Drafting in investigating

Before you begin a first draft, reconsider your purpose in writing, and further focus your questions, sense of audience, and shaping strategies.

The actual drafting of an investigative essay requires that you have all your facts, data statistics, quotations, summaries, and notes from interviews or results of surveys ready to use. Organize your notes, decide on an overall shaping strategy, or write a sketch outline. In investigative writing, a primary danger is postponing writing too long, in the mistaken belief that if you read just one more article or interview just one more person, you'll get the information you need. At some point, usually before you feel ready, you must begin writing. (Writers rarely feel they know enough about their subject, but deadlines require them to begin.) Your main problem, you'll quickly discover, will be having too much to say rather than not enough. If you have too much, go back to your focusing questions and see whether you can narrow your topic further.