Refer to your notes from class discussion. Look for the key concepts in your assignment, and then look back at your notes for anything that addresses the assignment. Choose that place in your notes to begin a draft for the assignment.

Students generally say writing “flows” when writing includes important transitions from paragraph to paragraph, idea to idea. You might think your writing is choppy if these transitions are missing. Transitions are more than simply key words or sentences. They help your reader understand how and why you are getting from one point to the next. You can take your reader anywhere in your discussion—to Mars if you want—but you can’t let go of their hand. If your writing is missing transitions, find those places in your writing that seem choppy. Try explaining out loud your reasoning behind moving from one paragraph to another, or even from one sentence to another. That reasoning will also give you clues about your thesis. The thesis (or answer to “why”) is ever present in transitions.

To think of transitions in a larger sense, think of the paper you are writing as a transition from discussion to writing. Or think of your paper as a transition between one course and another or a course and your college education as a whole. Where does this paper fit in?

What is the most important thing you have to say in your paper? Is it near the beginning? Good. No? Writing a paper is about demystifying ideas, not obfuscating them. Lead your reader carefully down the path of your thinking.

Without looking at your paper, resay into a voice recorder or type into a word processor what your paper is about, what point you make, and how you chose your points of support. If you can do that successfully, you’re probably in good stead. Can’t do it? Make adjustments to your paper until your satisfied with your ability to explain it without looking at the paper. (Is your explanation clearer than your paper? Write your explanation in your paper.)

For each major assertion in your paper, write three statements of support. Are any of these statements of support in turn assertions themselves? Write three statements of support for these as well. Continue in this vein.

Make a reverse outline for your draft. For each paragraph, write two things in the margin: 1) what the paragraph says, and 2) what the paragraph does, how it functions in your paper (makes a transition between ideas, introduces information, offers source material for exploring the implications of the thesis, etc.) (adapted from Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?)