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A rough draft just sounds kind of like something that people don’t really want to look at or maybe they shouldn’t look at. But what’s a rough draft actually? And is it different from a first draft?
Some people traditionally have said that a rough draft is basically just a flow of ideas. You write and write and write and whatever comes out, comes out. In other words, it’s kind of rough.
Then you would have to go back and cut it down and edit, edit, edit. Personally, I never found that to be a super officiant workflow for me. I always thought why do I need to be writing all the stuff if I’m just going to end up cutting it down anyway?
Nonetheless, to get to a good piece of content we need a first draft and a second draft and likely more drafts.
Is there a difference between a rough draft and a first draft?
I would say that colloquially using the term rough draft is very similar to saying first draft. It’s the first draft that you are sharing. “Hey, could you take a look at this rough draft of my article?” It’s really the same as saying “Hey, could you take a look at this first draft of my article?”
And at the end of the day, the first draft that I show to somebody is usually not the true first draft anyway – as I run through several iterations before I show anything to anyone.
Sometimes a rough draft might be an expanded outline. So basically it has the section details, followed by a little bit more detail on what will be talked about in those sections.
At the end of the day, it’s good to remember that all written content starts with a rough draft or a first draft. And then what we do with the content from there, sets it up to have a chance to perform.
