A content marketer has a 1,200-word article due on Friday and has rewritten the first paragraph six times. Nothing below it exists yet. The problem is rarely a lack of ideas. It’s that two jobs are happening at once: making sentences and judging them, and the judge keeps winning.
Here is a method to write a first draft without stopping every few lines to fix it. It rests on three university writing-centre handouts from the University of North Carolina, plus some practical routines for sessions, placeholders and stopping points. The routines are practical advice, not research findings, and the article says so where it matters.
How to write a first draft: keep making and fixing apart
The fix is sequencing, not willpower. Decide before you start that this session is for making, and that fixing comes later. Each stage has its own job and its own rules.
| Stage | The job | Allowed | Not allowed yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Make | Get the whole argument on the page, however rough | Placeholders, notes, gaps, bad wording | Rereading, polishing, deleting paragraphs |
| 2. Rest | Let the draft sit | A few hours, ideally a night | Tinkering just a little |
| 3. Big fixes | Purpose, order, what’s missing or repeated | Moving and cutting whole sections | Choosing synonyms |
| 4. Small fixes | Paragraphs, then sentences, then words | Reading aloud, tightening | New structural changes |
| 5. Proofread | Spelling, punctuation, typos | Commas and formatting | Rewriting |
Make freewriting the rule for the making stage
The UNC Writing Center’s brainstorming handout describes freewriting as a way of writing without judging what comes out. It says “The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing.” It is honest about the cost: “Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will be little gems, discoveries, and insights.”
The handout is about brainstorming, but the principle carries over to drafting. Filler is the price of getting to the usable sentences, and deleting filler is far quicker than inventing sentences from nothing.
Use a catch-all marker for anything you’d like to fix
Fixing urges don’t disappear, so give them somewhere to go. Type a marker in square brackets and carry on. Pick markers you can search for later:
- [check] for a fact, date or name you aren’t sure of
- [example] where a story or case would help
- [better word] when the right word is out of reach
- [cut?] for a paragraph you suspect doesn’t belong
Example (invented for illustration): a rough paragraph written in the making stage might read: Most small shops lose customers at the checkout page [check: find a real figure]. The first problem is forced account creation. [example: a shop that dropped it]. The second is shipping costs that appear late [better word than “appear”]. Three problems were spotted, none of them was allowed to stop the paragraph, and all three can be found with a single search later.
The markers cost two seconds each, and a search for the opening bracket later gives you a ready-made to-do list.
Skip the opening and start where the writing comes easily
The opening paragraph is hard because you don’t know yet what the piece is. The same UNC brainstorming handout offers a way out: “Start writing the section that comes together most easily.” It adds, “You don’t have to start at the beginning of the draft,” and “You can always go back to write the introduction later.”
The UNC handout on introductions goes further: “Try writing your introduction last.” It says writing the body first helps the opening match what the piece actually argues, and that a tentative introduction is acceptable if you need one to start, as long as you plan to rewrite it.
Rough first, then better: a mediocre draft that exists can be improved, while a perfect opening paragraph with nothing under it cannot.
Set a target small enough to finish today
A target like write the article can’t be finished in one sitting, so the mind avoids it. A target you can finish is one session, one section or one argument. This is practical advice, and the numbers are yours to adjust.
Example (illustrative pace): a 1,200-word article with four sections of about 300 words each. If you draft at roughly 300 words per 25-minute session, that’s four sessions of 25 minutes, or 100 minutes of drafting in total. Spread across two days, it’s two sessions each, with a rest between them. Time yourself once on a rough piece and use your own figure, because speed varies widely by person and topic.
Stop on a sentence you know how to finish
If you stop at a natural break, restarting feels like starting from zero. If you stop in the middle of a thought, with the next sentence clear in your head, you leave a handle to grab. Many writers type a few words of the next section before closing the file. This is a habit rather than a rule, and it costs nothing to test.
Write for one person, not a crowd
A blank page is intimidating because the audience is imaginary and enormous. Pick one specific reader, such as a colleague with the problem you’re writing about, and write as if you were explaining it across a table. Specific readers produce specific sentences, and specific sentences are easier to write than general ones.
For the marketer with the Friday deadline, that might be a small-business owner who has never written a product page. Every choice about what to explain and what to skip becomes easier to make.
What to do when the draft is done
Let it rest
The UNC Writing Center’s handout on revising drafts advises: “Wait awhile after you’ve finished a draft before looking at it again.” It says a day, or even a few hours, will work. Come back with fresh eyes, and read first without changing anything, just to see the shape.
Work from big to small
The same handout puts the order plainly. At the revision stage, “you should be concerned with the large issues in the paper, not the commas.” Look at purpose and organisation first, and leave proofreading for last: “When you finish revising, that’s the time to proofread.”
- Purpose: can you say in one sentence what the piece is for?
- Order: does each section lead to the next, or are some in the wrong place?
- Gaps and repeats: clear every bracketed marker, and cut what says the same thing twice.
- Paragraphs: does each one do a single job?
- Sentences: the handout suggests you “Read your paper out loud, sentence by sentence” and listen for places where you stumble.
- Proofread: spelling, punctuation and formatting come last.
Working this way prevents the most wasteful kind of editing: polishing a paragraph that you later cut.
Common mistakes during drafting
- Rereading from the top every time you sit down. Read only the last paragraph, then carry on.
- Looking things up mid-sentence. A bracketed marker keeps the momentum, and research can wait until the second pass.
- Treating the opening as a gate. If you can’t write it, skip it, as UNC suggests.
- Setting a target that can’t be finished. Choose one section or one session, not the whole piece.
- Revising straight away. Fixes made while the draft is still warm tend to be small ones. The structural problems show after a rest.
A drafting-session checklist
- One target chosen before sitting down: a section, an argument or a timed session
- A reader in mind, written at the top of the page
- Markers ready: [check], [example], [better word], [cut?]
- Started with the section that’s easiest to write, not necessarily the first one
- No deleting except to unblock the next sentence
- Stopped mid-thought, with the next sentence jotted down
- Draft left alone for a few hours or overnight before revising
- Revision order set: purpose, order, gaps, paragraphs, sentences, proofreading
The takeaway
A first draft is raw material, and it’s meant to be untidy. Separate making from fixing, mark problems instead of solving them, start wherever the words come easily, and let the draft rest before revising from the biggest issues down to the commas.
