Document Development Exposition: White Paper

Explain in detail your document’s development from planning to finish, describing your
challenges, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

Planning
My topic for the semester is oysters. I chose oysters because I like them as food, but I also
understood their importance to the environment. For the white paper, I wanted to write about the
importance oysters have to the environment and how oysters are threatened. I outlined main part of
the paper into the sections why are oysters important, the threat of human development, and how
we can help. I wanted my paper to be alarming, but I also wanted it to be a call to action.

First Draft (for peer editing)

I initially wanted to find good sources for the document and frame my points around them. In this
part of the process, I learned that your writing should be based off facts. So, I put the sources in the
document first and then I wrote my own analysis around the sources. I found that finding sources
that talked about the world were hard to find. I made sure that when my evidence was only talking
about a certain region, I only extrapolated the analysis to that area. I also learned that the research
should be done before the writing.

Second Draft (for your packet)

My initial draft, before peer editing, was very dry and did not have many colors or pictures. I realized
while writing this draft that the formatting and design of the document must match the tone. In
addition, I learned that matching the colors in the document to the topic will make it seem more
coherent. For example, I chose to use the color blue because my topic had is related to the ocean
and colder colors. A challenge I ran into was finding pictures to use that looked different from each
other. All oyster beds look pretty much the same, so I tried to find pictures with different
perspectives of the oyster beds.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

For the final draft of the project, I made a few significant changes. First, my formatting was a little too
like one of the examples, so I had to try and be more creative. Second, I reformatted so that my
problem was at the beginning of the paper. On the last draft I started with why oysters are
important, and, on this draft, I chose to start with “Oysters are threatened by Human Development.”
A challenge I had was deciding whether to keep some pictures. Figures should be present only if they
can be referenced and expanded on. I wanted to have a picture of an oyster meal, but it really did
not add to the purpose of the document, so I chose to remove it.