The Writing Process

The Writing Process Can be Broken to Four Stages: Prewriting: Discover a clearly stated point or thesis. (Free Writing, Questioning, Listing, Clustering, and Outlining) Provide logical detailed support for your thesis. Organize and connect your supporting material. Revise and edit so that your sentences are effective and error-free.

1- Prewriting

Free writing Free writing means jotting down in rough sentences or phrases everything that comes to mind about a possible topic. Do not worry about spelling, punctuation, mistakes, organization, or finding a specific word. If you get stuck for words, repeat yourself until more words come. It’s a way to explore, so focus on discovering what you want to say about a subject. The more you free write, you will develop the habit of thinking as you write.

Questioning In questioning, you generate ideas and details by asking questions about a subject: Why? When? Where? Who? and How? Ask as many questions as you can think of. Questioning helps you to think about a topic from a number of different angles.

Listing Listing, also known as Brainstorming, you collect ideas and details that relate to your subject. You pile items up one after another without trying to sort out major details from minor or trying to put the details in any specific order. Your goal is just to make a list of everything about your subject that occurs to you.

Clustering Also known as Diagramming or Mapping, clustering is helpful for people who like to think visually. You use lines, boxes, arrows, and circles to show relationships between ideas and details that occur to you. It can give you an early sense of how ideas and details relate to one another.

Outlining A scratch Outline can be a great sequel to the first four prewriting techniques. It’s a good way to see if you need to do more prewriting. If you can not come up with a solid outline, you know you need to do more prewriting to clarify your main point or its several kinds of support. It helps you think carefully about the point you’re making, the supporting items for that point, and the order in which you will arrange those items. It’s a plan to help you achieve a unified supported well organized composition.

2- Writing a First Draft

Writing First Draft In this stage, you put in additional thoughts and details that didn’t emerge in the prewriting. If you hit a snag, just leave a blank space or add a comment like “do Later” & continue to finish the papers. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, and spelling yet. Make it a goal to state your thesis clearly & develop

3- Revising

Revising Revising mean REWRITING a paper by building on what has been done already in order to make it stronger. Set a first draft aside for a while to be able to see it with a fresh more objective eyes. Work with a typed text to be impartial instead of your familiar hand writing. Read it a loud because hearing how your writing sounds will help you discover problems with meaning as well as style. As you do the above, add your thoughts & changes above the lines or in the margins of the papers.

Revising Content: Is my paper unified? Is my paper well-supported? Is my paper organized?

Revising Sentences: Do I use parallelism to balance words & ideas? Do I have a consistent point of view? Do I use specific words? Do I use active/passive verbs effectively? Do I avoid slang, cliché, pretentious language & wordiness? Do I vary my sentences?

4- Editting

Editing Now, you are ready to edit – check for and correct errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Eliminating sentence skills mistakes will improve an average paper and help you get a strong grade on a good paper.

Sources Langan, John. College Writing Skills with Readings.