Begin with a focused topic, and then move through these steps:
- Brainstorming: Discover valuable ideas by opening your mind to all
ideas. You can write all your ideas down in clusters, like an idea
network. Or you can free-write in sentence form: open your mind and write absolutely
whatever comes to your mind as you think about your topic--no editing
necessary! Then highlight the valuable ideas and brainstorm again, in
that more specific direction. Then highlight the valuable ideas and
brainstorm again. You know you are done when you have three to four
focused points that back up your position on and your argument about the topic.
- Organization / Outline: Arrange the valuable ideas from brainstorming into a logical order. Use my outlining template
to arrange your main points and details. Fill in your thoughts for the
beginning, middle, and end of the paper. The outline will serve as a
map or a list of instructions you can use to write your essay.
- Thesis Statement: As part of the outlining
stage, make a statement that you think is true and persuasive. In a
paper, this thesis brings the topic to focus and tells the reader your
position. It is not the same thing as your main points; your main
points explain your reasons for holding the position stated in your
thesis. As an argument, the thesis should not be self-evident or
factual.
- Rough Draft: When writing
your rough draft, focus on content and organization. Do NOT get
sidetracked by grammar, but do take time to find the right words and an
appropriate style. Ask yourself, who is my audience? How should I write
for them?
- Revising Checklist: Logical mistakes,
missing steps, clumsy transitions, confusing organization. If your
reader cannot follow your train of thought or constantly has to stop to
wonder where you are heading, your essay will become a burden to read.
It might be helpful to prepare a revised version of your paper before
you move on editing for grammar and formatting. Use this guide.
- Editing Checklist: First, list your struggles
with style, grammar, and mechanics. Put the items in order of most to
least important. Then read the paper BACKWARDS one sentence at a time
and LOOK FOR ONE ERROR AT A TIME: agreement, verb tense, prepositions,
punctuation, etc. Then read the paper OUT LOUD while following the text
with your pen; you will often SAY the correct form but WRITE the
incorrect one. Make changes as you go. Use this guide.
- Final Draft: Now make your essay PERFECT.
Make sure the essay is formatted correctly. For the research paper,
make sure it meets the MLA style requirements.
Is this process the only way to write a paper? Of course not. All of the steps are important, but you do not have to do them in this order. In fact, you can jump around. You can write your rough draft and then outline, for instance. But I have found that most students follow the process above quite comfortably. More important than following all of these steps in this order is making sure that you include all the parts of an essay in your final draft.
A note on in-class writing: You will follow a similar
process for in-class essays, but you should not write a rough draft
when writing a timed essay. Steps 1-3 are still important to do, but
when composing in-class, you should (a) skip lines as you go and (b) start each new paragraph at the top of a new sheet of paper to 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, editing, and
revising, and I do not mind a messy in-class essay or final exam.
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