1. 6 Steps of the Writing Process

2. Step 1 – Prewriting
Pre-writing literally means, “before writing.” Before you actually begin writing your essay, you will need to do the following things:
1. Choose a topic to write on
2. Brainstorm or generate ideas for your topic
3. Focus in on central ideas

3. Step 2 – Plan and Organize
Organizing your list of ideas can help you specifically decide what you want to write about and how to go about writing. This is a rough plan for your essay and can help make the rough draft writing easier.
There are three main ways to ‘plan and organize’ your ideas:
1. Spider Diagram/Bubble Cluster
2. Outline
3. Columns

4. Step 3 – Rough Draft Writing
After getting ideas and organizing them, it is time to start writing the essay. When you begin writing your rough draft, try to remember the following:
1. Don’t worry about writing the ‘perfect’ paper
the first time.
2. Don’t focus on spelling and grammar as you
write your rough draft. You can check this later
in the writing process.
3. Your goal in writing a rough draft is to develop
and support the ideas listed in your outline.

5. Step 4 - Edit
Editing is what you’re used to looking for naturally when you read your paper or peer edit someone else’s. When you read through your paper the first time after writing it, you should EDIT ONLY!
Begin editing your draft for
spelling,
grammar,
capitalization,
punctuation,
word choice, and
sentence structure errors.

6. Step 5 - Revise
After you write your first draft, go back over it and look for ways to improve your essay in content and organization.
Read through your paper a second time
and REVISE ONLY!
Begin revising your draft for
idea development
organization of sentences in a paragraph,
organization of paragraphs in the essay,
repetition of ideas, and
changing introduction and/or conclusion.

7. Step 6 - Publish
The last step is turning in your essay to be graded. Look at the guidelines below for turning in the final draft of your essay.
Did you follow the directions on the project handout?
Times New Roman e. Double Spaced, One-inch margins
Size 12 f. 5 Above Average Paragraphs
Correct format (name, hour…) g. Flesch-Kincaid (pre and post)
Unique title
Is your paper error free, having been edited and revised several times over?
Is your final copy clean, not written on, stapled neatly, etc.?
Are you turning it in on time?