Chapter 2: Technical Writing Process
2.4 Drafting
This section defines drafting and will prepare you to develop your ideas for your tutorial.
Learning Objectives
After you read this section, you will be able to
- define drafting
- begin drafting your tutorial by adding details to your outline
What is Drafting?
Drafting is when you develop your ideas and fully build your sections, subsections, paragraphs, and sentences beyond the outline. For example, while drafting this tutorial, particular attention was given to develop ideas and connecting them logically so that the user – you as a student – understands what a tutorial actually IS and how it functions in technical communication.
The drafting phase does not mean that the text is “perfect;” instead, this is when you take the time to write out all content as fully as possible while focusing on your audience and purpose. You also need to make sure that you delete the outline conventions of Roman numerals, capital and lower-case letters, numbers, and indentations although you can certainly include indentations in your tutorial, such as what is included in this tutorial.
In this phase of your writing, craft your headings as clearly as possible, build relevant paragraphs, explain your actionable procedural steps, and consider how the audience will skim rather than read your content (Determann, 2024). Since your user will skim your content to find the specific information they need, just as you are doing as you review this tutorial, make sure your paragraphs are short and easy to read rather than “walls of words” which are “large blocks of texts” (Redish, 2012, p. 146) that take too much time and thought to comprehend. Also, consider breaking down points into bullet points (Determann, 2024) rather than paragraphs for unordered lists of information.
A major part of the drafting phase is your writing style, which is further explained in chapter 5 of this tutorial since there are many aspects of writing style that need to be considered. In the drafting phase, you should consider your point of view, tone, sentence and language complexity, clarity and conciseness, etc.
In other words, the focus on the drafting phase is on content, organization, and writing style. Of course, all of this can change as you write and interact with users and conduct usability tests on documents.
As you write and organize your content, you should begin designing your document as well. Redish (2012) argues that designing should occur at the same time as the drafting of content so that they work harmoniously together. The layout, spacing, alignment, balance, etc., need to work in tandem with the content and organization, not fight against it. A user should not have to work to make sense of the document and how the information fits together. Instead, as discussed in the UX section, a document needs to be intuitive and easy to read, and this extends to both the content and design of that content.
| Note: Your drafting process is uniquely yours, and there are no right or wrong ways of developing your content. You may want to write a little bit every day or write all day long on one day and not write again for several days. You can draft in any platform, but make sure you keep track of your content and save appropriately if you do not use technology like Google Docs, which saves automatically. |
In Industry
As a technical communicator in industry, the drafting phase also includes researching the genre type to deeply understand the content and organizational expectations. For example, if you are tasks with writing a proposal or recommendation report for your organization, what sections are required?
You also need to review your company’s style guide as well as existing documents, including documentation, to make sure that your document aligns with branding and company expectations.
Lastly, you need to remember that documentation is generally written by multiple members of a team which produce large quantities of content. All members of the team need to understand the expectations of other team members and “share an understanding of the different types of documentation” (de Boer & van Vliet, 2009) as well as work together to develop a cohesive, clear documents.
In School
Similar to industry, you need to write and design your draft under constraints. Whereas in industry, your document needs to align with company expectations and branding, in school, your document content and design must align with the assignment guidelines, so as you write and design your document, reread the assignment guidelines, rubric, and module content to ensure that your document achieves the goals for the assignment.
In short, the drafting phase is where all of your ideas come together in a full document, but it is by no means the finished product; instead, it is rough, but ideas are developed in a logical organization. There are issues with drafts that will be fixed in the revising and editing phrase.
Once you have a full draft, which you think is almost “complete,” you can move to the peer reviewing phase, which are explained in the next section. You should also conduct a usability test with real world users, so you know what needs to be revised.
