1. A College Writer's Process
A Process of Writing

2. Generating Ideas
Discovering what to write about- Find a topic and say something about it.
Often challenging, you can find a topic or idea near home, in a conversation, or an everyday event.

3. Discovering Materials
Think over past writing experiences at work or school. How do you get ideas? Where do the come from? Where do you turn for related material?
How do you begin planning, drafting and developing these ideas?
Watch Video on the Writing Process.
To shape and support your ideas, you’ll need facts and figures, reports and opinions, examples and illustrations, which we will go over in more detail over the next couple of weeks.
For now, your own experiences work well as materials of support.

4. Identify your purpose and audience Decide on one main point
Planning
Identify your purpose and audience
Decide on one main point
State a thesis
Organize ideas by grouping or outlining
Stage 1

5. Drafting Start and restart Build paragraphs Open and conclude
Create coherence
Stage 2

6. Add definitions, examples, and details
developing
Explain and support
Add definitions, examples, and details
Supply evidence such as facts, statistics, expert testimony, and observations.
Stage 3

7. Revision, editing, and proofreading
Re-seeing and rewriting
Making major changes to your ideas and development
Changing or reconsidering your audience/purpose
Having others read to see what you can’t.
Refining details
Improving wording
Drop unnecessary words
Replace incorrect wording
Rearrange words in a clearer order
Combine sentences
Refine transitions
Correcting flaws
Proofreading- catching spelling and word-processing errors

8. Purpose and audience

9. Purpose

10. Three Reasons for Writing
To Inform (Expository)
To Persuade (Persuasive)
Entertain (Narrative or Poetry)

11. Writing to Inform Often called expository writing.
Expository writing shows or explains facts.
Examples:
Biography of Barack Obama
News report about a shooting
Note to a friend
Essay about “killer bees”
Remember: Expository = Expose

12. Writing to Persuade Attempts to influence the reader.
Usually makes an argument.
Examples:
Political speeches
Advertisements
A cover letter for your resume
An essay urging readers to recycle

13. Writing to Entertain Narratives: stories.
Have a beginning, middle, and end
A story may have a lesson, but the author’s main purpose is to entertain.
Examples of Writing to Entertain
Harry Potter books
Poems about love
Narrative essay about the big game
Script for a TV show

14. Is it a story, poem, or drama (script)?
Yes No
Does the text make arguments?
Yes No
Does the text give facts?
Yes No
Start
Over
Entertain
Persuade
Inform

15. Review
Informative or expository writing provides factual information about a topic.
Persuasive writing expresses an opinion (may use facts to support).
All narratives are written to entertain, but so is poetry.
Review Practice Worksheet

16. Audience

17. Targeting an Audience
After coming up with a specific topic, it is also important to identify the audience for an essay. As a writer, your audience is not whoever reads the essay (this is far too broad) or even simply your instructor (of course he/she will read the essay). Instead, the audience is the group of people you want to educate or persuade.
Who are you really writing to?

18. Writing for your audience
Knowing the audience for a particular essay is important because it determines the content that will appear in the writing.  The content of an essay that has a specific topic will vary depending on the intended audience. In other words, having a focused topic is important, but having a specific audience is equally important.

19. Writing for your audience
For example, let’s say you are writing an expository (informative) essay on the most important practice techniques in becoming a better tennis player.
Informative

20. Writing for your audience
If your audience is beginning tennis players, or players who know little about the game, the techniques needed to get better are different than if you are writing to intermediate players who want to become good enough to enter and/or win tournaments.
In the first example, the steps would be more basic, while in the second example they would obviously be more advanced. Either way, the topic of the essay, becoming a better tennis player, is the same, but because the audiences are different, the information in each essay will be different as well. 

21. Writing for your audience
The same is true of an argument or persuasive essay. If you are arguing for a change to occur, identifying the level at which you want this change to occur and/or the people you want to persuade to help create this change (audience) is important. 
Persuasive

22. Writing for your audience
For example, an essay about the need for a change to SAC’s grading system can have different audiences. One potential audience may be the students who attend SAC, in which case explaining how this change would benefit students with more accurate grading becomes important.
Another audience could be the SAC’s senior management, in which case the benefits to enrollment and student retention become important points to address.

23. Targeting a certain audience
General
Reason: Curious & Interested
Knowledge: A minimal level of Awareness
Expectations: Formal and a lot of Details
College Instructor
Reason: Professional responsibility
Knowledge: Well informed
Expectations: Formal, Serious, Thoughtful, Enough Research for Sound logic
Work
Reason: Reliance on job performance
Knowledge: Informed about business
Expectations: Reliability, Ethical, and Technical as needed
Friend
Reason: Personal interest
Knowledge: minimal knowledge on topic
Expectations: Informal and lots of Details
Use the Checklist to determine what and if you are writing for your audience.