Thoughts on Drafting

Different genres of writing require different drafting techniques. Because essays are the most common form of writing used in high school and college classes, English textbooks tend to focus on the essay genre. In developing the quick reference guide draft, it is important to determine which parts of the textbook are applicable and which parts are not.

Blocker, Trey "Textbook" 09/18/2015

 

What parts of the book’s advice on the above bulleted topics are helpful for writing in this genre?
 

The section about paragraph development suggests breaking paragraphs into points, illustrations, and explanations is particularly helpful. It matches up well with the practicing quoting assignment that we did. Rather than making a claim as the point, in a quick reference guide the point should be to describe the subheading that the paragraph addresses. Appropriate context should preface the illustration, which can be a quote, paraphrase, or summary. Following the illustration is an explanation, where the writer analyzes the illustration and its connection to the point, or subheading. The section on organization is fairly open ended. It basically says that the writer must decide how to present his ideas logically for the genre that he is writing in.
 

What parts of the book’s advice on these topics might not be so helpful, considering the genre you’re writing in?
 

The book's section on developing a thesis can essentially be ignored for this project. A quick reference guide looks at all aspects of a topic, rather than attempting to support a central thesis. For each of the other sections, it is important to remember that there is no thesis that you are trying to support. Organization changes to the effectiveness of your description of the topic as a whole, not a single idea.

I read Mehruba and Brandons' thoughts on drafting posts. Reading these posts made me realize that each writer can adapt the book's advice to fit his own style of writing for the quick reference guide. I particularly liked Brandon's idea to still develop a broad thesis to keep the quick reference guide on topic. The writing should fit its purpose. For quick reference guides, the purpose is to inform people about all aspects of a topic in an easy-to-read manner. In my own draft, I noticed that using the PIE method too strictly made my sentence structure too uniform. I also realized that I did not cover every aspect of the topic. Finally, the implementation of a conclusion would be helpful to leave the reader with a quick summary and some final thoughts on the topic.