10 Steps to Write a Killer Paper

By Danielle Collins ‘20

You sit down and stare at the blank Word document. The ominous cursor blinks in the top left corner. After you painstakingly type out the heading, the empty page taunts you as the deadline looms in the distance. The moral of this story: writing is hard. Hopefully I can provide some advice to make it easier, and maybe even fun!

As an English major, I write a lot of papers. And, this may come as a shock, but I genuinely enjoy writing essays. It’s only my second year at SC, but I have a pretty good grasp of my personal writing process. Writing is different for everyone and constantly changes, but you can learn a lot by seeing how another person writes. So let me walk you through my writing process. If you see something that sounds helpful, give it a shot!

1) Brainstorm ideas: The hardest part about writing is figuring out where to start. So I always start by typing out any ideas I have, good or bad. I’m a bullet point girl, so I just start writing bullet points. If I find I have a lot to say about a certain idea, I keep adding bullet points beneath it.

2) Choose an idea: After I’m done bulleting, I scroll through the document (hopefully it’s fairly lengthy— at least a page or two). I look to see which bullet points have the most bullet points beneath them, because those are the ideas that are the most developed and will probably form the strongest argument. If I have prompts, I compare my bullet point ideas to the prompts and see if any match. If more than one idea seems viable, I usually go with my gut and pick the one I’m more excited about, or I do step #3 for multiple ideas. 

3) Find evidence for that idea: Once I’ve picked an idea (or maybe two), I create a new document. I take the one bullet point and all of it’s sub-points, and start looking for evidence. Whether your evidence comes from a book, scholarly article, lap report, etc, make sure you write down exact quotes. Don’t just write “Page 57” because when you look back you’ll have no idea what was on page 57. Fully write out the quotes— I promise it’s worth the few extra seconds it takes to type them out. And besides, you will be able to just copy and paste or paraphrase them when you start writing the actual paper.

• NOTE: Never delete anything. And I mean anything. Always save your work and keep creating new documents so you don’t write over your old work. That way, you can always go back to your old work to find ideas or look back at your thought process.
  

4) Type stream-of-consciousness: This part of my writing process comes from John R. Trimble’s book Writing with Style courtesy of my writing professor, Dr. Trisha Tucker (her class is the reason I figured out this writing process). All you do is sit down and type. Set a time limit, maybe just 3-5 minutes to start out with (you can do more after some practice). For those 3-5 minutes, type every thought about your paper that pops into your head. Type things such as “I’m drawing a blank” or “I’m not sure what else to say” or even “sjjghfkjsdu” along with any ideas that pop into your head. This is the easiest way to get your thoughts down on paper and start developing your ideas. If you have more to say after the time is up— keep writing!

5) Write a rough thesis: After you have written down some evidence and your stream-of-consciousness ideas, you should hopefully have an idea about what your larger claim is going to be. Write a rough thesis. Emphasis on rough. This thesis should change by the time you’re done with the paper, but have an idea written down as a way to guide your thoughts.

6) Outline: My outlines are so detailed they are practically rough drafts of a paper. I start off with bullet points for an introduction, a few body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Then I add a hook to my intro, the most important evidence to my body paragraphs, topic sentences, transitions, my rough thesis, analysis of quotes, and any other components I can think of. By the time I’m done, almost everything I need to write a first draft should be present in my outline.

7) First draft: With a detailed outline, the first draft should be easy. Save yourself some time and copy and past things straight from your outline. Flesh it out as much as possible and do any reorganizing you think is necessary. But keep in mind this is only a first draft and can be changed— nothing is set in stone. By the conclusion of your first draft, you should have a good idea of the major claim your paper is making and the thesis you have proved.

8) Second draft from a blank page: Start a new blank document. You are going to rewrite your paper. Yes, rewrite. This is your chance to do any reorganizing and major revising of your first draft. Of course you can copy and paste things that you absolutely love from the first draft. But the second draft should look significantly different than your first draft. Try to leave at least a day in-between writing the first and second drafts so you can reconsider your first draft with fresh eyes and think critically about how to improve your paper. For the second draft, you should write a completely new thesis based on the conclusions you came to in your first draft, tying your whole paper together.

9) Third draft: Make a copy of your second draft, and paste the whole thing in a new document. You aren’t completely rewriting your paper like you did with the second draft, but you don’t want to lose any of the work you did on your second draft by typing over it. Reread the whole second draft, and start making edits. These edits should be more minor than the edits you made when writing the second draft, but feel free to keep reorganizing if need be.

• Pro tip: Go to the Writing Center! The Writing Center is a great resource to get a second pair of eyes to look at your essay. Talking through your ideas with another person and having them read over your work is extremely helpful. Click here to learn more and schedule an appointment!
  

10) Read over and submit: Before you turn your paper in, read it over one more time. I suggest mouthing the words while reading (I hate reading out loud, but mouthing the words makes you read slow enough that you won’t skip over a typo). Fix any grammar/spelling mistakes. But don’t overthink it. You have put a lot of effort into your paper and done a lot of rewriting and revising. You will always feel like your paper can be better, and it always can. But at some point you have to stop and be happy with where you’re at. This is that time. You have put in the work, now it’s time to hit submit. No matter the grade you get, you can be proud of the effort you put into writing a solid, well-thought-out, cohesive paper.

I know that seems like a lot of steps. But it doesn’t take as long as you might think. Going through the initial steps makes writing the actual paper significantly quicker and easier. Like I said, you don’t need to follow my process step-by-step. Take the process you already use and modify it to make your writing process as painless as possible. When all else fails, just sit down and start typing stream-of-consciousness. Once your fingers are pressing keys, I promise the rest will start to follow. Fight on, and write on!

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