of_Independence_1776_cph.3g09904.jpg. 8/12/2010 via Wikimedia. Public Domain.

Reflection: After reading Lauren's post, I discovered that we had a very similar view on the tips. We both agreed that the introduction and conclusion sections where more helpful for writing essays but still kind of helped. We also agreed that organization was helpful. After reading Addie's post I discovered we had very similar views in the reading as well. We both thought that certain point of the introduction were useful but some were not. We also agreed that the whole section on organization was useful.