ClearTips: Riveting reports

An Approach to Planning and Drafting

Most writers start by assembling details, examples, and comments in paragraphs—sporadically making points, rarely conveying a message. The approach here is to do the reverse-to start with your messages, to support them with points, and to use those points to assemble your details, examples, and comments.

What I suggest here is that you begin by answering a few basic questions about your topic, audience, and purpose. Next, come up with your main message and three or four supporting messages. Then use those messages to develop an outline, and move beyond that outline to formulate a detailed paragraph-by-paragraph plan for your first draft.

This may seem overly systematic, but it is just a plan, and plans change. The idea is to give your report a strong, linear foundation—and to save time when it comes to writing.

Coming up with your main and supporting messages before you start writing may seem impossible (the mere thought of it makes some writers catatonic). But what better way to structure your report than to have your messages provide your outline?

The techniques in this book are one set among many for preparing to write. Not all people can systematically plan what they are going to write before they start drafting, and many have to start writing just to get a feel for what they're dealing with. There's no reason to deny such spontaneity. But if you're in this school, try setting your first outpouring to one side and using it as raw material for the planning and drafting techniques described here.

If you normally produce an outline before you begin writing, first try answering the six questions in Chapter 1. If you already have an outline, see how you might improve it after you've answered those questions. Then read on to see how you can open your outline into a paragraph-by-paragraph plan.

If you write from a stack of index cards covered with notes, the techniques suggested here can help you to assemble those notes. The plan you develop will help you decide which bits of your raw material fit where and which don't fit at all.

You can also use these techniques at various points in the writing process and in various situations:

• Before you write—obviously the best time to plan
• After you write—to get a sense of the structure, balance, and linearity of your argument
• If you're asking someone to write something—to have them make it perfectly explicit what they will deliver
  
• If you're being asked to write something—to establish a "contract" for what you will deliver and to avoid a manager's capricious changes of mind
• If you're writing with others—to avoid overlap and to have a clear idea of what your colleagues are covering in their sections or chapters

And now, the nine steps to planning and drafting your riveting report:

Step 1. Figure out what you're writing and for whom. Start by answering six simple questions. What's your main topic? Who's going to read what you write? What's your purpose in writing? How long should your report be? How much time can you spend writing? What's your working title?

Step 2. Spell out your main and supporting messages. The most important sentence in any piece of writing spells out the main message. The problem is, few writers know what their main message is, and, if they do, they either don't write it down or they bury it in the conclusion. Identifying your main message forces you to boil down everything you want to communicate about a topic into one statement. It can be descriptive or prescriptive, and you should be able to voice it easily in 25 or so words. A short piece of writing may have no supporting messages, only a series of points to support the main message. A long piece generally needs supporting messages, to make your argument clear. But avoid more than three or four if you want people to remember them.

Step 3. Use your supporting messages to develop an outline. This way your outline and headings will reinforce—and resonate with—your messages. Your main message should drive your title, and your supporting messages should drive your section headings, which generally are needed in pieces longer than a couple of pages.

Step 4. Decide how long each section will be. Given the overall page length that you've decided at the outset, assign those pages to individual sections. Because the page is merely a unit of display, try to convert those pages to numbers of paragraphs. If you're writing 10 double-spaced pages, that's around 25 paragraphs. If 15, that's around 40.

Step 5. Create a paragraph-by-paragraph plan. To each paragraph, assign the topic that you need to cover, expanding your outline of section (and possibly subsection) headings into a paragraph-by-paragraph plan. Keep in mind that this is just a start—that some paragraph topics will disappear, others will expand to two or three paragraphs.

Step 6. Make a strong point about each of your paragraph topics. To turn those topics into points, write each of them at the top of a page or screen. If you have 30 paragraph topics, you'll need 30 sheets of paper or 30 screens. Now, make a strong point about each topic in 25 to 30 words. Assembled, this clothesline of points is your full line of argument.

Step 7. Gather your details, examples, and comments. On each page, under each point, make notes to assemble your details, examples, and comments. And to make it easier to shoot down your birds of thought on the wing, spread all your pages out on a table or carry them around in a binder.

Step 8. Convert your raw material into draft paragraphs. After you've assigned all your examples, details, and other supportive material to each point, you are finally ready to begin writing. Each page of raw material can now be drafted into sentences to build a coherent paragraph. See Powerful Paragraphs, another volume in this series, for tips on writing paragraphs that are unified, coherent, and well developed.

Step 9. Tape your draft on a wall to apply the finishing touches. The perspective of seeing an entire draft at one glance is more illuminating than you can imagine-far more so than looking at one page at a time. With your draft taped on a wall or spread out on the floor, you can check the balance of your sections, review your line of argument, make sure your messages stand out, review your headings, and get rid of anything that doesn't fit.

So, planning means having more than a rough outline to guide your writing. It also means identifying your messages, organizing your report into sections and subsections, and arranging those sections in the most persuasive and logical order. And it means deciding the point of each paragraph-and gathering the details and examples you will call on to support each point-before you begin writing. Drafting thus means writing from a plan. It means making sure that your main and supporting messages are clear to your readers, and that the point of each paragraph is clear and well supported.

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