Practice you lot feel like scientific writing is a long, draining process? Perchance you are a perfectionist who struggles with each sentence and questions every other give-and-take. Or yous can write down a draft quickly, only to realize that it is no proficient and you have to kickoff over once again. In any case, learning the principles of effective drafting helps you write better first drafts faster, increasing your writing output and at the same time improving the quality of your texts.

Here you lot'll discover 6 principles that will make a qualitative and quantitative difference to your writing. This approach is based on the freewriting technique, and the principal points are illustrated with quotes from Peter Elbow, the godfather of freewriting and a well-respected writing educator and researcher. These quotes from the volume Writing with power not only offering valuable advice — they likewise provide a great instance that even writing about a seemingly boring topic tin be captivating and powerful.

ane. Dissever drafting and revising

If you are always going to follow only one piece of writing advice, it should be this: don't write and revise at the same fourth dimension. Don't switch back and forth betwixt generating text and improving it. Because the processes of drafting and revising are polar opposites, they crave your mind to operate in two singled-out modes: fully attached to actively experience the thought vs. fully detached to critically evaluate the text.

Switching back and along betwixt drafting and revising is nothing else than multitasking. And this comprises the well-known fourth dimension and energy price of multitasking, making united states of america produce mediocre text at a mediocre tempo.

Peter Elbow exemplifies the problems of concurrent writing and revising in the post-obit mode:

Premature revising is counterproductive in various ways. When we put ourselves in a correcting, fault-finding frame of listen, nosotros normally accept more problem coming up with new and interesting ideas. We see faults in ideas before we've had a take chances to work them out, and we become distracted in our thinking by all the fixing and correcting at the surface level. As well, premature revising ordinarily gets us to spend time fixing or correcting things that we later throw away. Or worse nevertheless, we don't throw away something nosotros ought to throw away, because we've invested then much fourth dimension and energy massaging it that we can't behave to let it go.

So when yous sit down downwardly to write a outset draft, it's best to do just that: produce words. Don't read the text to fix it. Just as well don't interrupt your writing to expect up missing information. Work with placeholders instead.

  • You demand a reference for your claim? Write "[REF]" and move on.
  • You lot forgot a certain value that y'all want to report? Write "X" and look information technology upwards later.
  • You are not certain whether the word y'all just used is the right one / spelled correctly / etc.? Write it downward and mark it for a later on revision.
  • You can't determine which word to use? Write them down all ("word1/word2/etc.") and decide later.
  • You don't retrieve a certain word in English, just in your mother tongue? No problem — write what you have and translate later.

Isolating the act of drafting non only makes writing faster (by avoiding the cost of multitasking), information technology also results in a better text because yous don't interrupt your thinking every bit yous write.

If you are a pinnacle-downward writer, you probably find it hard to separate drafting and revising. You can learn this essential skill past practicing freewriting. Moreover, the next tips beneath should aid yous as well, particularly the advice to focus on content, experience your idea, and requite yourself a permission to write badly in the starting time draft.

two. Focus fully on content

Ane of the reasons why we need to split up the processes of drafting and revising is that this allows us to direct our full attention to the content. We need to stop worrying about the linguistic communication and the quality of our writing, and focus fully on the content in social club to attain the state of flow to write productively and effortlessly.

In Peter Elbow's words:

Put all your attention into connecting wholeheartedly with your thoughts and get inside them instead of trying so hard to find the right language for communicating them.

3. Feel your thought

We need to focus fully on the content equally we write because this allows united states of america to feel what we write about. Experiencing your thoughts means that you are closely connected to what you think about, and this connection brings focus and clarity in your thinking that translates into writing.

Peter Elbow suggests that experiencing your thoughts is exactly the quality of mind you demand to attain in social club to write powerful texts:

If you want your reader to experience your thinking and not merely manage to sympathize information technology—if you lot want him to feel your thoughts alive within him or hear the music of your ideas—then you must experience your thoughts fully as y'all write.

Experiencing your thinking happens naturally when you think something for the showtime time. Though when something is well-known, even boring to yous, yous demand a little trick to become yourself in the actively experiencing mode:

If you are not really experiencing your thoughts as you write, pretend you are the first person who ever had that thought and write excitedly nearly your new breakthrough.

Merely in that location will be times when you are tired or distracted, which makes y'all detached from your thoughts. Fifty-fifty in such cases, it may be possible to connect with your thoughts, albeit it volition crave a bit more than effort:

Even though experiencing requires more energy than not experiencing, if things become well you naturally and easily do experience what you are writing nearly. To feel fully is natural, human, and alive. Just when you are tired, nether force per unit area, scared, or distracted, it takes an act of special effort and self-direction to get yourself to experience fully what yous are writing about. You need to learn to stop, concentrate your energy, and focus your attention wholeheartedly on your significant—and do it and then vigorously that y'all don't have any free energy or attending left over for worries or distractions.

4. Forget well-nigh the reader


Taking the reader's perspective is crucial if you want to produce a useful and comprehensible text. However, it'southward best to consider the reader and their needs in the planning stage before drafting, and in the revision stage subsequently drafting.

As you write the first draft, information technology's often all-time to completely forget nigh the reader, especially if you are a superlative-down writer and easily go the "writer'due south block". Ignoring the reader while drafting helps you lot keep focused on the content and continued with your thoughts, equally well as avoid the force per unit area to write well that ofttimes leads to author'south block.

However, if yous are a bottom-up author who doesn't become blocked easily, yous tin imagine to have a conversation with the reader. This might help you focus on the essentials and avert diverting too much, making your text more than structured and easier to revise.

5. Allow yourself to write a crappy commencement draft

At present, the perfectionist top-down writer might struggle to separate drafting from revising and focus fully on the content. But in my experience, they only need a little trick to resolve this consequence, and that is to consciously give themselves a permission to write badly in the commencement draft.

And then don't exist afraid to write a "crappy starting time draft" — you tin meliorate it later on. Nobody needs to see your starting time draft, and so there is no force per unit area to go it perfect right abroad.

Every bit Peter Elbow says:

Coherence is not the goal of raw writing, life is. Coherence is what you must impose on raw writing as y'all revise.


It is much easier to iteratively ameliorate a "crappy" sentence than to try in your mind to come with a "perfect" one. In the moment you relax and allow yourself to non care about the quality of your writing, you will resolve your writer'southward cake and your writing productivity will increase enormously.

And you might be surprised when you sit downwards to edit your "crappy outset draft" that it'south not that bad at all…

six. Programme & outline before drafting

Bottom-upwards writers don't find information technology hard to separate writing from revising and to write down a lively outset draft quickly. Quite the reverse: their beginning draft might be as well lively and cluttered and then that information technology needs extensive revising. Oftentimes such a author decides to write a completely new draft instead of fighting with what they already accept.

Solution to this unfavorable situation is to resist the temptation to dive straight into the writing, and programme & outline beforehand. You don't need to have the definite outline for your text — a working version is enough. You can finalize the structure as you lot revise, by rearranging the bits you have written. Only it will be helpful if you brainstorm the points you want to include in your text, and endeavour to go them in some sort of logical order before you lot starting time drafting the text.

How to revise & go along the power of the commencement draft

Y'all might wonder whether it makes any sense to bother with experiencing your thoughts to write powerful sentences if you are going to revise them later anyhow. Well, Peter Elbow has skillful communication also on this matter:

If you revise only by cutting and rearranging elements in your raw writing, you terminate upwardly with a revision made simply of first-draft words—words written while you were experiencing your subject matter and not thinking about writing. Merely yous can besides add new words and passages as you revise—self-consciously and critically making judgments near what the manner, context, audition, and meaning demand. When your raw writing grows directly out of total experience of your subject, the life entrapped in these words enables you to generate more words during the revising process that also contain life. The life in those original words keeps you lot in affect with the experience and enables y'all to dart dorsum into information technology fifty-fifty if only for a moment as you search for a amend give-and-take or phrase—even though you are engaged in the common cold, calculating process of revising.

Now yous know how you tin can write powerful text quickly and easily. The side by side step is to implement the advice in your own writing. A great practice that prepares y'all well for this drafting strategy is freewriting. And freewriting can exist really fun! So don't wait as well long and endeavor it out. Freewriting helps you develop your scientific writing skills in a relaxed and enjoyable way.

Once you have drafted your text, you should further develop and amend it in a process of stride-wise revising, starting with content and finishing with linguistic communication & style. Our revision checklist helps you with detailed instructions, so get your copy hither:

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