The Writing Process

Most importantly, find a method that works best for your learning style. Here are some suggests for different stages of writing:

1. Pre-Writing: Discover valuable ideas by opening your mind to ALL ideas. Ask thought-provoking questions about your topic. You can write your ideas down in clusters, like an idea network. Or you can free-write in sentence form; then highlight the valuable ideas and brainstorm again, this time more focused.
2. Thesis Statement: As the main idea of your entire essay, this statement should be truthful and persuasive. In a paper, this thesis brings the topic to focus and tells the reader your position. The thesis should not be self-evident or factual, but something you have to explain.
3. Organization / Outline: Arrange your stages and details into the beginning, middle, and end of the paper. It is tricky sometimes to find 2 or 3 middle stages that fit with your thesis, so you have to use trial and error until you have a logical combination. Use my outlining template to arrange your main points and details. The outline will serve as a map or a list of instructions you can use to write your essay.
4. Rough Draft: Focus on content, organization, and style. Do NOT get sidetracked by grammar, but do take time to find the right words and an appropriate style. As you write, ask yourself, "who is my audience, and how should I write for them?"
5. Revising: Fix Logical mistakes, missing steps, clumsy transitions, confusing organization before fixing grammar and formatting. Use this guide.
6. Proofreading: Using a list of your common mistakes, read the paper BACKWARDS one sentence at a time and LOOK FOR ONE ERROR AT A TIME. Then have someone read the paper OUT LOUD to your while following the text with your pen. Use this guide.
7. MLA Formatting: Now make your essay PERFECT. Make sure the essay is formatted correctly. For the research paper, make sure it meets the MLA style requirements.

All of the steps are important, but you do not HAVE to do them in this order. In fact, you might go back to certain steps several times. You can write your rough draft and then reverse outline, for instance. Or what if you have writer's block? Most important is making sure that you include all the parts of an essay in your final draft.

A note on timed writing: You will follow an abbreviated version of this process for in-class essays, but you should not re-copy a rough draft when writing under time restraints. Instead, you should (a) skip lines as you go and (b) start each new paragraph at the top of a new sheet of paper. Both methods leave room for corrections. If you make a mistake, cross it out with a single line and write the correction above it. If you want to add sentences, use labels like a star or triangle to indicate where an insertion should go. THERE IS NO NEED to recopy an in-class composition simply to make it look neat. Recopying steals time away from planning, composing, revising, and editing.