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How to write a blog post: The four-drafts method

Amruta Ranade on January 05, 2020

If starting a new blog is one of your new year resolutions, this video will help you write a blog post in four drafts: Blogging workbook menti...
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MurrayVarey

Great post Amruta!

I've come to realise how important it is to have a writing process. Too often I've neglected one of those early stages.

Out of interest, where do you fit research into the process?

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Amruta Ranade

Excellent question! Research, self-study, and user-testing the process/product workflow is my pre-writing phase. The throwaway draft is the output of the research phase.

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MurrayVarey

Makes perfect sense -- get the research done, then get the words out onto the page. Thanks!

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Piotr Murach

Thanks for sharing your process. I've never thought about playing the article back to me via speech processing - brilliant! Will try next time.

Similar to you, my first draft is a dump of all my thoughts about the topic. However, before I do that I like to create a high-level outline of what I want this article to be about. I find that without the outline my article may veer off the path. The outline helps me decided what things to keep and what to throw away. I'm not a professional writer at all, but I'm committed to getting better at this craft. So thanks for sharing!

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Amruta Ranade • Edited

Thank YOU for sharing your process :)

I used to write an outline first and then write the draft. What I found, however, was that the article could end up being about what I want to say instead of what the reader (or the user) needs to know. This works perfectly fine for my personal blog posts but it doesn't really work for my technical documentation tasks. Hence I broke up my process into two distinct drafts: the first draft is a braindump of everything I want to say. Then I switch my mindset to that of the reader and use the audience analysis worksheet to figure out what the reader needs to know. And the rewrite the draft from the user's perspective.

(I admit it might be an unnecessary step for someone who doesn't need to craft professional tech docs, but it's what works best for me in my job as a tech writer.)

I admire your commitment to get better at writing! Good luck and I look forward to following your writing journey :)

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Vineet Singh

Excellent article Amruta!

I'm looking to start my own blog soon and this is just perfect for me

Thanks again

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The Tb Joshua’s Blog

Great Post .very useful keep it up

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blyoung

Very Nice!!!! This is very helpful.

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Kazumi Karbowski

I'm inspired to write more. Thank you, Amruta!
Do you use a paid-version of Grammerly or is the free version good enough?

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Amruta Ranade

I am so glad the post inspired you to write more!
I use the paid version of Grammarly but that's because I use it at my job as a tech writer. If I wasn't using it professionally, the free version would have been good enough for me.

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Kazumi Karbowski

Sounds good! Thank you. I feel my first Dev.to blog post coming up!

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SPeshov

Will be different for more technical posts - I just sit and write it at once, interesting method.

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Amruta Ranade • Edited

I use this process specifically for technical posts. As a tech writer, I found that writing the post in one session does not produce a draft good enough to be published professionally. Hence the rest of the process :)