The Writing Process (PART 1)

Prewriting is the initial stage of the writing process. As you begin thinking about
a specific writing task, consider what is expected of you in terms of your intended
audience, purpose, and context. Then start exploring your topic by talking with
others working on the same assignment, keeping a journal, freewriting, or
questioning. In short, do whatever it takes to energize your thinking and jump-
start your writing.

Drafting involves writing down your ideas quickly, without worrying about being
perfect or staying on topic. The more ideas you get down on paper, the more
options you will have as you begin t clarify your thesis and purpose fro writing,
organize, and revise. Progress –not perfection-is your goal at this stage.

Drafting involves many different types of activity: Writing to develop your idea in
paragraphs and sentences, outlining and revising your outline as you go along and,
finally, producing some of the features of the academic writing.

Revising offers you the opportunity to focus your purpose for writing, establish a
clear thesis statement, and organize your ideas toward those ends. This is the time
to start stabilizing the overall structure of your essay as well as the structure of the
individual paragraphs and to reconsider your introduction and conclusion.
Remember that revising means producing another draft fro further revision and
editing.

Editing focuses on surface features: punctuation, spelling, word choice and

Standardized English, grammar, and sentence structure. As you prepare your work
for final submission, consider reading it aloud to discover which sentence
structures and word choices could be improved.

Planning and Drafting Essays

1. Keeping a journal is one way to explore a subject.

2. Freewriting offers a risk-free way to explore a subject (freewriting/directed
freewriting).
3. Questioning pushes the boundaries of your subject.
Rhetorical methods of development:

 Narration. What kind of story can I tell about …?

 Description. What kind of …do I have? What is my place in…?
 Process analysis. How have I gone doing…?
 Cause-and-consequence analysis. What have been the causes of…?
Consequences?
 Comparison and contrast. How do my… compare with those of…?
 Classification and division. How can I classify the different types of…?
 Definition. How do I define…?

Checklist for assessing a topic:

 Are you interested in the topic?

 Is the topic appropriate for your audience?
 Can you interest the audience in your topic?
 What is your purpose in writing about this topic?
 Can you do justice to the topic in the time and space available to you? Or
should you narrow it down or expand it?
 Do you know enough about the topic to write a paper of the length your
instructor requires? If not, how will you get additional information?
 Are you willing to learn more about the topic?

Developing the main idea you want to convey:

At this point, you have come a long way toward developing the main idea, and
established your purpose for writing. Your subject, purpose, supporting
information, and focus all come together in a controlling idea, or thesis, one
appropriate for your audience and context. In the first draft or two, your thesis
may only be tentative. By your final draft, however, you will have developed a
clear thesis statement, an explicit declaration (usually in one sentence) of the main
idea. Your thesis statement conveys a single idea, clearly focused and specifically
stated. This is the central idea stated in the form of an assertion, or claim, which
indicates what you believe to be true, interesting, or valuable about your topic.

Examples:

 Dave Rahm was a stunt pilot, the air’s own genius. (Annie Dillard)
  With a show of energy and creativity that would be admirable if applied to
the (missing) assignments in question, my students persist, week after
week, semester after semester, year after year, in offering excuses about
why their work is not ready. Those reasons fall into several broad
categories: the family, the best friend, the evils of dorm life, the evils of
technology, and the totally bizarre. (Carolyn Foster Segal, “The Dog Ate My
Disk, and Other Tales of Woe”).

The main idea in an argumentative essay usually carries a strong point of view,
as in the following, which unmistakably argues for a specific course of action.

 Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without

exception. (Amnesty International)

Tips for developing a thesis statement:

- Decide which feature of the topic interests you most.

- Write down your point of view or assertion about that feature.
- Mark the passages in your freewriting, journal, or rough draft that support
your position.
- Draft a thesis statement, and consider whether you ca address the full
scope of this tentative thesis in your essay or whether it is still too broad to
be developed sufficiently.
- After your first or second draft, ask yourself whether your thesis is too
broad for your essay (or vice versa). Revise your thesis to widen or narrow
its scope in the direction your essay has taken.
- If you are unhappy with the results, start again with the first tip, and be
more specific.

The thesis statement most often appears in the first paragraph of an essay,
although you can put yours anywhere that suits your purpose (even in the
conclusion).

1. America is suffering from overwork. Too many of us are too busy, trying to
squeeze more into each day while having less to show for it. Although our
growing time crunch is often portrayed as a personal dilemma, it is in fact a
major social problem that has reached crisis proportions over the past 20
years. (Barbara Brandt).
 2. The story of zero is an ancient one. Its roots stretch back to the dawn of
mathematics, in the time thousands of years before the first civilization,
long before humans could read and write. But as natural as zero seems to
us today, for ancient people zero was a foreign –and frightening- idea. An
Eastern concept, born in the Fertile Crescent a few centuries before the
birth of Christ, zero not only evoked images of a primal void, it also had
dangerous mathematical properties. Within zero there is the power of
shatter the framework of logic. (Charles Seife).

Outline

An outline is a visual map of your thinking. The main points you want to make
form the major headings, and the supporting ideas form the subheadings.

Example:

Tentative Thesis Statement: Balancing a part-time job with success in school-

work is not only a manageable task, but also a valuable experience contributing to
growth as a student and as an individual.

I. Balancing work with school is manageable

A. Your own sacrifices will determine success
1. Time with friends
2. Use breaks at work wisely
3. Get a good handle on your school schedule and determine how
far ahead you need to start assignments
B. Best if you have an understanding employer
1. An employer who puts school first and values scholarship
2. Take advantage of university-run work programs
C. Flexibility in scheduling hours
1. Plan ahead around exam and paper weeks
2. Often need to sacrifice weekend time in order to get in hours
II. Balancing work with school is valuable experience for students
A. Provides discipline
1. In prioritizing schoolwork, those students who work part-time jobs
often have a good handle on their academic schedules and stay
on top of their studies
2. Working students learn the importance of time management and
set realistic goals and time for themselves
B. Working to pay for education leads students to place more value on
their education
 1. More serious about schoolwork
2. Realize the importance of timely completion of degree
C. Part-time work can offer career experience
1. Internships
2. Careers-related work
D. Part-time work can motivate students to achieve excellence in school
as a means of moving beyond the scope of part-time work
1. Face boredom or monotony in job
2. Face low wages
3. Constructive use of potential negativity

NOTE: You compose a draft by developing the information that will

constitute the paragraphs of your essay. If you are working from an
informal list, you will have a sense of where you want to take ideas
but may be uncertain about the number and nature of the
paragraphs you will need. If you are working from an outline, you
can anticipate the number of paragraphs you will probably write and
what you hope to accomplish in each paragraph.

- You can develop a paragraph with details.

- You can develop a paragraph by providing examples
- You can develop paragraphs using rhetorical methods:
1. Narrating a series of events tells readers what happened. (Chronological
order)
2. Describing how something looks, sounds, smells, or feels adds useful
detail.
3. Explaining process shows readers how something happens.
4. Analyzing cause or consequence establishes why something happens or
predicts results
5. Comparing or contrasting helps readers see similarities or differences
6. Classifying and dividing can give order to material
7. Defining an important concept or term clarifies meaning

REVISING

Revising entails rethinking what you have addressed your audience, how clearly
you have stated your thesis; how effectively you have arranged your information,
how thoroughly you have developed your assertions.
EDITING

Editing is polishing your writing: choose words precisely, shape prose more
distinctly, and structure sentences more effectively. Remember:

- Consider your work as a whole

- Evaluate your tone
- Compose an effective introduction and conclusion
- Strengthen the unity and coherence of paragraphs
- Improve transitions
- Benefit from a reviewer’s comments
- Edit to improve style
- Proofread to eliminate surface errors, and
- Submit a final draft
1. Anything and everything on the page can be revised
2. What is not on the page can be more important than what is on the page
3. Your tone helps you fulfill your purpose.

For the introduction and the conclusion

- An effective introduction arouses your reader’s interest and establishes your

topic and tone
- Opening with an unusual fact or statistic
- Opening with an anecdote or example
- Opening with a question your essay will answer
- Opening with an appropriate quotation
- Opening with general information or background about the topic
- Opening with a thesis, simply stated
- An effective conclusion helps readers understand the most important points
of your essay and why they are significant
- Rephrasing the thesis and summarizing the main points
- Calling attention to larger issues

TIPS FOR IMPROVING PARAGRAPH UNITY

- Identify the topic sentence for each paragraph. Where is each located?
- Relate. Read each sentence in a paragraph, and decide if and how it relates
to the topic sentence.
- Eliminate any sentence that violates the unity of a paragraph should be cut
(and possibly saved for use elsewhere)
- Clarify any sentence that “almost” relates to the topic sentence should be
revised with details or transitions to make the relationship clear.
- Rewrite if more than one idea is being conveyed in a single paragraph,
either rewrite the topic sentence so that it includes both ideas and
establishes a relationship between them or split the paragraph into two.