the writing process planning

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Academic writing
• A step-by-step guide to the writing process

The Writing Process | 5 Steps with Examples & Tips

Published on April 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on December 8, 2023.

Good academic writing requires effective planning, drafting, and revision.

The writing process looks different for everyone, but there are five basic steps that will help you structure your time when writing any kind of text.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Table of contents

Step 1: prewriting, step 2: planning and outlining, step 3: writing a first draft, step 4: redrafting and revising, step 5: editing and proofreading, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the writing process.

Before you start writing, you need to decide exactly what you’ll write about and do the necessary research.

Coming up with a topic

If you have to come up with your own topic for an assignment, think of what you’ve covered in class— is there a particular area that intrigued, interested, or even confused you? Topics that left you with additional questions are perfect, as these are questions you can explore in your writing.

The scope depends on what type of text you’re writing—for example, an essay or a research paper will be less in-depth than a dissertation topic . Don’t pick anything too ambitious to cover within the word count, or too limited for you to find much to say.

Narrow down your idea to a specific argument or question. For example, an appropriate topic for an essay might be narrowed down like this:

Doing the research

Once you know your topic, it’s time to search for relevant sources and gather the information you need. This process varies according to your field of study and the scope of the assignment. It might involve:

• Searching for primary and secondary sources .
• Reading the relevant texts closely (e.g. for literary analysis ).
• Collecting data using relevant research methods (e.g. experiments , interviews or surveys )

From a writing perspective, the important thing is to take plenty of notes while you do the research. Keep track of the titles, authors, publication dates, and relevant quotations from your sources; the data you gathered; and your initial analysis or interpretation of the questions you’re addressing.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Especially in academic writing , it’s important to use a logical structure to convey information effectively. It’s far better to plan this out in advance than to try to work out your structure once you’ve already begun writing.

Creating an essay outline is a useful way to plan out your structure before you start writing. This should help you work out the main ideas you want to focus on and how you’ll organize them. The outline doesn’t have to be final—it’s okay if your structure changes throughout the writing process.

Use bullet points or numbering to make your structure clear at a glance. Even for a short text that won’t use headings, it’s useful to summarize what you’ll discuss in each paragraph.

An outline for a literary analysis essay might look something like this:

• Describe the theatricality of Austen’s works
• Outline the role theater plays in Mansfield Park
• Introduce the research question: How does Austen use theater to express the characters’ morality in Mansfield Park ?
• Discuss Austen’s depiction of the performance at the end of the first volume
• Discuss how Sir Bertram reacts to the acting scheme
• Introduce Austen’s use of stage direction–like details during dialogue
• Explore how these are deployed to show the characters’ self-absorption
• Discuss Austen’s description of Maria and Julia’s relationship as polite but affectionless
• Compare Mrs. Norris’s self-conceit as charitable despite her idleness
• Summarize the three themes: The acting scheme, stage directions, and the performance of morals
• Answer the research question
• Indicate areas for further study

Once you have a clear idea of your structure, it’s time to produce a full first draft.

This process can be quite non-linear. For example, it’s reasonable to begin writing with the main body of the text, saving the introduction for later once you have a clearer idea of the text you’re introducing.

To give structure to your writing, use your outline as a framework. Make sure that each paragraph has a clear central focus that relates to your overall argument.

Hover over the parts of the example, from a literary analysis essay on Mansfield Park , to see how a paragraph is constructed.

The character of Mrs. Norris provides another example of the performance of morals in Mansfield Park . Early in the novel, she is described in scathing terms as one who knows “how to dictate liberality to others: but her love of money was equal to her love of directing” (p. 7). This hypocrisy does not interfere with her self-conceit as “the most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world” (p. 7). Mrs. Norris is strongly concerned with appearing charitable, but unwilling to make any personal sacrifices to accomplish this. Instead, she stage-manages the charitable actions of others, never acknowledging that her schemes do not put her own time or money on the line. In this way, Austen again shows us a character whose morally upright behavior is fundamentally a performance—for whom the goal of doing good is less important than the goal of seeming good.

When you move onto a different topic, start a new paragraph. Use appropriate transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas.

The goal at this stage is to get a draft completed, not to make everything perfect as you go along. Once you have a full draft in front of you, you’ll have a clearer idea of where improvement is needed.

Give yourself a first draft deadline that leaves you a reasonable length of time to revise, edit, and proofread before the final deadline. For a longer text like a dissertation, you and your supervisor might agree on deadlines for individual chapters.

Now it’s time to look critically at your first draft and find potential areas for improvement. Redrafting means substantially adding or removing content, while revising involves making changes to structure and reformulating arguments.

Evaluating the first draft

It can be difficult to look objectively at your own writing. Your perspective might be positively or negatively biased—especially if you try to assess your work shortly after finishing it.

It’s best to leave your work alone for at least a day or two after completing the first draft. Come back after a break to evaluate it with fresh eyes; you’ll spot things you wouldn’t have otherwise.

When evaluating your writing at this stage, you’re mainly looking for larger issues such as changes to your arguments or structure. Starting with bigger concerns saves you time—there’s no point perfecting the grammar of something you end up cutting out anyway.

Right now, you’re looking for:

• Arguments that are unclear or illogical.
• Areas where information would be better presented in a different order.
• Passages where additional information or explanation is needed.
• Passages that are irrelevant to your overall argument.

For example, in our paper on Mansfield Park , we might realize the argument would be stronger with more direct consideration of the protagonist Fanny Price, and decide to try to find space for this in paragraph IV.

For some assignments, you’ll receive feedback on your first draft from a supervisor or peer. Be sure to pay close attention to what they tell you, as their advice will usually give you a clearer sense of which aspects of your text need improvement.

Redrafting and revising

Once you’ve decided where changes are needed, make the big changes first, as these are likely to have knock-on effects on the rest. Depending on what your text needs, this step might involve:

• Making changes to your overall argument.
• Reordering the text.
• Cutting parts of the text.
• Adding new text.

You can go back and forth between writing, redrafting and revising several times until you have a final draft that you’re happy with.

Think about what changes you can realistically accomplish in the time you have. If you are running low on time, you don’t want to leave your text in a messy state halfway through redrafting, so make sure to prioritize the most important changes.

Editing focuses on local concerns like clarity and sentence structure. Proofreading involves reading the text closely to remove typos and ensure stylistic consistency. You can check all your drafts and texts in minutes with an AI proofreader .

Editing for grammar and clarity

When editing, you want to ensure your text is clear, concise, and grammatically correct. You’re looking out for:

• Grammatical errors.
• Ambiguous phrasings.
• Redundancy and repetition .

In your initial draft, it’s common to end up with a lot of sentences that are poorly formulated. Look critically at where your meaning could be conveyed in a more effective way or in fewer words, and watch out for common sentence structure mistakes like run-on sentences and sentence fragments:

• Austen’s style is frequently humorous, her characters are often described as “witty.” Although this is less true of Mansfield Park .
• Austen’s style is frequently humorous. Her characters are often described as “witty,” although this is less true of Mansfield Park .

To make your sentences run smoothly, you can always use a paraphrasing tool to rewrite them in a clearer way.

Proofreading for small mistakes and typos

When proofreading, first look out for typos in your text:

• Spelling errors.
• Missing words.
• Confused word choices .
• Punctuation errors .
• Missing or excess spaces.

Use a grammar checker , but be sure to do another manual check after. Read through your text line by line, watching out for problem areas highlighted by the software but also for any other issues it might have missed.

For example, in the following phrase we notice several errors:

• Mary Crawfords character is a complicate one and her relationships with Fanny and Edmund undergoes several transformations through out the novel.
• Mary Crawford’s character is a complicated one, and her relationships with both Fanny and Edmund undergo several transformations throughout the novel.

Proofreading for stylistic consistency

There are several issues in academic writing where you can choose between multiple different standards. For example:

• Whether you use the serial comma .
• Whether you use American or British spellings and punctuation (you can use a punctuation checker for this).
• Where you use numerals vs. words for numbers.
• How you capitalize your titles and headings.

Unless you’re given specific guidance on these issues, it’s your choice which standards you follow. The important thing is to consistently follow one standard for each issue. For example, don’t use a mixture of American and British spellings in your paper.

Additionally, you will probably be provided with specific guidelines for issues related to format (how your text is presented on the page) and citations (how you acknowledge your sources). Always follow these instructions carefully.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy
• Deep learning
• Generative AI
• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

Revising, proofreading, and editing are different stages of the writing process .

• Revising is making structural and logical changes to your text—reformulating arguments and reordering information.
• Editing refers to making more local changes to things like sentence structure and phrasing to make sure your meaning is conveyed clearly and concisely.
• Proofreading involves looking at the text closely, line by line, to spot any typos and issues with consistency and correct them.

Whether you’re publishing a blog, submitting a research paper , or even just writing an important email, there are a few techniques you can use to make sure it’s error-free:

• Take a break : Set your work aside for at least a few hours so that you can look at it with fresh eyes.
• Proofread a printout : Staring at a screen for too long can cause fatigue – sit down with a pen and paper to check the final version.
• Use digital shortcuts : Take note of any recurring mistakes (for example, misspelling a particular word, switching between US and UK English , or inconsistently capitalizing a term), and use Find and Replace to fix it throughout the document.

If you want to be confident that an important text is error-free, it might be worth choosing a professional proofreading service instead.

If you’ve gone over the word limit set for your assignment, shorten your sentences and cut repetition and redundancy during the editing process. If you use a lot of long quotes , consider shortening them to just the essentials.

If you need to remove a lot of words, you may have to cut certain passages. Remember that everything in the text should be there to support your argument; look for any information that’s not essential to your point and remove it.

To make this process easier and faster, you can use a paraphrasing tool . With this tool, you can rewrite your text to make it simpler and shorter. If that’s not enough, you can copy-paste your paraphrased text into the summarizer . This tool will distill your text to its core message.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, December 08). The Writing Process | 5 Steps with Examples & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-writing/writing-process/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to create a structured research paper outline | example, quick guide to proofreading | what, why and how to proofread, academic paragraph structure | step-by-step guide & examples, what is your plagiarism score.

Implementing the Writing Process

About this Strategy Guide

This strategy guide explains the writing process and offers practical methods for applying it in your classroom to help students become proficient writers.

Research Basis

Strategy in practice, related resources.

The writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising and editing, rewriting, publishing—mirrors the way proficient writers write. In using the writing process, your students will be able to break writing into manageable chunks and focus on producing quality material. The final stage, publishing, ensures that students have an audience. Students can even coach each other during various stages of the process for further emphasis on audience and greater collaboration during editing.  Studies show that students who learn the writing process score better on state writing tests than those who receive only specific instruction in the skills assessed on the test. This type of authentic writing produces lifelong learners and allows students to apply their writing skills to all subjects. Success in writing greatly depends on a student’s attitude, motivation, and engagement. The writing process takes these elements into account by allowing students to plan their writing and create a publishable, final draft of their work of which they can be proud. It addresses students’ need for a real audience and to take the time to draft and redraft their work. You can help your students think carefully about each stage of their writing by guiding them through the writing process repeatedly throughout the year and across various content areas.

The writing process involves teaching students to write in a variety of genres, encouraging creativity, and incorporating writing conventions. This process can be used in all areas of the curriculum and provides an excellent way to connect instruction with state writing standards. The following are ways to implement each step of the writing process:

• Prewriting—This step involves brainstorming, considering purpose and goals for writing, using graphic organizers to connect ideas, and designing a coherent structure for a writing piece. For kindergarten students, scribbling and invented spelling are legitimate stages of writing development; the role of drawing as a prewriting tool becomes progressively less important as writers develop. Have young students engage in whole-class brainstorming to decide topics on which to write. For students in grades 3-5, have them brainstorm individually or in small groups with a specific prompt, such as, “Make a list of important people in your life,” for example. Online graphic organizers might help upper elementary students to organize their ideas for specific writing genres during the prewriting stage. Examples are the Essay Map , Notetaker , or Persuasion Map .
• Drafting—Have students work independently at this stage. Confer with students individually as they write, offering praise and suggestions while observing areas with which students might be struggling and which might warrant separate conference time or minilessons.
• Revising and Editing—Show students how to revise specific aspects of their writing to make it more coherent and clear during minilessons. You can model reading your own writing and do a think aloud about how you could add more details and make it clearer. Teach students to reread their own work more than once as they think about whether it really conveys what they want to their reader. Reading their work aloud to classmates and other adults helps them to understand what revisions are needed. Your ELLs will develop greater language proficiency as they collaborate with their peers when revising.
• Rewriting—Have students incorporate changes as they carefully write or type their final drafts.

Rubrics help to make expectations and grading procedures clear, and provide a formative assessment to guide and improve your instruction. The Sample Writing Rubric , for example, can be used for upper elementary students.

As you work with your students to implement the writing process, they will begin to master writing and take it into all aspects of life. Peer review, with clear guidelines for students to give feedback on each other’s work, motivates students, allows them to discuss their writing with their peers, and makes the work load a little lighter for you. The Peer Edit with Perfection! PowerPoint Tutorial is a useful tool to teach students how to peer review and edit. You can also have students can edit their own work using a checklist, such as the Editing Checklist . Editing is when students have already revised content but need to correct mistakes in terms of spelling, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and word choice. Use minilessons, small-group lessons, or individual conferencing if necessary to make sure that students have made thoughtful changes to their writing content before moving on to the final draft.

• Publishing—Encourage students to publish their works in a variety of ways, such as a class book, bulletin board, letters to the editor, school newsletter, or website. The ReadWriteThink Printing Press tool is useful for creating newspapers, brochures, flyers and booklets. Having an authentic audience beyond the classroom gives student writing more importance and helps students to see a direct connection between their lives and their literacy development.
• Lesson Plans
• Student Interactives
• Calendar Activities

It's not easy surviving fourth grade (or third or fifth)! In this lesson, students brainstorm survival tips for future fourth graders and incorporate those tips into an essay.

Students are encouraged to understand a book that the teacher reads aloud to create a new ending for it using the writing process.

While drafting a literary analysis essay (or another type of argument) of their own, students work in pairs to investigate advice for writing conclusions and to analyze conclusions of sample essays. They then draft two conclusions for their essay, select one, and reflect on what they have learned through the process.

The Essay Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to organize and outline their ideas for an informational, definitional, or descriptive essay.

The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.

The Stapleless Book can be used for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets . . . the possibilities are endless!

Students examine the different ways that they write and think about the role writing plays in life.

• Print this resource

Explore Resources by Grade

• Kindergarten K

• Sign Up for Mailing List
• Search Search

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

Resources for Writers: The Writing Process

Writing is a process that involves at least four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. It is known as a recursive process. While you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas.

• Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information (e.g., interviewing people, researching in the library, assessing data).
• Although prewriting is the first activity you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process.
• Drafting occurs when you put your ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Here you concentrate upon explaining and supporting your ideas fully. Here you also begin to connect your ideas. Regardless of how much thinking and planning you do, the process of putting your ideas in words changes them; often the very words you select evoke additional ideas or implications.
• Don’t pay attention to such things as spelling at this stage.
• This draft tends to be writer-centered: it is you telling yourself what you know and think about the topic.
• Revision is the key to effective documents. Here you think more deeply about your readers’ needs and expectations. The document becomes reader-centered. How much support will each idea need to convince your readers? Which terms should be defined for these particular readers? Is your organization effective? Do readers need to know X before they can understand Y?
• At this stage you also refine your prose, making each sentence as concise and accurate as possible. Make connections between ideas explicit and clear.
• Check for such things as grammar, mechanics, and spelling. The last thing you should do before printing your document is to spell check it.
• Don’t edit your writing until the other steps in the writing process are complete.

The Writing Process

  The Writing Process Explained

Understanding the writing process provides a student with a straightforward step-by-step procedure that they can follow. It means they can replicate the process no matter what type of nonfiction text they are asked to produce.

In this article, we’ll look at the 5 step writing process that guides students from prewriting to submitting their polished work quickly and easily.

While explaining each stage of the process in detail, we’ll suggest some activities you can use with your students to help them successfully complete each stage. 

THE STAGES OF THE WRITING PROCESS

The five steps of the writing process are made up of the following stages:

• Pre-writing: In this stage, students brainstorm ideas, plan content, and gather the necessary information to ensure their thinking is organized logically.
• Drafting: Students construct ideas in basic sentences and paragraphs without getting caught up with perfection. It is in this stage that the pre-writing process becomes refined and shaped.
• Revising: This is where students revise their draft and make changes to improve the content, organization, and overall structure. Any obvious spelling and grammatical errors might also be improved at this stage.
• Editing: It is in this stage where students make the shift from improving the structure of their writing to focusing on enhancing the written quality of sentences and paragraphs through improving word choice, punctuation, and capitalization, and all spelling and grammatical errors are corrected. Ensure students know this is their final opportunity to alter their writing, which will play a significant role in the assessment process.
• Submitting / Publishing: Students can share their writing with the world, their teachers, friends, and family through various platforms and tools.

Be aware that this list is not a definitive linear process, and it may be advisable to revisit some of these steps in some cases as students learn the craft of writing over time.

Daily Quick Writes For All Text Types

Our FUN DAILY QUICK WRITE TASKS will teach your students the fundamentals of CREATIVE WRITING across all text types. Packed with 52 ENGAGING ACTIVITIES

STAGE ONE: THE WRITING PROCESS

GET READY TO WRITE

The prewriting stage covers anything the student does before they begin to draft their text. It includes many things such as thinking, brainstorming, discussing ideas with others, sketching outlines, gathering information through interviewing people, assessing data, and researching in the library and online.

The intention at the prewriting stage is to collect the raw material that will fuel the writing process. This involves the student doing 3 things:

• Understanding the conventions of the text type
• Gathering up facts, opinions, ideas, data, vocabulary, etc through research and discussion
• Organizing resources and planning out the writing process.

By the time students have finished the pre-writing stage, they will want to have completed at least one of these tasks depending upon the text type they are writing.

• Choose a topic: Ensure your students select a topic that is interesting and relevant to them.
• Brainstorm ideas: Once they have a topic, brainstorm and write their ideas down, considering what they already know about the topic and what they need to research further. Students might want to use brainstorming techniques such as mind mapping, free writing, or listing.
• Research: This one is crucial for informational and nonfiction writing. Students may need to research to gather more information and use reliable sources such as books, academic journals, and credible websites.
• Organize your ideas: This can be challenging for younger students, but once they have a collection of ideas and information, help them to organize them logically by creating an outline, using headings and subheadings, or grouping related ideas.
• Develop a thesis statement: This one is only for an academic research paper and should clearly state your paper’s main idea or argument. It should be specific and debatable.

Before beginning the research and planning parts of the process, the student must take some time to consider the demands of the text type or genre they are asked to write, as this will influence how they research and plan.

PREWRITING TEACHING ACTIVITY

As with any stage in the writing process, students will benefit immensely from seeing the teacher modelling activities to support that stage.

In this activity, you can model your approach to the prewriting stage for students to emulate. Eventually, they will develop their own specific approach, but for now, having a clear model to follow will serve them well.

Starting with an essay title written in the center of the whiteboard, brainstorm ideas as a class and write these ideas branching from the title to create a mind map. 

From there, you can help students identify areas for further research and help them to create graphic organizers to record their ideas.

Explain to the students that while idea generation is an integral part of the prewriting stage, generating ideas is also important throughout all the other stages of the writing process.

STAGE TWO: THE WRITING PROCESS

PUT YOUR IDEAS ON PAPER

Drafting is when the student begins to corral the unruly fruits of the prewriting stage into orderly sentences and paragraphs. 

When their writing is based on solid research and planning, it will be much easier for the student to manage. A poorly executed first stage can see pencils stuck at the starting line and persistent complaints of ‘writer’s block’ from the students.

However, do encourage your students not to get too attached to any ideas they may have generated in Stage 1. Writing is thinking too and your students need to leave room for their creativity to express itself at all stages of the process.

The most important thing about this stage is for the student to keep moving. A text is written word-by-word, much as a bricklayer builds a wall by laying brick upon brick. 

Instill in your students that they shouldn’t get too hung up on stuff like spelling and grammar in these early stages. 

Likewise, they shouldn’t overthink things. The trick here is to get the ideas down fast – everything else can be polished up later.

DRAFTING TEACHING ACTIVITY

As mentioned in the previous activity, writing is a very complex process and modeling goes a long way to helping ensure our students’ success. 

Sometimes our students do an excellent job in the prewriting stage with understanding the text purpose, the research, and the planning, only to fall flat when it comes to beginning to write an actual draft.

Often, students require some clear modeling by the teacher to help them transition effectively from Stage 1 to Stage 2. 

One way to do this for your class is to take the sketches, notes, and ideas one of the students has produced in Stage 1, and use them to model writing a draft. This can be done as a whole class shared writing activity.

Doing this will help your students understand how to take their raw material and connect their ideas and transition between them in the form of an essay.

STAGE THREE: THE WRITING PROCESS

POLISH YOUR THINKING

In Stage two, the emphasis for the student was on getting their ideas out quickly and onto the paper. 

Stage three focuses on refining the work completed earlier with the reader now firmly at the forefront of the writer’s mind.

To revise, the student needs to cast a critical eye over their work and ask themselves questions like:

• Would a reader be able to read this text and make sense of it all?
• Have I included enough detail to help the reader clearly visualize my subject?
• Is my writing concise and as accurate as possible?
• Are my ideas supported by evidence and written in a convincing manner?
• Have I written in a way that is suitable for my intended audience?
• Is it written in an interesting way?
• Are the connections between ideas made explicit?
• Does it fulfill the criteria of the specific text type?
• Is the text organized effectively?

The questions above represent the primary areas students should focus on at this stage of the writing process. 

Students shouldn’t slip over into editing/proofreading mode just yet. Let the more minor, surface-level imperfections wait until the next stage.

REVISING TEACHING ACTIVITY

When developing their understanding of the revising process, it can be extremely helpful for students to have a revision checklist to work from.

It’s also a great idea to develop the revision checklist as part of a discussion activity around what this stage of the writing process is about.

Things to look out for when revising include content, voice, general fluency, transitions, use of evidence, clarity and coherence, and word choice.

It can also be a good idea for students to partner up into pairs and go through each other’s work together. As the old saying goes, ‘two heads are better than one’ and, in the early days at least, this will help students to use each other as sounding boards when making decisions on the revision process.

STAGE FOUR: THE WRITING PROCESS

CHECK YOUR WRITING

Editing is not a different thing than writing, it is itself an essential part of the writing process.

During the editing stage, students should keep an eagle eye out for conventional mistakes such as double spacing between words, spelling errors, and grammar and punctuation mistakes. 

While there are inbuilt spelling and grammar checkers in many of the most popular word processing programs, it is worth creating opportunities for students to practice their editing skills without the crutch of such technology on occasion.

Students should also take a last look over the conventions of the text type they are writing. 

Are the relevant headings and subheadings in place? Are bold words and captions in the right place? Is there consistency across the fonts used? Have diagrams been labelled correctly?

Editing can be a demanding process. There are lots of moving parts in it, and it often helps students to break things down into smaller, more manageable chunks.

Focused edits allow the student the opportunity to have a separate read-through to edit for each of the different editing points.

For example, the first run-through might look at structural elements such as the specific structural conventions of the text type concerned. Subsequent run-throughs could look at capitalization, grammar, punctuation , the indenting of paragraphs, formatting, spelling, etc.

Sometimes students find it hard to gain the necessary perspective to edit their work well. They’re simply too close to it, and it can be difficult for them to see what is on the paper rather than see what they think they have put down.

One good way to help students gain the necessary distance from their work is to have the student read their work out loud as they edit it.

Reading their work out loud forces the student to slow down the reading process and it forces them to pay more attention to what’s written on the page, rather than what’s in their head. 

It’s always helpful to get feedback from someone else. If time permits, get your students to ask a friend or other teacher to review their work and provide feedback. They may catch errors or offer suggestions your students haven’t considered.

All this gives the student a little more valuable time to catch the mistakes and other flaws in their work.

WRITING CHECKLISTS FOR ALL TEXT TYPES

EDITING TEACHING ACTIVITY

Students must have a firm understanding of what they’re looking to correct in the editing process to edit effectively. One effective way to ensure this understanding is to have them compile an Editing Checklist for use when they’re engaged in the editing process.

The Editing Checklist can be compiled as a whole-class shared writing activity. The teacher can scribe the students’ suggestions for inclusion on the checklist onto the whiteboard. This can then be typed up and printed off by all the students.

A fun and productive use of the checklist is for the students to use it in ‘editing pairs’. 

Each student is assigned an editing partner during the editing stage of a writing task. Each student goes through their partner’s, work using the checklist as a guide, and then gives feedback to the other partner. The partner, in turn, uses the feedback in the final edit of their work.

STAGE FIVE: THE WRITING PROCESS

HAND IN YOUR WRITING

Now, it’s time for our students’ final part of the writing process. This is when they hand in their work to their teacher – aka you !

At this point, students should have one final reread of their work to ensure it’s as close to their intentions as possible, and then, finally, they can submit their work.

Giving the work over to an audience, whether that audience comes in the form of a teacher marking an assignment, publishing work in print or online, or making a presentation to classmates, can be daunting. It’s important that students learn to see the act of submitting their work as a positive thing.

Though this is the final stage of the writing process, students should be helped to see it for all it is. It is another step in the journey towards becoming a highly-skilled writer. It’s a further opportunity for the student to get valuable feedback on where their skills are currently at and a signpost to help them to improve their work in the future.

When the feedback comes, whether that’s in the form of teacher comments, grades, reviews, etc it should be absorbed by the student as a positive part of this improvement process. 

Submitting TEACHING Activity

This activity is as much for the teacher as it is for the student.

Sometimes, our students think of feedback as a passive thing. The teacher makes some comments either in writing or orally and the student listens and carries on largely as before. We must help our students to recognize feedback as an opportunity for growth.

Feedback should be seen as a dialogue that helps our students to take control of their own learning. 

For this to be the case, students need to engage with the feedback they’ve been given, to take constructive criticisms on board, and to use these as a springboard to take action. 

One way to help students to do this lies in the way we format our feedback to our students. A useful format in this vein is the simple 2 Stars and a Wish . This format involves giving feedback that notes two specific areas of the work that the student did well and one that needs improvement. This area for improvement will provide a clear focus for the student to improve in the future. This principle of constructive criticism should inform all feedback.

It’s also helpful to encourage students to process detailed feedback by noting specific areas to focus on. This will give them some concrete targets to improve their writing in the future.

VIDEO TUTORIAL ON THE WRITING PROCESS

And there we have it. A straightforward and replicable process for our students to follow to complete almost any writing task.

But, of course, the real writing process is the ongoing one whereby our students improve their writing skills sentence-by-sentence and word-by-word over a whole lifetime.

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO THE WRITING PROCESS

7 Evergreen Writing Activities for Elementary Students

Text Types and Different Styles of Writing: The Complete Guide

Top 5 Essay Writing Tips

7 ways to write great Characters and Settings | Story Elements

6 Simple Writing Lessons Students Will Love

• Enroll & Pay
• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Degree Programs

The Writing Process

The writing process is something that no two people do the same way. There is no "right way" or "wrong way" to write. It can be a very messy and fluid process, and the following is only a representation of commonly used steps. Remember you can come to the Writing Center for assistance at any stage in this process. 

Steps of the Writing Process

Step 1: Prewriting

Think and Decide

• Make sure you understand your assignment. See  Research Papers  or  Essays
• Decide on a topic to write about. See   Prewriting Strategies  and  Narrow your Topic
• Consider who will read your work. See  Audience and Voice
• Brainstorm ideas about the subject and how those ideas can be organized. Make an outline. See  Outlines

Step 2: Research (if needed) 

• List places where you can find information.
• Do your research. See the many KU Libraries resources and helpful guides
• Evaluate your sources. See  Evaluating Sources  and  Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• Make an outline to help organize your research. See  Outlines

Step 3: Drafting

• Write sentences and paragraphs even if they are not perfect.
• Create a thesis statement with your main idea. See  Thesis Statements
• Put the information you researched into your essay accurately without plagiarizing. Remember to include both in-text citations and a bibliographic page. See  Incorporating References and Paraphrase and Summary  
• Read what you have written and judge if it says what you mean. Write some more.
• Read it again.
• Write some more.
• Write until you have said everything you want to say about the topic.

Step 4: Revising

Make it Better

• Read what you have written again. See  Revising Content  and  Revising Organization
• Rearrange words, sentences, or paragraphs into a clear and logical order. 
• Take out or add parts.
• Do more research if you think you should.
• Replace overused or unclear words.
• Read your writing aloud to be sure it flows smoothly. Add transitions.

Step 5: Editing and Proofreading

Make it Correct

• Be sure all sentences are complete. See  Editing and Proofreading
• Correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
• Change words that are not used correctly or are unclear.
• APA Formatting
• Chicago Style Formatting
• MLA Formatting  
• Have someone else check your work.

The Writing Process

Making expository writing less stressful, more efficient, and more enlightening, search form, you are here, what is a writing process.

“Writing is easy. You just open your veins and bleed.”  — Red Smith, Sportswriter

As you might expect, process writing means approaching a writing task according to a formalized series of concrete, discrete steps.  Although different versions of the writing process can be found—some with as few as three steps or phases, others with as many as eight—they generally move from a writer-oriented phase of pre-writing through drafting to reader-oriented revising and editing.  I generally find that the one I will present below, comprising five steps, is specific enough to make the important steps separate and yet not so complex as to be daunting.

Why even use a formal writing process, though?  What can it offer you that the kind of informal processes people typically use don't? Continue.

Do You Know The 7 Steps Of The Writing Process?

How much do you know about the different stages of the writing process? Even if you’ve been writing for years, your understanding of the processes of writing may be limited to writing, editing, and publishing. 

It’s not your fault. Much of the writing instruction in school and online focus most heavily on those three critical steps. 

Important as they are, though, there’s more to creating a successful book than those three. And as a writer, you need to know.   

The 7 Steps of the Writing Process

Read on to familiarize yourself with the seven writing process steps most writers go through — at least to some extent. The more you know each step and its importance, the more you can do it justice before moving on to the next. 

1. Planning or Prewriting

This is probably the most fun part of the writing process. Here’s where an idea leads to a brainstorm, which leads to an outline (or something like it). 

Whether you’re a plotter, a pantser, or something in between, every writer has some idea of what they want to accomplish with their writing. This is the goal you want the final draft to meet. 

With both fiction and nonfiction , every author needs to identify two things for each writing project: 

• Intended audience = “For whom am I writing this?”
• Chosen purpose = “What do I want this piece of writing to accomplish?”

In other words, you start with the endpoint in mind. You look at your writing project the way your audience would. And you keep its purpose foremost at every step. 

From planning, we move to the next fun stage. 

2. Drafting (or Writing the First Draft)

There’s a reason we don’t just call this the “rough draft,” anymore. Every first draft is rough. And you’ll probably have more than one rough draft before you’re ready to publish. 

For your first draft, you’ll be freewriting your way from beginning to end, drawing from your outline, or a list of main plot points, depending on your particular process. 

To get to the finish line for this first draft, it helps to set word count goals for each day or each week and to set a deadline based on those word counts and an approximate idea of how long this writing project should be. 

Seeing that deadline on your calendar can help keep you motivated to meet your daily and weekly targets. It also helps to reserve a specific time of day for writing. 

Another useful tool is a Pomodoro timer, which you can set for 20-25 minute bursts with short breaks between them — until you reach your word count for the day. 

3. Sharing Your First Draft

Once you’ve finished your first draft, it’s time to take a break from it. The next time you sit down to read through it, you’ll be more objective than you would be right after typing “The End” or logging the final word count. 

It’s also time to let others see your baby, so they can provide feedback on what they like and what isn’t working for them.

You can find willing readers in a variety of places: 

• Social media groups for writers
• Social media groups for readers of a particular genre
• Your email list (if you have one)
• Local and online writing groups and forums

This is where you’ll get a sense of whether your first draft is fulfilling its original purpose and whether it’s likely to appeal to its intended audience. 

You’ll also get some feedback on whether you use certain words too often, as well as whether your writing is clear and enjoyable to read. 

4. Evaluating Your Draft

Here’s where you do a full evaluation of your first draft, taking into account the feedback you’ve received, as well as what you’re noticing as you read through it. You’ll mark any mistakes with grammar or mechanics. 

And you’ll look for the answer to important questions: 

• Is this piece of writing effective/ Does it fulfill its purpose?
• Do my readers like my main character? (Fiction)
• Does the story make sense and satisfy the reader? (Fiction)
• Does it answer the questions presented at the beginning? ( Nonfiction )
• Is it written in a way the intended audience can understand and enjoy?

Once you’ve thoroughly evaluated your work, you can move on to the revision stage and create the next draft. 

More Related Articles

How To Create An Em Dash Or Hyphen

Are You Ready To Test Your Proofreading Skills?

How To Write A Book For Kindle About Your Expertise Or Passion

5. Revising Your Content

Revising and editing get mixed up a lot, but they’re not the same thing. 

With revising, you’re making changes to the content based on the feedback you’ve received and on your own evaluation of the previous draft. 

• To correct structural problems in your book or story
• To find loose ends and tie them up (Fiction)
• To correct unhelpful deviations from genre norms (Fiction)
• To add or remove content to improve flow and/or usefulness

You revise your draft to create a new one that comes closer to achieving your original goals for it. Your newest revision is your newest draft. 

If you’re hiring a professional editor for the next step, you’ll likely be doing more revision after they’ve provided their own feedback on the draft you send them. 

Editing is about eliminating errors in your (revised) content that can affect its accuracy, clarity, and readability.

By the time editing is done, your writing should be free of the following: 

• Grammatical errors
• Punctuation/mechanical and spelling errors
• Misquoted content
• Missing (necessary) citations and source info
• Factual errors
• Awkward phrasing
• Unnecessary repetition

Good editing makes your work easier and more enjoyable to read. A well-edited book is less likely to get negative reviews titled, “Needs editing.” And when it comes to books, it’s best to go beyond self-editing and find a skilled professional. 

A competent editor will be more objective about your work and is more likely to catch mistakes you don’t see because your eyes have learned to compensate for them. 

7. Publishing Your Final Product

Here’s where you take your final draft — the final product of all the previous steps — and prepare it for publication. 

Not only will it need to be formatted (for ebook, print, and audiobook), but you’ll also need a cover that will appeal to your intended audience as much as your content will. 

Whether you budget for these things or not depends on the path you choose to publish your book: 

• Traditional Publishing — where the publishing house provides editing, formatting, and cover design, as well as some marketing
• Self-Publishing — where you contract with professionals and pay for editing, formatting, and cover design. 
• Self-Publishing with a Publishing Company — where you pay the company to provide editing, formatting, and cover design using their in-house professionals.

And once your book is live and ready to buy, it’s time to make it more visible to your intended audience. Otherwise, it would fail in its purpose, too. 

Are you ready to begin 7 steps of the writing process?

Now that you’re familiar with the writing process examples in this post, how do you envision your own process?

While it should include the seven steps described here, it’ll also include personal preferences of your own — like the following: 

• Writing music and other ambient details
• Writing schedule
• Word count targets and time frames

The more you learn about the finer details of the writing process, the more likely you are to create content your readers will love. And the more likely they are to find it. 

Wherever you are in the process, our goal here is to provide content that will help you make the most of it. 

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

The Writing Process: A Seven-Step Approach for Every Writer

Aaron Burden / Unsplash.com

Main Writing Process Takeaways:

• Writing process refers to a series of steps that a writer must follow to complete a piece of writing.
• Having a  writing process  is essential to produce a wide range of content.
• Breaking down your text into different stages could ultimately improve content quality.
• A writing process or method includes the following stages: planning, drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, editing, and publishing.
• The prewriting stage is the most critical stage of the writing process .

We all follow a writing process when creating an article or any written content. In most cases, this process becomes a routine that comes naturally rather than a step-by-step guide.

However, following a step-by-step writing process can come in handy, especially when dealing with challenging pieces. In this post, we will discuss the seven-stage writing method that you can use for writing high quality content.

What is the Writing Process?

Writing process refers to a series of steps that you must follow in order for you to complete a piece of writing . Writers may have different writing methods , but the writing stages are essentially the same. These stages break writing into manageable pieces from planning, drafting, and sharing to revising, editing, and publishing. That way, the task seems less laborious.

The primary strength of the writing process is its usefulness in producing a wide range of content. Whether you’re an academic writer, blogger , or screenwriter , it helps you write better, easier, and faster.

Read More: The Best Copywriting Courses For Beginners

Why is the writing process important.

Having a writing process will help you break your writing tasks into manageable parts, making the work less intimidating. As a result, you’re less likely to experience writer’s block. It could also aid in reducing the anxiety and stress that comes with writing. Also, breaking down your writing work into different stages could ultimately improve content quality.

It will allow you to focus on your piece. That way, you can tailor your content to address the specific needs of your target audience.

We could think of writing in terms of merely producing materials for readers to enjoy. But there’s more to the story.

With the right approach, writers usually undergo three stages — thinking, learning, and discovery — to produce excellent pieces. And such authentic writing usually makes lifelong learners and versatile writers.

Writers must always follow a writing process to be efficient and more productive.

It does not matter whether you are writing a thesis, academic report , research paper , essay, or blog content. The more organize your ideas are when you present them in text, the more you will be able to connect with your readers.

What are the 7 Steps of the Writing Process?

The EEF’s “ Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2 ” guidance report broke down the writing process into seven stages. This includes the planning , drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, editing, and publishing stages. As writers become adept in these stages, they can quickly move back and forth, revising their text along the way. In other words, writing is not a linear process.

1. Planning or Prewriting

The planning or prewriting stage involves brainstorming, which takes into account your writing purpose and goal. It’s also the stage to connect your ideas using graphic organizers. The prewriting stage is when you ask the following questions:

• What will I write?
• What is the intended purpose of the writing?
• Who is the audience for your writing?

You need to do intent research to better understand what your target readers need. For instance, if you are writing for the web, you can take advantage of Google-Related Questions to know what the people are searching for online in relation to your topic.

Answering these questions ensures that you start your writing with the end in mind. Furthermore, you’ll be able to see your writing project through your audience’s eyes.

2. Create Your First Draft

Before your content is ready for publishing, you must have created a couple of drafts.

Thanks to the drafting process, you can write freely from the beginning to the end. What’s more, it provides a way to quickly draw from your outline or list of main plot points — depending on your writing process.

You could also use these stages to establish word count goals to get a rough idea of the project duration. This is especially important for creative writers such as novelists.

3. Share Your First Draft

After completing the first draft, it’s time to take a break and share the text with others.

While it may sound a bit scary at first, the feedback will help you evaluate elements of your writing. These include the composition, structure, and overall effectiveness.

Consider sharing your first draft in the following places:

• Your email list — if you have one
• Online writing groups and forums
• Social media groups for writers
• Social media group for a specific genre

In the end, you’ll know whether your first draft fulfills the intended purpose and appeal to your audience. The feedback also tells you if your writing is clear, enjoyable, and easy to read.

4. Evaluate Your Draft

This writing process involves doing a full evaluation of your first draft.

At this stage, you have to take the feedback that you’ve received into account. It’s also an excellent opportunity to address possible mistakes with grammar or mechanics.

For fiction writers, this writing stage allows you to ask whether the readers like your main character. Likewise, non-fiction writers have to ask if their content addresses their audience’s questions.

After evaluating your work, you can move to the revision stage of writing.

5. Revising Your Draft

Revision involves making changes to your work based on the feedback you received and thorough evaluation. This writing process is especially useful for fiction writers.

Along with correcting structural problems in your story, it also allows you to find loose ends and tie them up. You can also add or remove content to improve your write-up’s flow and usefulness.

When you’re done revising, you’ll have a new draft that takes you closer to your  writing goal .

At this point, your newest revision becomes your latest draft. After that, you may opt to edit your own work using a content writing and editing tool like INK or hire a professional editor.

6. Editing your Content

The editing aspect of the writing process is about eliminating possible errors in your revised content. These include elements that can affect your text’s accuracy, clarity, and readability.

The editing process also addresses misquoted content, factual errors, awkward phrasing, and unnecessary repetition. Not only does good editing make your work easier, but it also makes the text more enjoyable.

Specialized writing tools such as INK could prove useful for editing web content. But it’s best to avoid self-editing for books. Consider hiring a professional editor for novels and non-fiction books.

7. Publishing your Content

The last stage of the writing process involves sharing your text with your audience.

There are various ways to publish your content, depending on the content type. For example, you can share your book using self-publishing platforms such as Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and CreateSpace .

Whatever the writing may be, the writing processes outlined above will help you create an excellent piece.

What is the Most Important Step in the Writing Process?

Educators have not reached a consensus on the most important writing process . Some would argue that the prewriting stage is the most critical for completing a piece of writing.

After all, brainstorming is required to create an idea that’ll eventually become the content. Besides, writers can use the prewriting stage to avoid or overcome writer’s block.

Meanwhile, educators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill believe that the revision stage is the most critical. It’s when a piece of writing undergoes the most changes.

It could entail increasing the word count to supply as much information as possible. You could also rearrange some aspect of the manuscript to improve the content’s flow, pacing, and sequence.

Read More: 10 Effective Content Writing Techniques for Beginners

Found this article interesting?

Let Sumbo Bello know how much you appreciate this article by clicking the heart icon and by sharing this article on social media.

Sumbo Bello

Sumbo Bello is a creative writer who enjoys creating data-driven content for news sites. In his spare time, he plays basketball and listens to Coldplay.

How to Come up With Writing Topics for Your Website                   

Why the Dutch are Investing Heavily in Bangladesh Water Infrastru...

How Fighter's Blocks! Uses a Video Game to Solve Writer's Block

Google Docs Machine Translation Grammar Suggestions now Live 

How Facebook Instant Articles Improves Your UX                             

How Many Pages is 1000 Words?                                                               

How and why you Should Only Create Authentic Content                 

10 Best Content Writing Courses for Beginners                               

4 Techniques to Make Your Content More Persuasive                       

Tag Manager Verification Issue on Search Console Fixed             

10 Social Media Marketing Tips to Help You Succeed                     

How to Become a Successful Content Manager                                     

4 Content Marketing Pitfalls and how to Avoid Them                     

Here's how to Write Better Listicles                                                 

Comments (2).

One has to be careful with the brokers on the internet now. Last year I was scammed in the binary trade option by a broker I met on Instagram. I invested $14000 which I lost, I couldn’t make a withdrawal and I slowly lost access to my trade account for 3 months I was frustrated and depressed. After a few months, I met Mrs Lisa who is A recovery expert that works in affiliation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law firm. she worked me through the process of getting my money back and all the extra bonus which I got during my trading. he can be of help to anyone who has a similar situation. You can contact him via her mail: Email Lisa.Eric @ proton.me WhatsApp +84 94 767 1524

Hello guys I wan to say this to whom it may concern. Investing in crypto was my husband ideal. I trade with sim ceypto platform not knowing they where sc!m and this made me lose almost all I had. Am only happy because I found help after reporting to Mrs Lisa Eric and she helped me recover all I lost to these fake crypto platform. My advice is that everyone need to be careful of the platform you deal with. If you have falling victim of these fake platform do not hesitate to file a complaint to Lisa via he mail ( Lisa.Eric @ proton.me ) she helped me and I believe she can help you too. Stay safe guys. You can visit WhatsApp +84 94 767 1524.

Link Copied Successfully

Sign in to access your personalized homepage, follow authors and topics you love, and clap for stories that matter to you.

By using our site you agree to our privacy policy.

• U.S. Locations
• UMGC Europe
• Learn Online
• Find Answers
• 855-655-8682
• Current Students

Online Guide to Writing and Research

The writing process, explore more of umgc.

• Online Guide to Writing

Introduction

Every writer, whether inexperienced or seasoned, knows that the process can be overwhelming. Whether you are analyzing, reporting, or composing a poem for your creative writing class, writing demands that you expose your innermost thoughts to the scrutiny of others. While you write, concentrating on the writing process, rather than what others will think, can give you the confidence to focus on the task at hand. Although every writer’s process is unique, it usually involves a combination of 1) planning and prewriting, 2) writing, and 3) rewriting/revising.

The Big Picture

The prewriting and planning phase begins with an understanding of the big picture. If you are new to academic writing, it might be helpful to think about academic writing in a simple way; there are usually three parts:

1) Your position on the topic (prior, current, and future knowledge on the topic)

2) Expert ideas (formal research)

3) A union of those two 

Why this balance?

Neither excessive emphasis on your own ideas nor too much information from outside research will lead to well-balanced writing. While expectations are different in every discipline and class, and you should always ask your professor what is preferred, your writing should include mostly your ideas, in a formal tone, with scholarly research that supports and supplements your argument. In other words, your voice carries the argument and flow of any written piece.  

Keeping the big picture in mind as you dive into the phases ahead will result in a smoother writing process, while hopefully reaching the main goals of any writing assignment: engaging meaningfully with your topic, demonstrating your knowledge, and educating your audience.

Planning and Prewriting

The purpose of the planning and prewriting phase is to explore your topic from different angles, connect to your own thoughts about the topic, come upon new ideas, and identify new relationships between concepts. When planning and prewriting, you will (click on the arrows):

Study your assignment expectations or writing prompt closely.

Brainstorm your own ideas on the chosen topic., conduct casual research to familiarize yourself with the topic., add these thoughts to a prewriting strategy., add formal research and notes to your chosen prewriting strategy., writing and rewriting.

Writing and rewriting phases allow you to implement your planning and the results of your experimentation while prewriting. You implement your strategy, working out the details and fine-tuning your thoughts. In the rewriting , or revising, phase, you review what you have written and consider how and where your writing can be improved.

It’s important to remember that there is no such thing as a perfect writing process, and you can always edit and polish your thoughts later. Being passionate about your chosen topic can also help motivate you to get started. Write. Generate ideas. Revise later. Try to have fun with it!

Key Takeaways

Planning/prewriting, writing, and revising help organize and guide your writing process.

Academic writing consists of 1) your ideas 2) expert ideas 3) connections between the two.

The writing process is unique to each individual and need not necessarily follow a strict order.

The overall goal in writing is to engage in the pursuit of knowledge so you can share it with others.

Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783 This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . © 2022 UMGC. All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

By using our website you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more about how we use cookies by reading our  Privacy Policy .

📕 Studying HQ

A comprehensive guide to the writing process: 5 steps with examples, rachel r.n..

• November 30, 2023
• How to Guides

You might have heard the saying that good writing involves a lot of rewriting. This means that to write well, you need to come up with ideas, organize them, put them together in a clear way, go back to check your work, edit it, and make your words stronger. These steps are called the writing process.

Writers have their own unique way of working. Some start writing from the beginning and go straight to the end. Others write in parts and then organize them later. Some writers focus on one sentence at a time. Knowing how and why you write the way you do helps you treat your writing like a job, while still letting your creativity flow free

No matter what you’re writing – whether it’s a blog post, a script, a research paper, or a book review – you’ll follow these steps to turn your initial ideas into a well-crafted and ready-to-publish piece. Keep reading to find out more about each of the six steps in the writing process.

Here’s a tip:  Want to score outstanding grades in your research paper? Studyinghq.com has a team of professional writers that are always available to help you reach your target.

Are You Working on a Research Paper?

Feel free to let our professional writers help you.

What You'll Learn

What Is the Writing Process?

Writing follows a step-by-step process, like putting together a puzzle. Many writers might not be aware that they use common terms to describe each stage. The writing process includes everything from thinking about the idea and making a plan to fixing mistakes and finally sharing the finished work

Importance of Knowing the Stages in The Writing Process

Like most writers, you probably have your own way of writing books.

When you sit down to tell a story or talk a lot about a topic, you follow certain steps to make your idea real.

It’s okay to do each new project your own way, but it’s still good to go back to the six basic stages of writing every now and then.

First, it’s a good habit to develop, especially if you’ve recently started writing professionally.

Going through the stages of writing makes sure you’ve covered everything. It keeps you organized and helps you work better. This way, you can expect a better final product each time.

Second, going through each stage of writing is a great way to get unstuck when you’re struggling to finish an idea.

Writing is creative, but sometimes having a plan helps. Just knowing how to start can break down mental barriers that stop you from moving forward.

Third, even if you have your own routine for writing, you’re probably already following the basic steps without realizing it.

In that case, it wouldn’t hurt to know the terms used. That way, you can keep a mental (or physical) checklist and adjust it to fit your creative way of working.

Keeping all of this in mind, we wanted to remind you (or maybe introduce you) to the six stages of writing.

Stage 1: Prewriting

Prewriting is a crucial step in the writing process that sets the foundation for a successful piece of writing. It involves several key activities, including idea generation , research , and considering the intended audience .

Prewriting allows writers to brainstorm ideas, gather relevant information, and plan their writing in a structured manner. By taking the time to engage in prewriting, writers can clarify their thoughts and ensure a strong start to their writing project.

During the prewriting stage, idea generation plays a significant role. This is the time to let creativity flow and explore different topics and angles. Brainstorming techniques such as mind mapping or freewriting can help writers generate a wide range of ideas and choose the most suitable one for their piece. By allowing ideas to flow freely, writers can tap into their creativity and uncover unique perspectives that will make their writing stand out.

In addition to idea generation , research is another important component of prewriting. Conducting thorough research helps writers gather relevant information, facts, and evidence to support their ideas. By investing time in research, writers can ensure that their writing is accurate, well-informed, and credible. It also allows them to explore different viewpoints and strengthen their arguments, ultimately enhancing the quality of their piece.

This stage generally involves:

• Writing notes about something you see in real life
• Thinking about something that happened when you were a kid
• Finding out more about something you like
• Imagining how a character should seem
• Using a piece of a writing idea

When your idea begins to take shape, you are now free to move to the next stage

Stage 2: Planning Your Project

Once the prewriting stage is complete, it’s time to move on to planning your project.

It’s fair to say that Planning is a crucial step in the writing process as it helps you organize your thoughts and establish a clear structure for your piece.

Without at least a general sketch of your characters or path for your plot, you’re more likely to hit a roadblock halfway through writing. By planning ahead of time, however, you can typically avoid such an issue and have a much easier time crafting your book

There are several techniques you can use to plan effectively, such as outlining , mind mapping , and freewriting .

An outline is a helpful tool for organizing your ideas and ensuring a logical flow in your writing. It involves creating a structured framework that outlines the main points and subpoints of your piece. This can be done using headings, subheadings, and bullet points. An outline provides a roadmap for your writing, making it easier to stay focused and maintain coherence.

Mind mapping is another method that can be used for planning. It involves creating a visual representation of your ideas by linking related concepts and information. Mind maps are useful for brainstorming and generating new ideas. They allow you to see connections between different concepts and can be a great tool for organizing your thoughts before diving into the writing process.

Freewriting is a technique that encourages you to write continuously without worrying about grammar , punctuation, or structure. It helps to free your mind and overcome writer’s block. By allowing your thoughts to flow freely on paper, you can discover new ideas and insights that you may not have come up with through traditional planning methods. Freewriting can serve as a starting point for your writing and can be refined and revised later in the process.

Using these planning techniques can help you stay organized and ensure that your writing is well-structured and coherent. Experiment with different methods and find what works best for you. Remember, planning is a critical step that sets the foundation for a successful writing project.

Table: Comparing Planning Techniques

Stage 3: the drafting process.

Now it’s time to start writing! Here, you begin to transform your thoughts and ideas into written words. It is during this stage that you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and create the first draft of your piece. Drafting allows you to express my thoughts freely and capture the essence of your ideas.

Don’t stress about making everything perfect right away. When you’re writing your first draft, just focus on getting your ideas down on paper. It’s okay if it’s not perfect yet.

Using the outline you made, begin writing your draft one sentence and paragraph at a time.

Here’s a tip: You don’t have to start writing from the beginning. If you know what you want to say in one part but not another, start with the part you know and come back to the tricky parts later. This can save you time and frustration.

Writing the easy parts first can also make the harder parts seem less intimidating. Instead of seeing them as big, scary challenges, they become smaller tasks to tackle one by one.

During the drafting process , I adopt a mindset of continuous writing , allowing the words to flow without worrying too much about perfection. I understand that the first draft does not have to be flawless; it is simply a starting point. Overcoming perfectionism is key during this stage, as it can hinder progress and stifle creativity. Instead, I focus on getting my ideas out and creating a rough version of the piece.

One strategy I find helpful during drafting is to set aside dedicated time for writing and eliminate distractions. By creating a conducive environment, I can immerse myself in the writing process and maintain a steady flow of ideas. I also remind myself that the purpose of drafting is not to produce a final, polished piece, but rather to generate material that can be refined and improved in subsequent stages.

Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism during Drafting

• Give yourself permission to write imperfectly. Remember, you can always revise and edit later.
• Set realistic goals and focus on making progress rather than striving for perfection.
• Embrace the messy nature of drafting and embrace the creative process.
• Remind yourself that writing is a journey, and the first draft is just the beginning.

By embracing continuous writing and overcoming perfectionism , I can harness the power of the drafting process to bring my ideas to life. The first draft may be rough around the edges, but it lays the foundation for the subsequent steps of revising , editing , and polishing my work.

Stage 4: Revising and Polishing Your Work

Once you have completed the drafting process, it’s time to focus on revising and polishing your work. This critical step in the writing process allows you to make big-picture changes , refine your ideas, and improve the overall structure and clarity of your piece.

During the revising stage, consider reorganizing paragraphs or sections to enhance the flow of your writing. You may also need to delete or add content to strengthen your arguments or provide additional support for your ideas. This is your opportunity to take a step back and evaluate your work with a fresh perspective.

After making the necessary revisions, it’s time to move on to editing and proofreading . This stage focuses on correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other minor errors. Pay attention to sentence structure, word choice, and overall coherence to ensure your writing is clear and polished.

Remember, revising and polishing your work may involve multiple rounds of review and refinement. Take the time to read your piece aloud, seek feedback from others, and make any necessary adjustments. By dedicating time and attention to this step, you can ensure your writing is error-free and ready for publication.

The Importance of Revision:

“Revision is not the time to doubt yourself; it’s the time to make your writing shine.”

Revising Tips:

• Read your piece aloud to identify any awkward or unclear sentences.
• Ask a trusted friend or colleague to provide feedback and suggestions.
• Consider the overall flow and organization of your writing.
• Focus on strengthening your arguments and providing ample support.
• Edit for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

Proofreading Checklist:

• Check for typos and spelling errors.
• Ensure proper punctuation and capitalization.
• Verify the consistency of verb tense and pronoun usage.
• Review sentence structure and clarity.
• Double-check citations and references if applicable.

Stage 5: Publishing

After putting in the effort to write a well-crafted piece, it is crucial to take the final step: publishing and sharing your work. This step allows your writing to reach a broader audience and establish your presence as a writer. Whether you choose to publish on your own website, submit your work to a publication, or share it on social media, the goal is to make your writing accessible and visible to others.

Self-publishing has become increasingly popular in today’s digital age. With platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing , authors can easily publish and distribute their own books. This gives writers the freedom to control the entire publishing process, from formatting to pricing. Self-published authors can also take advantage of online marketing tools to promote their work and reach potential readers.

Sharing your writing on social media platforms is another effective way to get your work noticed. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to connect with a wide audience and engage with readers. By sharing snippets or excerpts from your writing, you can pique interest and direct people to your full piece. Social media also provides an opportunity to interact with your audience, receive feedback, and build a community of readers and fellow writers.

It is important to note that publishing your work does not mean it is set in stone. Even after publication, you have the flexibility to revise and update your writing. This is especially relevant for bloggers who often update their older posts to keep them relevant and accurate. Publishing should be seen as a starting point, and the ability to make revisions allows you to continually improve your work and maintain its relevance over time.

Table: Pros and Cons of Publishing and Sharing

Publishing and sharing your writing is an essential step in the writing process. It allows you to connect with readers, establish your authority, and continuously improve your work. Whether you choose to self-publish or share on social media, remember that publishing is just the beginning; revising and updating your writing ensures its relevance and quality over time.

Related Articles

The Beginner’s Guide to Writing an Essay | Steps & Examples

The Writing Process: 6 Steps Every Writer Should Know

The six steps writing process is a valuable tool for writers of all levels and abilities. By following these steps, writers can enhance their writing skills, overcome challenges, and produce high-quality work. Each step plays a vital role in the overall writing process and should not be overlooked.

Embracing the writing process can lead to improved productivity, organization, and overall writing proficiency. Whether you’re a student working on an academic assignment or a professional copywriter crafting persuasive content, the six steps writing process provides a framework for success.

So, embrace these steps and take your writing to the next level! By utilizing prewriting, planning, drafting, revising, editing & proofreading , and publishing, you can enhance your writing skills and create effective, well-crafted pieces. Remember, practice makes perfect, so keep honing your writing process and watch your skills soar.

What are the steps of the writing process?

The steps of the writing process are prewriting, planning, drafting, revising, editing & proofreading, and publishing.

Why is prewriting important?

Prewriting is important because it helps writers generate ideas, conduct research, and consider the  intended audience .

How can I plan my writing project?

You can plan your writing project by creating an outline, using mind maps, or engaging in freewriting.

What is the drafting process?

The drafting process is when writers start putting their thoughts into words, creating a rough version of their piece.

What is revising in the writing process?

Revising involves making  big-picture changes  to improve the overall structure, flow, and clarity of the writing.

What is the purpose of editing and proofreading?

Editing and proofreading focus on correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other minor errors to polish the piece.

How do I publish my finished piece?

You can publish your finished piece by uploading it to a website, sharing it on social media, or submitting it to a client or editor.

Can I revise my writing after publication?

Yes, you can revise and update your writing after publication, especially for blog posts that can be regularly updated.

Why is the writing process important for writers?

The writing process is important because it helps writers enhance their skills, overcome challenges, and produce high-quality work.

Source Links

• https://smartblogger.com/writing-process/
• https://www.thewordsmithblog.com/mastering-the-art-of-writing-six-ways-to-hone-your-skills-develop-your-craft/
• https://www.toppr.com/guides/business-correspondence-and-reporting/introduction-to-basic-writing/steps-for-writing/

Start by filling this short order form order.studyinghq.com

And then follow the progressive flow. 

Having an issue, chat with us here

Cathy, CS. 

New Concept ? Let a subject expert write your paper for You​

Have a subject expert write for you now, have a subject expert finish your paper for you, edit my paper for me, have an expert write your dissertation's chapter, popular topics.

Business StudyingHq Essay Topics and Ideas How to Guides Samples

• Nursing Solutions
• Study Guides
• Free Study Database for Essays
• Privacy Policy
• Writing Service 
• Discounts / Offers 

Study Hub: 

• Studying Blog
• Topic Ideas 
• Business Studying 
• Nursing Studying 
• Literature and English Studying

Writing Tools  

• Citation Generator
• Topic Generator
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Conclusion Maker
• Research Title Generator
• Thesis Statement Generator
• Summarizing Tool
• Terms and Conditions
• Confidentiality Policy
• Cookies Policy
• Refund and Revision Policy

Our samples and other types of content are meant for research and reference purposes only. We are strongly against plagiarism and academic dishonesty. 

Contact Us:

📧 [email protected]

📞 +15512677917

2012-2024 © studyinghq.com. All rights reserved

Initial Thoughts

Perspectives & resources, what should ms. lin know in order to provide effective writing instruction.

• Page 1: Understanding Difficulties with Written Expression
• Page 2: Prerequisites for Written Expression

What could Ms. Lin do to help her students learn to write persuasive essays?

Page 3: elements of the writing process.

• Page 4: POW+TREE Writing Strategy
• Page 5: POW+TREE Applications
• Page 6: References & Additional Resources
• Page 7: Credits

• Editing and revising

Planning refers to the use of a deliberate and organized approach to tackling a writing task and includes a writer’s first thoughts or basic ideas about the topic. Students who struggle with writing generally do not plan ahead; rather, they compose their text as they write. During the planning process, students should ask themselves who their readers will be and what the essay’s purpose is. Planning ahead helps students to form more complete thoughts and to produce more cohesive essays.

• Elaborate on the ideas that were generated for them during the planning process
• Determine what information, if any, is still needed in order to fill in the gaps
• Gather that information
• Arrange their ideas so that they flow together and make sense

In the initial writing stage, students will produce a rough draft incorporating the ideas that were generated during the planning stage and subsequently arranged in the organization stage. This initial writing phase requires students to coordinate ongoing cognitive demands, such as:

• Combining planned ideas with new thoughts
• Remembering the purpose of the paper
• Using appropriate grammar rules
• Considering the intended audience

Editing and Revising

Instruct students to write their drafts on colored paper to help them remember that this is not a final product.

Though the editing and revising stages are usually thought of as one step, they are, in fact, two interlinked steps. It is important for students to distinguish between the editing and revising steps in the writing process. For example, students need to learn that writing is a process that requires them to apply editing marks as they revise their essays. The revising stage, however, may also require changes in content or organization.

During the editing stages of the writing process, students will:

• Check their grammar
• Check their spelling
• Check their punctuation
• Ask whether their ideas are clear
• Ask whether their purpose has been met

Other than teacher-editing, there are two ways editing can occur: self-editing and peer-editing.

The bulletin board below displays example statements that students can be taught to use when they edit a peer’s paper.

Adapted from S. Graham (personal communication, September 20, 2006)

Description

A bulletin board holds two papers. One is a transcript entitled “Peer Editor.” The other is a transcript entitled “Writer.”

Peer Editor :

• Tell your partner what you like most about his or her paper.
• Tell your partner another thing that you liked.
• Tell your partner a third thing that you liked about the paper.
• If you did not understand some part of the paper, ask your partner what he or she was trying to do.
• Your suggestions should be specific.
• Listen carefully to what your partner has to say.
• Don’t interrupt your partner as he or she speaks.
• Remember, your partner is trying to help you make your paper better.
• Only use the suggestions that you think will be most helpful.
• Be sure to say “thanks” for his or her help.

As was discussed above, it is important for students to distinguish between the editing and revising stages. Revising allows the writer to consider the content, quality, and clarity of his or her composition. When students revise their work, they should look at the editing suggestions made by their teachers and peers, and that they themselves arrived at during self-editing, to determine how the edits and comments can help to improve their papers. For example, they might:

• Utilize comments and suggestions
• Rearrange the order of the text
• Make corrections
• Expand ideas
• Rewrite their papers

The Writing Process

Definitions.

• Stages of the Writing Process
• Strategies for Good Writing

The Writing Process is a cycle of activities that you complete as you generate ideas, compose those ideas into a document or presentation, and refine those ideas. It is a recursive process, meaning that at any one stage in the process, you may find that you have to return to previous steps to review and refine your methods.

To read more about the elements of the Writing Process, we recommend the following resource:

• Dziak, M. (2018). Writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing). Salem Press Encyclopedia. The writing process is the series of actions taken by writers to produce a finished work. Writers, educators, and theorists have defined the writing process in many different ways, but it generally involves prewriting tasks, writing tasks, and post-writing tasks. More specifically, these tasks include planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing, in approximately that order.

Benefits of following the Writing Process include:

• The ability to revisit previous work completed to find new ideas or refine existing ones.
• A more organized finished product.
• A less stressful experience, which is one cause of Writer's Block .
• Less time spent in the drafting stage.
• << Previous: Welcome
• Next: Stages of the Writing Process >>
• Last Updated: May 22, 2023 10:46 AM
• URL: https://library.tiffin.edu/writingprocess

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

7 The Writing Process

Kathy Boylan

Communication skills, including writing, are some of the most important soft skills (employable skills that have more to do with emotional IQ such as common sense, communication, problem-solving, and collaboration) that students learn when they are in college because most professions require high competency in written communication, which can be a chance for one to shine or to falter. With emails, memos, letters, texts, and even Tweets, most people spend a fair amount of time at work communicating via the written word. Whether you are messaging a colleague, writing to your manager, creating the company newsletter, or writing a press release to the media, your writing skills can boost or hinder your career easily, even if you do not have a “writing” profession. Basically, writing skills make a difference in how you are perceived in college and in the workplace.  That is the reason it is important to be sure you are following expected guidelines, always using the steps of the writing process, and making sure that all of your writing is coherent, concise, credible, and correct.

1.       What is the writing process?

2.       What is prewriting?

3.        What is a thesis statement?

4.        How to organize and arrange.

5.        How to write a rough draft.

6.        What is revising?

7.        What is done during editing & proofreading & formatting?

8.        What are other types of academic writing?

1.   What is the writing process?

No matter what type of writing you are doing, academic writing, professional writing, or personal writing, it can be made easier by using the writing process.  The writing process consists of the different stages that a writer follows to produce a good piece of writing.  Although different sources may label and group the stages in various ways, the stages of the writing process are essentially as follows:

Prewriting – Deciding what to write about (the topic) and gathering information to support or explain what you want to say about your subject, and planning how to organize your ideas in a way that effectively develops the topic.

Drafting -Writing the first copy of the piece (essay, article, etc.). This is often called the rough draft. Ultimately, you should have multiple copies or drafts of your work.

Revising -Reconsidering the ideas and content of the essay as well as refining the style and structure of the paper.

Editing/Proofreading – Correcting grammar, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics.

Publishing – Sharing the final draft with others.

Figure 4.1 The Writing Process

However, the writing process is not a series of neatly developed steps and may differ somewhat for everyone.  Sometimes ideas do not flow easily, and the essay that you originally start out to write is not the essay that you end up writing.  Often the stages proceed erratically and overlap; the important thing is to keep writing and improving until a final product is achieved.  The more that you write, the better you will become as a writer.

2.   What is prewriting?

Prewriting describes all of the thinking and planning that precedes the actual writing of a paper.

Much careful thought needs to be given to the assignment in general at the beginning of prewriting before focusing on your topic.

• First, understand the writing assignment and its limits.  Consider the assignment’s length.  Always know the expected length of a writing assignment.  A two-page paper has a much narrower topic than a ten-page paper would have.  If there is no page limit, consider the nature of the assignment to suggest its length .  A summary of a chapter will be much shorter than the original chapter.  An analysis of a poem may likely be longer than the poem itself.
• Expressive writing conveys personal feelings or impressions to the audience.
• Informative writing enlightens the audience about something.
• Persuasive writing attempts to convince the audience to think or act in a certain way.

Other more specific purposes can include entertaining, analyzing, hypothesizing, assessing, summarizing, questioning, reporting, recommending, suggesting, evaluating, describing, recounting, requesting, and instructing.

• Next, determine the assignment’s audience .  You must determine to whom you are writing.  An audience can be an individual or a group.  An audience can be general or specialized.  Once you define your audience, you must determine how much the audience already knows about the subject to know how much or little background information should be included. You should also determine how best to approach your audience in terms of language, rhetorical strategies, purposes for reading, and background knowledge.
• Then devise the assignment’s occasion .  The occasion for which you are writing will determine the formality and scope of a writing project.  An in-class writing assignment will differ from an out-of-class formal assignment.  A memo for fellow office workers will differ from a report written for the company’s president.  A letter to an aunt will differ from a letter written to a bank to request a personal loan.
• Finally, assess your own previous knowledge of the subject . Before writing, you need to determine what you already know about a subject, what you need to find out about the subject, and what you think about the subject.  Personal essays draw upon your own experiences and observations; research essays require you to gain new knowledge through research.

Topic Choice

The next step in prewriting, and often the hardest, is choosing a topic for an essay if one has not been assigned.  Choosing a viable general topic for an assignment is an essential step. Sometimes your instructor will give you an idea to begin an assignment, and other times your instructor will ask you to come up with a topic on your own. A captivating topic covers what an assignment will be about and fits the assignment’s purpose and its audience.  There are various methods you may use to discover an appropriate topic for your writing.

Using Experience and Observations

When selecting a topic, you may also want to consider something that interests you or something based on your own life and personal experiences. Even everyday observations can lead to interesting topics. After writers think about their experiences and observations, they often take notes on paper to better develop their thoughts. These notes help writers discover what they have to say about their topic.

Have you seen an attention-grabbing story on your local news channel? Many current issues appear on television, in magazines, and on the Internet. These can all provide inspiration for your writing. Our library’s database   (http://infoguides.virginiawestern.edu/az.php)  Issues and Controversies is a first-rate source.

Reading plays a vital role in all the stages of the writing process, but it first figures in the development of ideas and topics. Different kinds of documents can help you choose a topic and develop that topic. For example, a magazine advertising the latest research on the threat of global warming may catch your eye in the supermarket. This cover may interest you, and you may consider global warming as a topic, or maybe a novel’s courtroom drama sparks your curiosity of a particular lawsuit or legal controversy.  After you choose a topic, critical reading is essential to the development of a topic. While reading almost any document, you evaluate the author’s point of view by thinking about his main idea and his support. When you judge the author’s argument, you discover more about the author’s opinion as well as your own. If these steps already seem daunting, remember that even the best writers need to use prewriting strategies to generate ideas.

The steps in the writing process may seem time consuming at first, but following these steps will save you time in the future. The more you plan in the beginning by reading and using prewriting strategies, the less time you may spend writing and editing later because your ideas will develop more swiftly.  Prewriting strategies depend on your critical reading skills. Reading prewriting exercises (and outlines and drafts later in the writing process) will further develop your topic and ideas. As you continue to follow the writing process, you will see how to use critical reading skills to assess your own prewriting exercises.

Freewriting

Freewriting (also called brainstorming) is an exercise in which you write freely (jot, list, write paragraphs, dialog, take off on tangents: whatever “free” means to you) about a topic for a set amount of time (usually three to five minutes or until you run out of ideas or energy). Jot down any thoughts that come to your mind. Try not to worry about what you are saying, how it sounds, whether it is good or true, grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Instead, write as quickly as you can without stopping. If you are stuck, just copy the same word or phrase repeatedly until you come up with a new thought or write about why you cannot continue. Just keep writing; that is the power of this technique!

Writing often comes easier when you have a personal connection with the topic. Remember, to generate ideas in your freewriting, think about readings that you have enjoyed or that have challenged your thinking. Then write about it. Doing this may lead your thoughts in interesting directions.  Quickly recording your thoughts on paper will help you discover what you have to say about a topic. When writing quickly, try not to doubt or question your ideas, but if you do, write those, too. Allow yourself to write freely and unselfconsciously. Once you start writing with few limitations, you may find you have more to say than you first realized. Your flow of thoughts can lead you to discover more ideas about the topic as well as different perspectives on it. Freewriting may even lead you to discover another topic that excites you even more than your original idea.  Freewriting can also be used to narrow a topic and/or to develop supporting ideas once a broad topic has been chosen.

Journaling is another useful strategy for generating topic and content ideas. Journaling can be useful in exploring different topic ideas and serve as possible topic ideas for future papers.

Some prewriting strategies can be used together. For example, you could use experience and observations to come up with a topic related to your course studies. Then you could use freewriting to describe your topic in more detail and figure out what you have to say about it.

Focusing Topic

Once a general topic has been assigned to or chosen by you, then you must decide on the scope of the topic.  Broad topics always need to be narrowed down to topics that are more specific.  Then you need to determine what you are going to say about a subject.  Two ways to help narrow a general subject down to a narrower topic are probing and focused freewriting .

• Probing is asking a series of questions about the topic. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? As you choose your topic, answering these questions can help you revisit the ideas you already have and generate new ways to think about your topic. You may also discover aspects of the topic that are unfamiliar to you and that you would like to learn more about. All these idea-gathering techniques will help you plan for future work on your assignment.

For example, if you were writing about tattoos, then you might ask yourself the following questions:   Who do you know that has tattoos or who are some celebrities with memorable tattoos?   What kinds of tattoos do people usually get–what symbols and what words?   Where do people place tattoos on their bodies or where do people go to get tattoos–tattoo parlors?   When do people get tattoos–is it after some memorable event or life stage?   Why do people get tattoos? Finally, how do people get tattoos–what is the actual process?

• Focused Freewriting is freewriting again and again with each freewriting cycle becoming more focused (also called looping ), and it can yield a great deal of useful material. Try this by taking the most compelling idea from one freewriting and starting the next with it.

Developing a Topic

The following checklist can help you decide if your narrowed topic is a possible topic for your assignment:

• Why am I interested in this topic?
• Would my audience be interested and why?
• Do I have prior knowledge or experience with this topic? If so, would I be comfortable exploring this topic and sharing my experiences?
• Why do I want to learn more about this topic?
• Is this topic specific? What specifics or details about this topic stand out to me?
• Does it fit the purpose of the assignment, and will it meet the required length of the assignment?

3. What is a thesis statement?

Once the topic has been narrowed to a workable subject, then determine what you are going to say about it; you need to come up with your controlling or main idea.  A thesis is the main idea of an essay.  It communicates the essay’s purpose with clear and concise wording and indicates the direction and scope of the essay.  It should not just be a statement of fact nor should it be an announcement of your intentions.  It should be an idea, an opinion of yours that needs to be explored, expanded, and developed into an argument .

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick ; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence somewhere in the introductory paragraph that presents the writer’s argument to the reader. However, as essays get longer, a sentence alone is usually not enough to contain a complex thesis.  The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the readers of the logic of their interpretation.

If an assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that the writer needs a thesis statement because the instructor may assume the writer will include one. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively.

How do I get a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. (See chapter on argument for more detailed information on building an argument.)   Once you have done this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis,” a basic or main idea, an argument that you can support with evidence.  It is deemed a “working thesis” because it is a work in progress, and it is subject to change as you move through the writing process.  Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic to arrive at a thesis statement.

For example, there is the question strategy. One way to start identifying and narrowing a thesis idea is to form a question that you want to answer. For example, if the starting question was “Do cats have a positive effect on people with depression? If so, what are three effects? The question sends you off to explore for answers. You then begin developing support. The first answer you might find is that petting cats lowers blood pressure, and, further question how that works. From your findings (research, interviews, background reading, etc.), you might detail how that happens physically or you might describe historical evidence. You could explain medical research that illustrates the concept. Then you have your first supporting point — as well as the first prong of your thesis: Cats have a positive effect on people with depression because they can lower blood pressure . . . . When you start with a specific question and find the answers, the argument falls into place. The answer to the question becomes the thesis, and how the answer was conceived becomes the supporting points (and, usually, the topic sentences for each point).

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there is time, run it by the instructor or make an appointment at the Composition and Literature Center to get some feedback (https://www.howardcc.edu/programs-courses/academics/academic-divisions/english-world-languages/resources/). Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own.

When reviewing the first draft and its working thesis, ask the following:

• Is my thesis statement an opinion , and is it a complete thought?   Beware of posing a question as your thesis statement.  Your thesis should answer a question that the audience may have about your topic.  Also, be sure that your thesis statement is a complete sentence rather than just a phrase stating your topic.
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it is possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement provable ? Can I establish the validity of it through the evidence and explanation that I offer in my essay?
• Is my thesis statement specific ? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: W hy is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is, “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It is okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

To create a thesis statement simply follow this formula:

TOPIC  +  CLAIM  =  THESIS STATEMENT

• Animals + Dogs make better pets than cats. =When it comes to animals, dogs make better pets than cats because they are more trainable, more social, and more empathetic.
• Movies & Emotions + Titanic evoked many emotions. = The movie Titanic evoked many emotions from an audience.
• Arthur Miller & Death of a Salesman + Miller’s family inspired the Loman family. = Arthur Miller’s family and their experiences during the Great Depression inspired the creation of the Loman family in his play Death of a Salesman .

For more information on bad, good and better thesis statements from the writing center at the University of Evansville, go here (https://tinyurl.com/y8sfjale).

Exercise: Creating Effective Thesis Statements

Using the formula, create effective thesis statements for the following topics:

• Drone Technology
• Helicopter Parents

Then have a partner check your thesis statements to see if they pass the tests to be strong thesis statements.

Once a working thesis statement has been created, then it is time to begin building the body of the essay.  Get all of the key supporting ideas written down, and then you can begin to flesh out the body paragraphs by reading, asking, observing, researching, connecting personal experiences, etc. Use the information from below to maintain the internal integrity of the paragraphs and smooth the flow of your ideas.

4. How to organize and arrange?

Once you have generated supporting ideas for the main idea of your paper, you need to arrange those ideas in some type of order. Clustering and outlining can help organize the ideas.

Clustering (also called idea mapping) is a way of visually arranging ideas. Begin clustering by writing the topic in the center of a sheet of paper. Circle the topic, and then surround it with words and phrases that identify the major points to be discussed in the paper. Continue the process until all supporting details and secondary details have been listed. Many writers like this method because the shapes show how the ideas relate or connect, and writers can find a focused topic from the connections mapped. Using clustering, you might discover connections between topics that you had not thought of before.

Figure 4.2 Clustering

Outlining lists the major supporting details in a tentative order and includes secondary supporting details.

Figure 4.3 Traditional Formal Outline

Before you write, you need to decide how to organize your ideas.  You need to determine the rhetorical mode(s) that will be used and the order of the supporting ideas. Simplistically speaking, there are nine basic rhetorical modes .  They are as follows:   narration, description, exemplification, process, cause and effect, comparison and contrast, classification and division, definition, and argument.  However, most complex writing begins with an argument of some sort and then uses a combination of modes to relay one’s message.

Structure of a Paragraph and Essay

All formal paragraphs and essays have a title , a beginning or an introduction , a middle-a body of supporting paragraphs , and an end or conclusion .

A title is at the top of your paragraph or essay, but it is often the last thing that you create because until the paper is complete, you do not really know what your final product will be.  A good title makes people want to read your paper; it does not merely repeat the topic sentence or thesis statement; it hints at your main idea.  It is not a complete sentence, but it is a phrase or phrases that indicate your topic.

An effective introduction captures your readers’ attention and arouses their curiosity.  In a paragraph, it is often your topic sentence, and in an essay, it usually includes your thesis statement, which narrows your subject, claims something specific and significant, and conveys your purpose and often your form of organization.  You can include a question, tell a story, use a quotation, give interesting facts or statistics, give background information, or outline a problem and/or a solution.   Do not tell the reader what your topic is–show them.  Do not be vague and mysterious.  Do not refer back to your title.  Do not apologize for what you are about to say, and be original.  The important thing is that you hook your readers’ attention and motivate them to continue reading.

Your body of supporting evidence should be organized, unified and coherent.  The support can be organized using chronological order, spatial order, or emphatic order.  Each supporting detail should have its own topic sentence and be developed with valuable supporting details.  In an essay, the supporting ideas should support your thesis statement.   You should use transitional words or phrases to establish connections between paragraphs and different ideas.  You should use parallel structure   throughout your paper and use repetition sparingly and only when it is effective and necessary.  Be consistent in tense, number, and person throughout your paper as well.  The entire body of supporting evidence should be focused on supporting your main idea without straying off topic or including unrelated ideas.

Your conclusion should let the readers know that you are finished and not leave them with any unanswered questions.  It may recommend a call to action, or it may just summarize a long and complex paper.  The conclusion may repeat some of the ideas from the introduction, but it should not be a replica of that paragraph.  It may restate your main idea.  The conclusion can be either hopeful or hopeless depending on the mood of your paper.  You may leave your reader with some final important facts, or a compelling example, or a final visual image.   It is important that you do not go off in a new direction in your conclusion.  Do not make sweeping generalizations, and again do not apologize for any of your ideas.  Once these arrangements and ideas have been decided, then an outline should be constructed.

Figure 4.4 The Essay Structure

Using a Clear Organizational Pattern

Depending on your topic, you might find it beneficial to use one of these common organizational patterns, either within individual paragraphs or within the entire essay:

5. How to Write a Rough Draft.

Make the Writing Process Work for You! What makes the writing process beneficial to writers is that it encourages alternatives to standard practices and motivates you to develop your best ideas. For instance, the following approaches, done alone or in combination with others, may improve your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:

• Begin writing with the part you know the most about. The purpose of a first draft is to get ideas down on paper that can then be revised.  Consider beginning with the body paragraphs and drafting the introduction and conclusion later. You can start with the third point in your outline if ideas come easily to mind, or you can start with the first or second point   Although paragraphs may vary in length, keep in mind that short paragraphs may contain insufficient support. Readers may also think the writing is abrupt. Long paragraphs may be wordy and may lose your reader’s interest. As a guideline, try to write paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than the length of an entire double-spaced page.
• Write one supporting point at a time and then stop. As long as you complete the assignment on time, you may choose how many paragraphs you complete in one sitting. Pace yourself. On the other hand, try not to procrastinate. Writers should always meet their deadlines.
• Take short breaks to refresh your mind. This tip might be most useful if you are writing a multipage report or essay. Still, if you are antsy or cannot concentrate, take a break to let your mind rest, but do not let breaks extend too long. If you spend too much time away from your essay, you may have trouble starting again. You may forget key points or lose momentum. Try setting an alarm to limit your break, and when the time is up, return to your desk to write.
• Be reasonable with your goals. If you decide to take ten-minute breaks, try to stick to that goal. If you told yourself that you need more facts, then commit to finding them. Holding yourself to your own goals will create successful writing assignments.
• Keep your audience and purpose in mind as you write. These aspects of writing are just as important when you are writing a single paragraph for your essay as when you are considering the direction of the entire essay.
• Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is key to writing success. If your purpose is to persuade, for example, you will present your facts and details in the most logical and convincing way you can for the particular audience you have in mind. If your audience dwells on logic, for example, points that use reason, facts, documented information, and the like, will provide the persuasion to which those readers best respond. Some writers find it useful to keep the purpose and audience at the top of every page, highlighted in some way, as a reminder of the targets of each point.
• Your purpose will guide your mind as you compose your sentences. Your audience will guide word choice. Are you writing for experts, for a general audience, for other college students, or for people who know very little about your topic? Keep asking yourself what your readers, with their background and experience, need to know to understand your ideas. How can you best express your ideas, so they are meaningful and memorable and your communication is effective?
• Write knowing that the revision and editing processes lie ahead, so leave plenty of time for those stages.

You may want to identify your purpose and audience on an index card that you clip to your paper (or keep next to your computer). On that card, you may want to write notes to yourself—perhaps about what that audience might not know or what it needs to know—so that you will be sure to address those issues when you write. It may be a good idea to state exactly what you want to explain to that audience, or the subject about which you want to inform them or persuade them.

Writing at Work

Many of the documents you produce at work target a particular audience for a particular purpose. You may find that it is highly advantageous to know as much as you can about your target audience and to prepare your message to reach that audience, even if the audience is a coworker or your boss. Menu language is a common example. Descriptions like “organic romaine” and “free-range chicken” are intended to appeal to a certain type of customer though perhaps not to the same customer who craves a thick steak. Similarly, mail-order companies research the demographics of the people who buy their merchandise. Successful vendors customize product descriptions in catalogs to appeal to their buyers’ tastes. For example, the product descriptions in a skateboarder catalog will differ from the descriptions in a clothing catalog for mature adults.

Tips to Avoid Writer’s Block

Set up scheduled times to write and set deadlines to accomplish different parts of your essay, and avoid perfectionism–that comes later in the writing process.

Maintaining Internal Integrity of Paragraphs

A paragraph needs to provide links between the ideas, and here are techniques that you can put into practice.

Using Transitions

Transitions within paragraphs are words that connect one sentence to another so that readers can follow the intended meanings of sentences and relationships between sentences. Transitions may also smooth the flow between body paragraphs.  The following table shows some commonly used transition words:

6.   What Is revising?

Once a rough draft is created, take some time to step away from the essay to get a newer and better perspective.  Then begin revising.  Revising means reexamining and rethinking the first draft, adding and deleting ideas extensively; rearranging any of the ideas, sentences, or paragraphs in the first draft; rewriting sentences and paragraphs for more variety, better flow, and more precise word choices.  Often times, you may have three or four drafts before you are finally satisfied with a final draft.  For easier revision, follow the following tips:

• Take time between the first draft and the later revisions to approach it more objectively.
• Revise on hard copy rather than on the computer screen.  Do not delete any drafts!  Do label each successive one. Allow yourself and others to annotate (comment on and give suggestions to improve) your draft.
• Read the draft aloud.  Better yet, have someone else read it aloud.
• Take advantage of opportunities to get feedback; however, do not become overwhelmed by feedback.
• Do not allow ego to get in the way of a successful paper.
• Revise for overall meaning and structure. Does the essay develop a central point clearly and logically and are the purpose, tone, and point-of-view suited for the audience of the essay?
• Revise for paragraph development. Check that your paragraphs are logically ordered, unified, and specific.
• Revise sentence structure. Make your sentences consistent with your overall tone, varied in type and length, emphatic, and economical.
• Finally, revise for word choices. Aim for an appropriate level of diction, word choices that do not overstate or understate, specific rather than general terms, strong verbs, only necessary modifiers, and original and nonsexist language.
• When you get your essays back, read the essay and heed your instructor’s comments.  They can help improve your future essays.  If you do not understand your grade or the instructor’s comments, schedule a conference to discuss them with her.  As you revise your future essays, revisit the mistakes made before and be sure you avoid repeating them.

7.   What is done during editing & proofreading & formatting?

• To edit , search for grammatical errors, check punctuation, check spelling, and look over sentence style and word choices one last time. See chapters 8 , 9 , and 10 for additional help.
• To proofread , look for surface errors, such as typos, incorrect spacing, or formatting problems.
• To format , be sure that you are following the formatting style your instructor requires whether it is Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), etc. For more information, see the Brown Library Citation Styles Guide (http://infoguides.virginiawestern.edu/citations).
• Overall, look carefully for any error, large or small, that may weaken the essay’s message or undermine its credibility.

8. What are other types of academic writing?

There are many different types of writing that you will be asked to create during your academic and professional careers.  Always be clear what your boss or professor expects in an assignment before you begin writing.  Below is just a sample of the various assignments you may be given:

Personal/reflective writing assig nment–personal expression about an experience, event, situation, or information.

Expository writing assignment –writing that explains, describes, or informs.

Case study –a written report about a situation, group, or person that one has studied.

Review –summarizing as well as analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of a piece of writing, a show, or an event.

Technical report –clear, detailed report of the procedures undertaken and the results obtained during a scientific or technical procedure.

Lab report –writing that details the steps taken and the results of a scientific experiment.

Book report –writing that summarizes the contents of a book as well as some commentary concerning the writer’s opinion of the book.

Critical analysis/critique –writing an informed review and an analysis of the significance of a piece of writing or an event.

Bibliography –writing a full list of all resources consulted during a research project.

Annotated bibliography –writing not only a list of all resources consulted for a research project, but also including a summary and analysis of each resource.

Literature review –writing that focuses on a specific research topic and the critical aspects of the literature consulted during the research process.

Research paper –the final product following an extended period of research, critical thinking, and composition that encompasses the writer’s own ideas supported by a combination of primary and secondary sources.

E-mail –writing in electronic mail

Web writing –writing web content, which needs to be direct, concise, and credible.

Oral presentation of written report –developing an effective summary of a project to be delivered in front of an audience; may include visual aids.

Midterm/final exam essay –exams often include short essay questions that need to be written in a short amount of time.

Resume & other ‘business’ writing –writing that must communicate pertinent information in a concise, easy-to-read format.

Key Takeaways

• All writers rely on steps and strategies to begin the writing process.
• The steps in the writing process are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing/proofreading, and publishing.
• Prewriting is the transfer of ideas from abstract thoughts into words, phrases, and sentences on paper.
• A good topic interests the writer, appeals to the audience, and fits the purpose of the assignment.  Writers often choose a general topic first and then narrow the focus to a more specific topic.
• A strong thesis statement is key to having a focused and unified essay.
• Rough drafts are opportunities to get ideas down onto paper to get a first look at how your ideas will work together.
• Revising improves your writing as far as supporting ideas, organization, sentence flow, and word choices.
• Editing spots and corrects any errors in grammar, mechanics, spelling, and formatting.
• Regardless of the type of assignment you may be given in college or in work, it benefits you to follow a writing process, to put in the work necessary to understand your subject and audience, and to communicate your ideas confidently and coherently.

CC Licensed Content, Shared Previously

English Composition I , Lumen Learning, CC-BY 4.0.

Rhetoric and Composition , John Barrett, et al., CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Writing for Success , CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Image Credits

Figure 4.1 “The Writing Proces,” Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0, .

Figure 4.2 “Clustering,” Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0.

Figure 4.3 “Traditional Formal Outline,” Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0.

Figure 4.4 “The Essay Structure,” Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0.

Figure 4.5 “Point of View,” Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0.

The Writing Process Copyright © 2021 by Kathy Boylan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Skip to right header navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

The Writing Process Explained: From Outline to Final Draft

May 30, 2023 //  by  Lindsay Ann //   Leave a Comment

Sharing is caring!

Writing is a messy process. Rarely do writers pick up their pen or open a fresh Google Doc and write everything start to finish. To take the genesis of an idea, consider the rhetorical situation, form that idea into whatever genre and format it needs to take, polish it, and then publish it requires a writing process to help make the non-linear process of writing more manageable and productive. 

Student writers often struggle with this process. They think one submitted draft means the writing process is complete. The lack of engagement in the writing process can hold a student’s writing in that rough draft limbo land forever.  

Empowering students to have agency in their own writing process can inspire amazing writing, increase engagement, and improve students’ metacognition. 

Writing Process 5 Steps

The writing process as we know it has 5 distinct stages. 

• Prewriting, research & planning: In this stage, the writer is mapping out the writing.

This may include brainstorming ideas, storyboarding the narrative arc, conducting any necessary research and making an outline. Anything that happens before actually writing is considered prewriting.

• Drafting: In the drafting stage, writers are making their first attempt at getting the words on the page. In this stage the writing isn’t expected to be perfect because the writer will eventually go back and make necessary changes. The goal in this stage is simply to get the ideas on paper. The drafting stage tends to be where student writers think the writing process ends. For many reasons, they lack the understanding that this is a first attempt and will require some finessing.

 But writing is definitely not done here.

• Revising: When revising, writers go back into their draft and make changes for content . 

This looks like reordering sentences, adding sentences, deleting sentences altogether, reordering paragraphs, etc.

In this stage, writers are really ripping their drafts to shreds, taking out what isn’t working and replacing it with more beautiful and functional content in order to better get their message across and accomplish the purpose of their piece.

• Editing & proofreading: During the editing and proofreading phase, writers are carefully combing through the piece to make sure everything is correct . Word choice, sentence structure, rhythm, punctuation, clarity…getting all of it right matters. 

Sometimes in this stage it’s helpful to have an extra set of eyes on the draft because it can be difficult for us to always spot errors in our own writing.

• Publishing: Publishing can look very different for every writer. In a classroom, publishing may just mean, I’m finished and I’m going to turn this into my teacher now and she’s going to post it on the class Padlet . It could also mean sharing it with a collaborative writing group or submitting to the school’s literary magazine. It could also mean pitching the piece to a publication or presenting it to a community group. Basically, in this step, the writer is ready to show off their writing to the world. 

Teaching the Writing Process

Students need explicit instruction and time to practice the writing process. Time of course is one of our most precious resources in the classroom, so how can we make the most efficient use of it when teaching the writing process?

 Here’s what I’ve found to be particularly helpful:

Use the language of the writing process: Be intentional about using the language of the writing process in your daily agendas, lessons, and feedback. This way when you tell a student something like, “Today you need to focus on prewriting for your upcoming argumentative essay” or “This writing project needs some more revision” or “Do you have your draft completed?” they know what stage of the writing process they’re in and what they need to be doing in that stage of the process.

Teaching writing as a recursive process: The writing process is recursive. 

We (and by we I just mean all of us writers out there) can bounce back and forth from the drafting to the revision stage 15 times before moving on. We can also engage in deep and thoughtful prewriting only to abandon the idea before ever drafting because a better one came along and we decided to start prewriting and drafting for that idea. 

Breaking students of their bad habits is tough work, but helping students see writing as a recursive process will strengthen their final products and help them gain overall confidence in their writing. 

Write daily : Again, I know there are just not enough minutes in the day, but making writing a daily habit is so important. 

The writing process doesn’t just have to be used for long-form writing. 

If you use a daily quickwrite, journal prompt, or warmup, have students cycle through the writing process by jotting down a few ideas and making a quick outline before writing, writing, and then revising and editing before turning in or sharing with a shoulder partner. 

By being in the habit of writing every day, students will find their groove with their own process for writing and it will become second nature!

Model for students your process: Writing in front of students is Vulnerable (yes, with a capital V). I like writing and even I sometimes get nervous before putting my notebook under the document camera. But I try to make writing in front of my students something I do at least once weekly. I model for them my process, I think aloud what I’m going to write, how I want to write it, and they get to watch me write something, hate it, revise it, and cycle through the writing process. 

Status of the class for managing it all: Connor may need three days to organize his ideas in the prewriting stage while Ava only needs about 5 minutes to plan her writing and hit the ground running.

There is no time limit for being in a particular stage of the writing process (unless ya know, they’ve got their phone propped up behind their Chromebook watching Euphoria instead of writing, then we’ve got problems. But I digress…). 

Despite that knee jerk reaction to herd our students like cattle through the writing process, it needs to be differentiated for each writer in the room.

So how the heck do you manage that? 

Utilizing a status of the class for the writing process helps you keep track of where each writer in the room is and can also help you better plan small group or individual instruction and coaching.

 If you just do a quick Google search for the status of the class in the writing workshop, you’ll see approximately one million great ways to do it, but I particularly like the visual Stacy Shubitz at Two Writing Teachers created for her classroom.

Ideas for Brainstorming and Initiation

Check out these ideas to get students engaged in the writing process and shorten the time they stare at a blank page:

• Storyboarding: Draw out problems and solutions and organize them in a logical order.
• Alphabet boxes: See if you can come up with one idea for each letter of the alphabet.
• Heart Maps : Can be used for all writing genres!
• Keeping a writer’s notebook: Have all of your brilliant ideas living in one place. When a new one comes along, jot it down in the notebook!
• Pomodoro technique: Set a timer for 25 minutes and write. When the timer goes off, take a 5 minute break, reset the timer for 25 minutes, and continue writing.
• Stream of consciousness: Write whatever comes to mind about your spark of an idea for writing. When you’ve written all you have to say, use a reverse outline to organize your ideas and continue drafting or begin revising. 

Writing Process Stages

Break assignment up for students: Depending on your students’ skill levels, they may need you to break the assignment up into the stages of the writing process and assign one stage at a time.

Design cycle for STEM and PBL: The writing process is similar to the design cycle used for STEM and PBL ( yes, even engineers need to understand the writing process!).

Have students create their own goals and workflow calendar: In her book Project Based Writing , Liz Prather shares how she has students establish goals for their writing as part of the prewriting process as well as develop their own calendars using a reverse engineering process.

For example, if a student has 25 days and intends to create a poem about the changing seasons, they will need to break down the project into individual tasks and then map out on their calendar how many days they will need for each task. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing if by the end of the year students could move 100% autonomously through the writing process?!

Writing Process Revising v. Editing

What is the difference between revising and editing in the writing process? 

Revising focuses on content only. When you are revising your draft you may notice you are missing a comma or misspelled a word. That’s great! But in the revising stage, those observations don’t matter. Instead, you’re only focusing on making your mystery narrative more suspenseful or making your satirical article more humorous. 

In the editing stage is when you address those spelling, grammar, and mechanics errors. 

Oftentimes in the classroom, the editing phase of the writing process is merely relegated to peer editing, which usually looks like a student’s paper getting shipped off to another student and being told to magically edit it without any guidance. 

Peer editing often gets a bad rap, but I have found that peer editing does have some redeeming qualities if explicitly taught and done correctly . 

Other Misconceptions

Sometimes misconceptions about the writing process hold us back from being our best possible teacher selves and hold our writers back from being their best possible writing selves. So as we wrap up, let’s debunk some of these common misconceptions. 

• Only writers who have problems in their writing need feedback: Ummmmm noooo. Even Jodi Piccoult has a literary agent and a team of editors at her publishing house to make sure her writing is perfect before being published. If it’s good enough for the New York Times bestselling author, it’s good enough for all of us.
• Every piece of writing needs to go through the full cycle: While it would be totally ideal to take every possible idea we ever have for a writing project and then brainstorm it, research it, outline it, draft, revise, edit, and then hit publish, that’s not really realistic. It’s okay to give up on a piece, change your mind on your idea, or have 6 drafts before it’s ready to be edited!
• You need to use the same process each time: The writing process is intended to be flexible. 

Now listen, I fully believe students have to learn the rules of writing (writing process included!) before they can learn to break them. But each student’s process doesn’t have to be the same.

If someone in your classroom needs to fully brainstorm each writing assignment using a storyboard before writing and you have another who needs to write a stream of consciousness before getting organized, it’s all good! Allow students to find their own way in the writing process. That’s where the really good, authentic writing lives! 

About Lindsay Ann

Lindsay has been teaching high school English in the burbs of Chicago for 19 years. She is passionate about helping English teachers find balance in their lives and teaching practice through practical feedback strategies and student-led learning strategies. She also geeks out about literary analysis, inquiry-based learning, and classroom technology integration. When Lindsay is not teaching, she enjoys playing with her two kids, running, and getting lost in a good book.

Related Posts

You may be interested in these posts from the same category.

31 Informational Texts for High School Students

Project Based Learning: Unlocking Creativity and Collaboration

Empathy and Understanding: How the TED Talk on the Danger of a Single Story Reshapes Perspectives

Teaching Story Elements to Improve Storytelling

Figurative Language Examples We Can All Learn From

18 Ways to Encourage Growth Mindset Versus Fixed Mindset in High School Classrooms

10 Song Analysis Lessons for Teachers

Must-Have Table Topics Conversation Starters

The Art of Storytelling: Techniques for Writing Engaging Narratives

Writing Topics for Student Writer’s Block

The Art of Argumentation: How to Write a Convincing Argumentative Essay

5 Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension Skills

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, planning – what are the dispositions and planning strategies of successful writers.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida

Planning is a crucial step of the writing process , especially when a project is complicated or includes coauthors . This article defines planning as a cluster of creative, intuitive processes and analytical, critical processes that writers employ BEFORE writing and THROUGHOUT THE WRITING PROCESS. It summarizes the dispositions and strategies writers employ to manage their time, coordinate coauthors and team projects, and tailor their message for audiences and discourse communities .

Planning refers to

• a cluster of creative, analytical, strategic processes that writers engage in before beginning to write — aka prewriting
• Writers may engage in planning throughout the composing process . They may pause from writing to contemplate how best to respond to a problem, an exigency — the specific call or problem that motivates their writing. For example, they may pause because a particular article, research study , or counterargument challenges their thesis or hypothesis, requiring a reevaluation of their message or writing plan. Thus, although planning is often defined as an initial stage of the writing process, in the real world it permeates and informs all acts of composing. In other words, planning is not just a preliminary stage but an ongoing activity that influences the entire composition process.

Interviews and case studies of writers @ work have found that writers engage in a variety of dispositions and strategies during prewriting:

Dispositions

• During prewriting, writers engage in playful exploration of ideas. They don’t worry about organization or grammar or try to produce polished prose. Instead, their focus is on taking in information and letting it percolate in unexpected ways.
• As writers work their way through the writing process they may need to revise their plans for managing their time and writing the document. This requires a mindset of openness — a willingness to walk from a project that ill-conceived, a willingness to change one’s thesis as a project evolves.
• “When writers are given a topic , the topic itself evokes a felt sense in them. This topic calls forth images, words, ideas, and vague fuzzy feelings that are anchored in the writer’s body. What is elicited, then, is not solely the product of a mind but of a mind alive in a living, sensing body…..When writers pause, when they go back and repeat key words, what they seem to be doing is waiting, paying attention to what is still vague and unclear. They are looking to their felt experience, and waiting for an image, a word, a phrase to emerge that captures the sense they embody….Usually, when they make the decision to write, it is after they have a dawning awareness that something has clicked, that they have enough of a sense that if they begin with a few words heading in a certain direction, words will continue to come which will allow them to flesh out the sense they have” (Perl 1980, p. 365).

Strategies – Examples of Planning Strategies

• During composing , writers remain open to subconscious cues, embracing ambiguity and intuition. They pay attention to their felt sense—an embodied awareness of what they’ve expressed versus their initial intentions . Perl (1980) notes that this involves waiting for the emergence of an image, word, or phrase that captures the sense embodied by the writer, leading to a moment of clarity where writing begins to flow .
• setting specific goals for the writing piece and methodically organizing the steps to achieve them by deadline.
• identifying the necessary research steps you need to take understand to explore the topic and ensure ethical codes of conduct .
• Writers analyze the rhetorical situation . They consider context , purpose , and discourse community norms . This includes identifying the current scholarly conversation on the subject , understanding the required research methodology , and adhering to ethical standards .
• Writers tailor their rhetorical stance , voice , tone , and persona in alignment with audience expectations and discourse conventions . This includes selecting the appropriate citation style and considering the use of citation management tools to streamline the process of tracking citations.
• Writers may use  heuristics  such as  freewriting , preliminary research , and visual brainstorming to engage in exploratory, divergent thinking about a topic.
• Writers use heuristics such as document planners , Burke’s Pentad , team charters , or templates to engage in convergent thinking.
• When an exigency, a call to write , is important to the writer , they may go beyond preliminary research to engaging in strategic research and reviewing scholarly conversations about a topic . Some writers prefer to read deeply into a topic before actually beginning to write .
• Writers continually revise and adapt their initial plans based on new insights, feedback , or an evolving understanding of their topic . Throughout composing , writers pause to reflect on what they’ve said and what they’ve learn. They reassess their plans, often refining their arguments or pivoting to new arguments .

Related Concepts: Intellectual Openness ; Invention ; Mindset ; Resilience ; Self-Regulation & Metacognition

Why Does Planning Matter?

• For college students, planning involves carefully interpreting the assignment prompt to align with the instructor’s expectations and the intended audience . Similarly, professional writers must consider their target audience’s needs early in the process to avoid misdirection and inefficiency in their research and drafting efforts.
• Writing is an iterative process of reasoning and discovery. Writers pause throughout composing to reflect on what they’ve learned as a result of research writers engage in strategic research and learn more about their topics, their initial thesis, hypothesis, research question, their initial plans may need to evolve. This adaptability is essential because the writing process is a knowledge refine what they need next to communicate pe thesis and arguments in light of new insights, a principle that holds true for both academic and professional contexts.
• Effective planning helps in structuring complex ideas, ensuring logical progression and clarity. This is crucial in academic essays and professional reports or proposals where coherent organization is key to effectively communicating complex information.
• Thorough planning allows for a deeper exploration of topics, benefiting both students in academic research and professionals in fields that require detailed analysis and comprehensive reporting.
• A clear plan reduces uncertainty, a benefit for students facing challenging assignments and professionals tackling demanding projects. It provides a sense of control and confidence in managing the writing task.
• In both academic and workplace settings, complex or lengthy projects require meticulous planning to manage the scope and scale effectively.
• Planning enables efficient use of time, a critical skill for students juggling multiple assignments and professionals meeting deadlines.
• As understanding deepens or project requirements change, a flexible plan allows writers to adjust their approach, maintaining clarity and persuasiveness.
• Planning is vital in team writing projects, common in both academic group assignments and professional collaborations, ensuring coordinated efforts and clear communication.
• A well-structured plan aids in the revision process, allowing writers to compare their drafts against initial objectives and make focused improvements.

When, During Composing, Should Writers Engage in Planning?

The necessity of planning in the writing process varies among writers and depends on the specific rhetorical situation . While some scenarios are so familiar that they require little to no planning, allowing writers to immediately know what to say, other circumstances demand more thoughtful preparation.

Planning is traditionally seen as an initial step in writing, often associated with prewriting and including activities like rhetorical analysis . However, in reality, planning is a dynamic and continuous part of the writing process . Writers may find themselves revisiting and adjusting their plans at various stages of the writing process, especially during invention ,  drafting ,  collaboration ,  research ,  planning ,  organizing ,  designing ,  rereading ,  revising .

The extent of planning needed is largely dictated by the nature of the writing task. Extensive planning is more common when the task is unfamiliar, intricate, carries significant impact, or involves collaboration, whether face-to-face or online. In these cases, careful planning helps in organizing thoughts , aligning team efforts , and ensuring that the final message is coherent and effective. Conversely, for routine or straightforward writing tasks, extensive planning may not be necessary.

Understanding the specific demands of the rhetorical situation enables writers to determine the appropriate level of planning required. This flexibility in planning ensures that writers can effectively address the unique challenges and opportunities presented by each writing task.

What Is the Difference Between Planning, Prewriting & Invention?

The terms planning , prewriting , and invention may be used used interchangeably because they are such intertwined processes, yet they each carry distinct meanings:

• Planning typically refers to the overall process of organizing ideas and structuring a writing piece , encompassing the selection of topics , determination of purpose , and arrangement of content.  It typically encompasses tools such as Team Charters and usage of project management software . While prewriting and invention may involve more creative and exploratory activities, planning is focused on setting a clear direction and framework for the writing.
• Prewriting is a subset of planning , focusing more on the initial stages of idea generation, brainstorming, and exploration of thoughts before formal writing begins. Prewriting is more expansive and free-form than planning, allowing for a broader exploration of thoughts and concepts. In comparison to invention, prewriting is less about generating new ideas and more about exploring and organizing existing ideas in preparation for writing.
• Invention in writing refers to the process of generating new ideas, concepts, or perspectives. Invention is distinct from planning and prewriting in that it is focused primarily on creating something new, rather than organizing or setting objectives for existing ideas.

Gendlin, Eugene T. (1978). Focusing . (New. York: Everest House, 1978), pp 35, 165. Perl, S. (1980). Understanding Composing. College Composition and Communication , 31 (4), 363–369. 

—-. Felt Sense . CUNY Composition Community. https://compcomm.commons.gc.cuny.edu/feltsense/ 

—-.” Guidelines for Composing .” CUNY Composition Community. https://compcomm.commons.gc.cuny.edu/feltsense/guidelines-for-composing/

Related Articles:

Career planning.

Planning Technical & Professional Documents

Prewriting - Laying the Foundation for Successful Writing

Suggested edits.

• Please select the purpose of your message. * - Corrections, Typos, or Edits Technical Support/Problems using the site Advertising with Writing Commons Copyright Issues I am contacting you about something else
• Your full name
• Your email address *
• Page URL needing edits *
• Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
• Alan Balfour

Effective career planning requires strategic searching. Consider these strategies for exploring a career that fits your personality and goals.

• Angela Eward-Mangione

Prewriting refers to all of the work you do before beginning to write. This article explores the dispositions and prewriting strategies writers employ to write more efficiently and with greater...

Featured Articles

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Authority – How to Establish Credibility in Speech & Writing

Our content is reader-supported. Things you buy through links on our site may earn us a commission

Join our newsletter

Never miss out on well-researched articles in your field of interest with our weekly newsletter.

• Project Management
• Starting a business

Get the latest Business News

Writing success: plan, organize, write, review.

Suggested Pre-Reading

• Building Blocks of Writing: Vocabulary, Spelling and Grammar

Sections of This Topic Include

• Planning and Organizing

Writing for Readability

Formatting your writing, getting started with writing, reviewing your writing.

Also, consider

• Communications (Interpersonal)
• Communications (Organizational)
• Interpersonal Skills
• Related Library Topics

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Business Writing

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Business Writing. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also, see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “Next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

• Library’s Communications Blog

Planning and Organizing Your Writing

When people struggle to write, it is often because they did not start by planning and organizing their writing. For example, you need to consider:

• Who is your audience?
• What are your goals with that audience, that is, what key points do you want to convey to them?
• What kind of writing style best appeals to them?
• So how should you design your writing?

Consider this table:

(Contributed by Deane Gradous, Twin Cities consultant)

Type of correspondence

Letters (external)

Memos, reports (internal)

• Research reports
• Status reports
• Meeting reports
• Trip reports
• Progress reports
• Newsletters
• Request for action

Transparencies

• Up–Management
• Down–associates
• Across–peers
• Our–customers

Reader analysis

• Decision maker
• Customer/client
• Expert/ non-expert

Task, relationship, and image

• Turn on/off
• Connotation/ denotation
• Conversational

Correctness

Proofreading

• Active Voice

Relationship issues

• You” focus
• Problem-solving
• Collaborative

Organized for the reader

Methods of development

• Order of importance
• By space, etc.

Illustrations

(Contributed by Deane Gradous, Twin Cities Consultant)

Make your writing visually appealing, well organized, and simple to take in and remember. Even though you write for a captive reader, do not assume that he or she will be fascinated with what you have to say.

Use headings and subheadings

Help speed recognition of what the page contains. Use headings to communicate a sense of order and conciseness. Make your communication look planned, coherent, and forthright. Order is important. Start with a statement of your purpose for writing. Add the when, who, how, and where details that you have organized into some rational order. Say what you think about the above, and end with a summary. Put endless tables of data in an appendix.

Don’t tax your reader’s power to take in information

Straight text looks formidable. The reader braces himself or herself for an ordeal–for heavy going. Because we humans have relatively limited capacities for information processing, you should present your information in bite-sized chunks, which your reader may then quickly note and take in. Keep paragraphs short–seven lines of type at the most. The shorter, the more irresistible your paragraphs are.

Look for opportunities to use numbered or bulleted lists. Numbers designate order or hierarchy. If your word-processing program does not create bullets, you can create them by filling in lower-case o’s with a felt pen. Remember to make all the items in your lists grammatically parallel and to add no punctuation because the list is its own punctuation.

Use white space as a foil

White space is not random nothingness. It is a tool; use it! White space is functional when it works to lift your ideas off the page and into your reader’s mind. Be concerned with the use of margins and the consistency of spacing between lines and paragraphs. A 60-character line or less will help your reader track correctly through your text. And keep white space white (clean). Eliminate visual nuisances such as fancy borders or prominent logos.

Use a style sheet

For consistency, design template files with your preferred page layouts for letters, reports, and memos. Save these settings in separate files and lock them. Some word processors have a style feature to facilitate paragraph formatting. Style sheets save you time because you make the small but important decisions involved in formatting your written communications just once. Style sheets also help you create a consistent, professional image.

Add visual appeal

Add personality and drama to your correspondence by incorporating hand-written notations, graphic illustrations, and charts. Graphics attract. Use graphics to break up the page and to lead the reader’s eye right to where you want it — perhaps to the second and third pages of a long memo.

Checklists, sidebars, summaries, tables, graphs, hand-written notations, and cartoons will add to the visual appeal of the page. (Exception: Place a series of tables and graphs in an appendix.)

Use restraint

Sparingly employ italics, boldface, underlining, upper-case type, asterisks, and changes of font or type size. Too much variety creates an impression of complexity or messiness. Eliminate noise, such as unnecessary periods at the end of items in a list and parentheses after the numbers in a list.

Highlight important text

As mentioned in the previous section, formatting is a powerful way to ensure readability for your readers, especially in today’s rapid pace when many readers prefer to skim rather than read.

• Formatting – Using titles and subtitles for spacing and readability
• Formatting – How to format your text so it’s more readable
• Formatting – Recommended headings for business reports
• Formatting – Using headings/sections
• Formatting – Using Microsoft Word typographic capabilities

Often, the hardest part of writing is getting started. Consider this variety of different suggestions.

Set a timer for 510 minutes, and write for the entire time. Aim to write anything that is even slightly related to your topic. It’s OK to set down your thoughts and feelings about approaching this writing task.

Ask a colleague to listen while you talk about your writing project and the ideas you plan to convey to your reader. Then go to your computer and start writing.

Take a handful of 3″ x 5″ index cards and write your ideas on them, one per card. Arrange and rearrange your cards in an order that makes sense. Add ideas as they occur to you. Then tape the cards to a large sheet of paper and fill in the details around each idea. Very often, the ideas on the cards become headings or topic sentences for paragraphs.

Begin to write anywhere in the middle of the piece. Start with the most interesting [to you!] part. Your enthusiasm may carry you into completing your writing project. Write the beginning of the piece last or whenever you are ready to do so.

Put your reader in an empty chair and talk to your reader as if he or she were sitting across the desk from you. What is your reader most interested in learning from what you are writing? After your conversation, start writing.

Listen to baroque music. Mentally explore your topic. Reread your notes. Relax, and let your subconscious take over for a few minutes. Expect an A-Ha! Write quickly.

Go for a walk and consider what you want to say to the reader. Return to your computer, and start writing.

Create a Mind Map. Write your way around it.

• Drafting – Guidelines for writing your first draft

The following act ivies are often covered in the overall topic of editing.

This means carefully reviewing your writing to be sure that it conforms to the rules of proper spelling and grammar. Here are some useful articles:

• How to Proofread
• 7 Effective Ways to Proofread Writing
• How to Proofread Effectively
• Proofreading Tips

Does It Meet the Goals of Your Writing?

Do you believe that your writing will achieve the goals that you specified when you first planned and organized your writing? One of the best ways to verify that is to have a few members of your intended audience review the draft of your writing and then ask them to mention the key points that they took from the reading. Ask them how your writing might be modified to make your points even clearer.

Here’s a useful article about reviewing/editing your writing

• 100 Editing and Proofreading Tips for Writers

For the Category of Communications (Business Writing):

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

• Recommended Books

7 Best Tax Preparation Software for the 2024 Tax Season

Feeling anxious about tax season? You’re definitely not alone. But don’t worry, because there are excellent tax preparation software options that can make this overwhelming time a breeze. This blog post will simplify the process and introduce you to the top-rated tax software choices available. Whether you’re a first-time filer or looking for ways to …

H&R Block Review: Features, Cost, & Alternate Tax Software

Contemplating the approaching tax season and uncertain if you possess the capabilities to manage your return independently or require expert assistance? H&R Block offers a variety of tax filing solutions, catering to those who prefer a do-it-yourself approach and those who opt to entrust their tax returns to a professional, whether virtually or in person. …

FreeTaxUSA Review 2024: Pros, Cons, Pricing, & Alternatives

If you’re seeking tax software on a budget, this is the one for you. FreeTaxUSA is an online platform that allows you to prepare, print, and electronically file your taxes without any cost. This applies specifically to filing your Federal income tax return. It seems like a reliable option for online tax preparation software, and …

Cash App Taxes Review for 2024: 100% Free & Other Features

Looking to file your tax return at no cost in 2024? Cash App Taxes is a fresh addition to the realm of self-service tax software this filing season, although it could be more novel. Square, Inc., the parent organization behind the financial services application Cash App, purchased Credit Karma’s complimentary do-it-yourself tax filing service and …

7 Best Self-Employed Tax Software for 2024

Becoming your boss has advantages and disadvantages, as any self-employed individual attests. The flexibility to set your schedule is a major perk, but when tax season arrives, the burden of being in charge loses some of its appeal. Fortunately, tax preparation software can streamline your life and alleviate stress during this period. The ideal tax …

TaxAct Tax Software Review 2024: Pros, Cons, & Pricing

If you’re already considering the upcoming tax season and want to find affordable tax filing software, TaxAct could be a suitable choice. However, determining the exact cost of tax filing may require some effort, particularly if you need more clarification about your income, deductions, and eligible tax credits. To assist you in making an informed …

Jackson Hewitt Tax Software Review 2024: Is It Legit?

Jackson Hewitt is renowned for its face-to-face tax preparation services, available at almost 6,000 physical locations across the United States, with 3,000 conveniently situated within Walmart stores. In addition to providing in-person assistance, Jackson Hewitt allows customers to file their tax returns online independently. This evaluation presents our analysis of Jackson Hewitt’s online tax filing …

How Long Does It Take to Get Tax Refund: Updated for 2024

Tax season can evoke different emotions depending on whether you anticipate receiving a tax refund or not. If you do expect a refund, it can provide an opportunity to enhance your savings, make headway toward financial goals, or establish a stable financial foundation. However, the question of how long it takes to receive your refund …

TaxSlayer Review 2024: Is It the Best Online Tax Software?

Are you considering a budget-friendly alternative for your next tax filing? TaxSlayer proposes an affordable, self-service online platform for tax preparation, which might be free of cost. Yet, is it equipped to manage your specific taxation requirements? Therein lies our critique of TaxSlayer’s digital application, analyzing its ideal user base, pricing structure, and ease of …

TurboTax Review 2024: Cost & Ease of Use Compared

If you’re looking for assistance in determining the appropriate forms to file and deductions to claim while filing your tax, TurboTax could be your ideal tax filing software.  However, it’s important to note that there are many invitations to upgrade or add on extra features throughout the program. Let’s examine TurboTax’s strengths and pricing structure …

Liberty Tax Review 2024: Pros, Cons, Cost & Alternatives

Navigating the complexities of tax filing can be daunting, especially with the many options available. Fortunately, you don’t have to navigate the labyrinth of IRS forms alone. The top-notch tax software guides you through the entire process, simplifying the submission of your returns. Numerous tax software solutions exist in the market. This Liberty Tax review …

How to Start an LLC in Iowa  – Essential Steps for 2024

In 2021, Iowa experienced an unprecedented surge in new business registrations, setting a remarkable record. Numerous individuals are eager to establish limited liability companies (LLCs) in the state. While the prospect of forming an Iowa LLC may appear daunting, it can actually be simplified. It’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the specific forms and requirements …

How to Start an LLC in Hawaii in 2024

Establishing a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in Hawaii is a relatively simple and secure undertaking that presents entrepreneurs with a flexible and protective business structure.  To embark on this endeavor, aspiring business owners must adhere to a set of guidelines outlined by the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA). From selecting an original …

How to Start an LLC in Oregon – 10 Steps for 2024

Establishing an LLC in Oregon is a simple procedure that presents entrepreneurs with a versatile and advantageous business framework. To commence the creation of a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the state, prospective business proprietors must adhere to a series of steps. These steps encompass various pivotal decisions, ranging from selecting an exclusive and compliant …

How to Start an LLC in Connecticut: Easy Steps to Follow 

Connecticut has experienced consistent growth in new business establishments since 2010, with an average yearly increase of 5%. However, in 2021, there was a significant surge of 20% in registrations within the state known as the “Constitution State.” As a result, it’s unsurprising that numerous Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) are being formed. This guide will …

Privacy Overview

• Our Mission

Planning Writing Lessons for the Early Elementary Grades

Teachers can provide thoughtful instruction that supports the sustained development of young students’ literacy skills.

Often, attempting to plan effective and purposeful writing instruction raises many questions: What does lesson planning look like? How will I manage so many students who may be in different stages of their writing? How often should they be editing and revising? The list doesn’t stop there.

By utilizing on-demand writing for assessment and long-range writing for scaffolded practice of applying various writing techniques, teachers can approach their instruction with intentional and tailored lessons that meet the needs of the learners in the classroom, as well as help students develop self-regulated behaviors when crafting a piece of text.

On-Demand Writing

Just like any area of instruction, assessment is critical for knowing what the students’ strengths and areas of growth are, and on-demand writing is how teachers can gather that evidence. An on-demand piece of writing simply means that the teacher provides a specific prompt for the student to write to for the purpose of anecdotal data. For example, let’s say a second-grade teacher prepares for a narrative writing cycle. In the first couple of days before the cycle begins, they’ll ask students to write a narrative about something fun they’ve experienced (with their family or a friend). 

After the prompt is given, students get one or two days to write and are provided with all necessary tools to carry out the process of developing a piece of writing without additional modeling or instruction. Effective tools might include graphic organizers, writing paper, tools for editing, and a writing checklist. However, the teacher will not model how to use the tools. The teacher is informally assessing if the students know how to use these resources to develop a story.

After students complete their piece, the teacher collects them for analysis. It is critically important to determine realistic expectations for what writing should look like throughout various points of the year, so creating a common rubric as a grade level is a great way to stay on the same page for analyzing the assessment. 

Writing growth, similar to reading, happens along a continuum of skills. At the beginning of the year, a second grader can’t be expected to write like an end-of-the-year second grader because they haven’t been taught the grade-level skills necessary to do so yet. On-demand benchmark assessments along the way will gradually raise the expectation of what that student should be able to do. Websites such as Reading Rockets and Achieve the Core provide useful anchor examples of real student writing in various genres that provide annotated explanations of students’ overall writing ability and possible next steps for instruction.

As students engage in daily lessons about crafting a narrative within the instructional cycle of a long-range writing piece, another on-demand prompt may be given at the halfway point of the cycle to track growth and drive future instruction. This could be the same prompt as before or a prompt given in response to a story or passage the student has read.  

It’s important to remember that it’s easy to fall into the trap of using writing prompts daily for students to produce writing simply because it’s easy to manage. If we use this approach exclusively, we rob our students of the opportunity to dive deeply into producing self-chosen, elaborate pieces full of voice and author’s craft.

Long-Range Writing

Long-range pieces give students the autonomy to choose their own writing topic while the teacher assists in walking them through the process. This type of instruction instills the executive-functioning behaviors needed when students are asked to write a piece on demand. When considering how to implement this type of writing instruction, it can be overwhelming. Breaking down long-range instruction using the following components allows for a more manageable approach.

Keep your lesson mini: A mini lesson is 15 to 20 minutes long and organized in a gradual release format, and it allows the teacher to model a specific, focused lesson. For example, narrative writing could be broken into the following mini lessons for a beginning-of-the-year cycle for second grade: introduce and describe a setting, introduce and describe the character, edit on the go (this means to stop and edit before we add more writing), describe the first event in the narrative, introduce a problem, etc. Essentially, each lesson will invite students to add to their story one chunk at a time.

Model, provide independent practice: The teacher begins by modeling one learning target using a well-crafted organizer . An effective organizer teaches students that each genre has a specific structure. As learners begin to recognize the pattern in text structure, they can replicate it when assessed in on-demand pieces. For example, the teacher can start by using a text that clearly introduces and describes the setting, and then read that page out loud and ask students what they notice about how the author introduced the setting.  

Next, students are invited to help the teacher write a setting to a story together by offering verbal suggestions. The teacher records the students’ ideas and writes an example introduction in the organizer. Then students think about an idea for an introduction of a setting on their own and are prompted to talk to a partner about their story. The students verbally rehearse what they plan to write, as this provides them an opportunity to organize their thoughts and prepares them to get started as soon as they are released to write independently, using the same organizer that the teacher used to model the mini lesson.  

The benefit of this approach is that it gives the teacher time to provide specific feedback over the same crafting element. Having every student write their complete thoughts directly in the organizer in a chunked manner allows for a better visual of where to correct capitalization and punctuation. Essentially, each lesson should invite students to write one or two complete sentences that can be quickly edited before adding the next part of the story.  

Share and reflect: Close each lesson by bringing students back together so that they have an opportunity to share what they’ve produced. This time celebrates students’ creativity, as well as giving them an opportunity to reflect on how they can improve their writing.   

Both on-demand writing and long-range writing are vital in developing confident writers across various genres. It’s important to approach them with a cyclical scope and sequence that allows students to learn the craft, structure, and development of narrative, informative, and opinion styles of writing. By scaffolding and supporting students’ growth in each genre of writing, learners will begin to automatically apply these techniques more independently as the year progresses because of the solid foundation that has been built. 

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.