Writing your first essay

Every essay in Draftl starts from a template on your dashboard and opens into a full-featured editor with autosave, formatting tools, and an AI tools panel. Here's how to get from a blank page to a working draft.

Choose a template

At the top of your Essays home page you'll find a grid of six templates:

Pick the one that matches what you're writing. The application-specific templates come preloaded with the official prompts, so you never have to hunt them down or worry about pasting the wrong year's prompt. If nothing fits, Blank Essay works for anything.

Walk through the creation steps

Each template opens a short multi-step form with a "Step X of Y" indicator. The steps vary slightly by template:

• Common App, Coalition, and UC — first give your essay a working title ("Give your essay a working title — you can rename it later."), then choose your prompt from a dropdown of the official prompts: 7 for Common App, 6 for Coalition, and 8 UC personal insight questions.
• Supplemental — pick your school first from a searchable dropdown of 430+ US schools ("Pick the school this essay is for."), then paste the prompt your essay is responding to, then add a title.
• Scholarship and Blank — enter a title, then paste your prompt.

When you finish the last step, Draftl creates the essay and drops you straight into the editor.

Get to know the editor

The editor is split into two resizable panels: your writing on the left and the tools panel on the right (you can collapse it when you want to focus). Up top you'll find a Back to dashboard link, your editable essay title, and a save status indicator.

A few things that just work in the background:

• Autosave — every change saves automatically. The header shows how fresh your draft is, like "Saved 2 min ago." There's no save button to remember, so you can close the tab mid-sentence and pick up exactly where you left off.
• Live word count — your word count updates in real time as you type, so you always know where you stand against the limit.
• Skeleton loading — while an essay loads, you'll see placeholder blocks rather than a spinner, and your draft appears in place a moment later.

The toolbar covers standard formatting: bold, italic, and underline, a choice of eight fonts (Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Georgia, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana), font size, and 12 text colors.

Most application portals strip formatting anyway, so keep styling light and focus on the words.

Adjust your essay settings

Click the settings icon in the top-right corner of the editor to open the essay settings dialog. From there you can edit three things:

1. Title — rename the essay anytime.
2. Prompt — update or replace the prompt you're responding to.
3. Word limit — every essay starts with a default limit of 300 words. Change it to match your actual prompt (650 for the Common App personal statement, for example) so the word count and AI feedback are calibrated correctly.

Use the tools panel

The right-hand panel is where Draftl's AI lives, organized into tabs:

• Writing Agent — chat with an AI assistant about your draft.
• Essay Grader — get your essay scored with detailed feedback.
• Grammar Check — catch mechanical errors.
• Cliché Detector — flag overused phrases and tropes.
• Hook Generator — brainstorm opening lines.
• Comments — see and reply to comments from anyone you've shared the essay with.

You can also pick which AI model powers these tools using the model selector in the top-right of the editor. For a deeper look at interpreting scores and suggestions, read Understanding AI feedback.

Share when you're ready

When you want a second pair of eyes, click the share icon next to settings to invite someone by email as a viewer, commenter, or editor — collaborators can even work in the essay live alongside you. If you're working with an advisor, see Working with your consultant, or browse the marketplace via Getting a professional essay review.

Once you have a few drafts going, keep them tidy with folders.