Fat Drafting Your Essay
Methods for Fat Drafting:
Add a snap shot - a word picture. Use words and phrases to zoom in and capture the sights, smells,
sounds, etc. of the scene to let it reveal something OR add concrete examples/facts to focus the
reader’s lens on a set of details that might be blurry. Add a snapshot to show what a character is
feeling so that the reader can experience it with you.
Example-
I went inside. The smell of hot cocoa flowed throughout the house. The fire crackled in
the small red and brown bricked fireplace. My mother was stirring the beef soup. My two
year old brother was quietly playing with wooden blocks that had little letters carved in
them. My father sat playing a slow, sad song on his beautiful country guitar. I took off my
parka an hung it on the brass coat rack. My mother gave me a bowl of hot beef soup and
cocoa. The broth felt warm running down my throat. The feeling of warmth spread all over
me.
Add a thoughtshot . . . show what you are thinking when you’re making a decision, where you are
wondering, when you’re trying to frame a personal experience for the reader. Add flashbacks, flash
forwards (where you show the thought process about what actions could be taken), and internal
dialogue ( what you are saying in your mind).
Example-
Here’s an example of a thoughtshot from Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
The jolts that took the pilot had come, and now Brian sat
and there was a strange feeling of silence in the thrumming
roar of the engine—a strange feeling of silence and being alone.
He was stopped. Inside he was stopped. He could not think
past what he saw, what he felt. All was stopped. The very core
him, the very center of Brian Robeson was stopped and stricken
with a white-flash of horror, a terror so intense that his
breathing, his thinking, and nearly his heart had stopped.
Another exampleI don’t know why my mother always sat down in front of the television after dinner.
Perhaps it was the only time she really had for herself. My sister and I always
had to do the dishes. My step-father usually went out to the garage to work on
the old Buick that he always thought he could get up and running someday.
Maybe Mom just liked being alone with her game show. She always watched
Jeopardy with Alex Terbeck. I think she thought Alex was handsome and smart.
Maybe she dreamed that Alex would come into our living room one day and swoop
her off to game show land. Mom knew a lot of the answers on Jeopardy, and she’d
call them out to the television as if those contestants could hear her. “Where is China!”
she’d yell. I always thought it was sort of dumb, and I remember one time my best friend
Angela was over at my house. She heard my mother and looked at me like I was weird.
Explode a moment – zoom in on the detail . . . start with the big idea and get more and more specific
with your development of that detail.
First sentence: The
girl ran away from the party.
Exploded moment:
Music and laughter filled the room as the entire village of Chinese peasants danced in
merriment under the airy pavilion, which was lighted by gold tasseled, rice paper lanterns and the
starry sky. Oddly, the dark-haired girl, who was clearly overdressed for a peasant in her sky-blue
silk kimono and trimmed in fold and royal blue ribbon, was fleeing the celebration as onlookers
noted her hasty departure. “Why is that curiously beautiful stranger running from our harvest
feast?” asked the plumpish overlord of one of the nearby farmers.
As the mysteriously lovely girl dashed from the festivity, she quickly took one last look
over her shoulder at all that she was leaving behind. In that moment, she awkwardly tripped,
displacing the intricately designed slipper. Her abrupt exit did not go unnoticed for long. The
overlord’s handsome son, Lo Koo, frantically searched the room with his keen hawk-like eyes.
All that he found and all that remained of the wondrous beauty was the golden slipper that had
earlier encased her dainty foot. Carefully, he placed the shoe into the deep pocket of the ornately
fashioned kimono. Desperately, he
searched every inch of the pavilion before continuing his hunt along the path from which his
father and the farmer had witnessed the girl’s mysterious exodus. My son, wait…” called the
overlord to his lovesick son.
Write in slow motion

Stretch the moment out . . . try to capture every detail – every emotion, thought sight, smell,
taste, touch . . . draw out the big moment into more than the one or two sentences you have
Writing like a DVD player

Play – keep telling story – use sentences that keep driving the story forward

Skip scenes – jump ahead using time transitions or condensing time into a paragraph or two
while giving examples

Skip back – start with a flashback

Pause – find an important part in story to pause the action and have your character think (add
a thoughtshot) or zoom in and add a snapshot that catches everything about that moment.
Freeze the scene for the reader so they can capture everything they want to
Build a scene
Snapshot + Thoughtshot + Dialogue = scene
Add dialogue to enhance – replace a snapshot with dialogue where it reveals character p. 109
Use dialogue where appropriate to show something about you p. 118
Mark the center of gravity sentence from each paragraph – the one that seems “core, crucial,
provocative, evocative, and so on.” List these sentences somewhere and develop off each one. What
can you add to your paper?
Find two places in your draft where expansion seems to be invited and then write in those places
and see what you find to add to your paper.
Circle five important or thought-provoking words in your paper. Freewrite on each one. Find 5
sentences. Do the same. See what you can add to your paper.
Write different leads that imitate the models. What does each different lead predict you will need
to change about your paper?
Think about your draft as hypertext. Where would you create a link and then write the imagined
text of that link. How could you insert this material into your essay?
Explain a detail
Clarify a point
Generate an example
Extend an idea
Add a story or an anecdote
Insert a contrary point and argue with it
Change your voice
Find a new connection
Reorder parts
Condense ideas