Page 365 - Keys To Community College Success

■ Connecting ideas with logical transitions
■ Creating an effective introduction and conclusion
■ Checking for plagiarism
■ Creating a list of works cited
Don’t aim for perfection in a first draft. Trying to get every detail right too early
may shut the door on ideas before you even know they are there.

Freewriting Your Draft
Use everything that you developed in the planning stage as the raw material for freewrit-
ing a draft. For now, don’t think about your introduction, conclusion, or organizational
structure. Simply focus on what you want to say. Only after you have thoughts down
should you begin to shape your work.

Writing an Introduction

The introduction tells readers what the paper contains and includes your thesis state-
ment, which is often found at the end of the introduction.

Creating the Body of a Paper

The body of the paper contains your central ideas and supporting evidence, which
underpins your thesis with facts, statistics, examples, and expert opinions. Try to find
a structure that helps you organize your ideas and evidence into a clear pattern. Several
organizational options are presented in Key A.1.

KEY A.1 Find the Best Way to Organize the
Body of the Paper

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE WHAT TO DO
Arrange ideas by time. Describe events in order or in reverse order.

Arrange ideas according to importance. Start with the idea that carries the most weight
and move to less important ideas. Or move from
the least to the most important ideas.

Arrange ideas by problem and solution. Start with a problem and then discuss solutions.
Arrange ideas to present an argument. Present one or both sides of an issue.
Arrange ideas in list form. Group a series of items.

Arrange ideas according to cause and effect. Show how events, situations, or ideas cause
subsequent events, situations, or ideas.
Arrange ideas through the use of comparisons. Compare and contrast the characteristics of events,
people, situations, or ideas.
Arrange by process. Go through the steps in a process: a “how-to”
approach.

Arrange by category. Divide topics into categories and analyze each i
n order.

Appendix A: The Writing Process 327