Drafting
Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook

Writing Introductions
Writing Body Paragraphs
Transitions | Conclusions

Writers should remember that although introductions appear at the beginning of essays, they do not have to be written first in the drafting process.

Above all, make sure your introduction is sharply focused.

Papers which begin, "In today's fast-paced world of modern society" or "Throughout the ages of human history" are likely to be vague and boring.

Ideally, writers should rely on the information they have developed during the prewriting and planning stages to help shape their introduction.

It is important to remember that many writers often revise their introductions extensively during the revision stage as they now have a clearer vision of the essay as a whole.

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One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced writers make is to deviate from the plan made during the initial drafting of the body paragraphs to the point that they depart on tangents that no longer have logical connections to their thesis.

Of course, new points are thought of during the drafting process and the working thesis is often revised to some extent, but writers need to keep both their plan and dominant idea in mind as they write.

In doing so, writers will be able to keep their essay (and thus their audience) focused.

Throughout your body, you should focus on developing your ideas fully. Remember that your first priority is to support your thesis. Keep asking yourself, "What did I tell my reader I was going to do? Am I doing it?"

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While commonly used at the beginnings of paragraphs, transitions are really needed throughout the whole essay.

Just like paragraphs should connect to each other and to the thesis of the essay, so should sentences connect with each other within paragraphs.

In addition to establishing better connections from idea to idea-commonly referred to as coherence-writers should use transitions to improve the variety of their sentence structures.

An essay that effectively uses transitions is not only easier to read, but it is (more importantly) easier to understand.

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A conclusion can be brief, and it is usually written with more speed and ease than most introductory and body paragraphs.

More importantly, a conclusion can reverberate far deeper if it is not a mere restatement of the main points of the thesis.

While ideas developed in the essay can be re-examined in the conclusion, this is not a requirement.

Instead, writers should rely on the information they have developed during their prewriting, planning, and drafting to help shape their conclusion so that it is an effective communicative tool.

Writers should also remember that although a conclusion comes at the end of an essay, it does not have to be written last in the drafting process.

As in the case of introductions, it is important to remember that many writers often rewrite their conclusions extensively during the revising stage as they have a clearer vision of the essay as a whole and have cemented their thesis.

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