Writing as Process: Drafting

Your writing process The product is a result of a process. A successful product is the result of a process that works. Good writers monitor their writing process, the ways in which they evaluate the writing situation and the strategies they use to negotiate their process. Everyone’s process is unique to them, but there are some things that all good writers do before putting their work into play as a product. Things all good academic writers do: The assess the writing situation They go through a process of finding a topic that is relevant to the audience they are targeting. They plan. They design ways of gathering information and inform that design and their findings by gathering the information provided by others in the literature. They take notes. They identify sources. They go through a process of drafting an argument, making a case. Once they know what they are trying to say, how to make their case, they begin to think about how the case can best be made to the particular audience being addressed. They revise, edit and proofread their texts so that the text is infused with purpose, prepared to perform the social action it is designed to perform.

Drafting Drafting is a process of figuring out what we want to say and attempting to express the meaning we intend to express. Ultimately, in drafting, we are focused on trying to say what we want to say. Later, when we revise, we focus on how we want to say it. For now, though, we just want to convince ourselves that our case is sound. We do that by sketching out our argument and attempting to articulate it so that we can evaluate it and decide if we have enough to defend our position.

Writing is messy It is rare that what is in our heads will spill eloquently onto the paper. Often, we’ll write something and be dissatisfied with it. Good writers are not put off by this dissatisfaction, but continue to make efforts to manipulate the language in order to be satisfied that it accurately expresses the meanings they wish to convey. Meaning-making is a messy process of articulation and clarification. Once clearly articulated, the writer can progress to thinking about how best to articulate it so that it has its desired effect on the audience.

Some drafting strategies Structuring—dividing your paper into increasingly smaller spaces by outlining or mapping. For instance, for a 1500 word essay assignment: Introduction (the thesis, its relevance and what you’ll do): 200 words Synthesis of the opposing positions on the claim: 400 words Synthesis of the arguments supporting the claim: 500 words Conclusions based on the strength of the arguments supporting the claims over the arguments in opposition: 400 words Freewheeling—employing strategies such as free-writing and writing to prompts in order to generate text appropriate to the spaces identified through structuring. For instance: Compare de Saussure and Castoriadas on symbolic mediation (150 words) The idea of structuring, here, is to divide larger spaces into smaller, and therefore, less daunting, spaces to fill with text. The thought here is that it is easier to fill smaller spaces with text than larger spaces because the smaller spaces are designated for particular conversations, therefore, more focused, and because the smaller space is more approachable, more doable, in the mind of the impatient or anxious writer. Some cautions on structuring: novice writers need accept the provisionality of the structure—it can change, and should change as the argument takes shape. Also, if headings are used to identify spaces, they might need to be removed once the audience is brought back into the paper during the revision stage. Paragraphs, at that point, need to carry the argument, not the headings. Some benefits of freewheeling: prompts, whether free-writing or generative-writing prompts, are great ways of getting started, of testing your readiness to articulate certain ideas and a good way to fill spaces that can be returned to for revision. A caution on freewheeling: the response is not a one-off, but a stating point in the generation of text. Afterwards, the text needs to be modified for more precise meaning and organised to carry the argument.

Writing is a recursive process; therefore, write what you are ready to write when you are ready to write it. If you know that you are going to include an explanation of a particular concept or a summary of a particular position on an issue and you are ready to write it, then write it, even though the context for that explanation hasn’t been written yet. Better to get it down while it’s fresh in your mind. Parts of the text get developed before other parts. Later parts might be developed and refined before earlier parts. We may discover or decide that more information needs to be added to a part that we had previously thought was polished, so it is back to gathering information, drafting the portion being added, fitting it into or modifying what was previously complete in order to accommodate the new information.

Methods for developing of ideas Aristotle identified topoi, or topics, to which good writers go to develop a deeper understanding of their topic: definition, division (into parts), comparing, (other) relationships (such as cause/effect), circumstances, testimony…(see ‘topics of invention’, Silva Rhetorica) Journalists’ questions: Who? What? Where? How? Why? How much? How often? Etc. Rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s Pentad: (a variation of the journalists’ questions): act, scene, agent, agency, purpose. Burke’s ratios inquired into how one element affects the other, for instance, the effect of the scene on the act or the agent. I am using two resources here: Sally Barr Ebest et al., Writing from A to Z. McGraw-Hill, 2005. and ‘topics of invention’, Silva Rhetorica, available at: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/. The hyperlink will take you to the Silva Rhetorica home page. Click on Invention, under Cannons of Rhetoric in the left-hand menu. Then on the Invention page, in the first paragraph, click on ‘topics of invention’. Journalists’ questions is pretty self explanatory, but Burke’s Pentad might need some explanation. Burke envisages writing situations as dramatic events. Ebest et al. (9) call attention to the correspondence between the Journalists’ Questions and Burke’s Pentad: Act=what? Scene=where and when? Agent=who? Agency=how? Purpose=why? Writing about any of these elements clarifies its importance.

Possible exercises Craft a provisional outline of the paper you are working on, including the amount of space each part will occupy. Conjure a prompt that will generate text for a particular part of your paper. Freewrite on a part of your paper that you think you are ready to write.