Lesson Introduction

Intro

If you think that a blank sheet of paper or a blinking cursor on the computer screen is a scary sight, you are not alone. Many writers, students, and employees find that beginning to write can be intimidating. When faced with a blank page, however, experienced writers remind themselves that writing, like other everyday activities, is a process. Every process, from writing to cooking, bike riding, and learning to use a new cell phone, will get significantly easier with practice.

Just as you need a recipe, ingredients, and proper tools to cook a delicious meal, you also need a plan, resources, and adequate time to create a good written composition. In other words, writing is a process that requires following steps and using strategies to accomplish your goals.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Use prewriting strategies to choose a topic and narrow the focus
Identify and utilize the steps in constructing an outline
Identify and utilize drafting strategies that improve writing
Identify major areas of concern in the draft essay using proofreading strategies of your own writing and others
Apply revising and editing strategies to produce a final draft

Overview of the Writing Process

Effective writing can be simply described as good ideas that are expressed well and arranged in the proper order. This lesson will give you the chance to learn and work on important aspects of the writing process.

Although many more steps to the writing process exist, this lesson covers the main ones and the popular strategies available within each step.

These are the four steps in the writing process:

Prewrite to figure-out your focus
Organize the structure
Write a rough draft
Revise and edit

Tip: Repeat the four steps as needed. For instance, you might find that after you revise and edit, you might have to reorganize your structure and write another draft. Seasoned writers often revisit steps before their final draft (or publish their work).

Using the steps and strategies in this lesson may help you overcome the fear of the blank page and confidently complete your writing task.

The steps in the writing process may seem time consuming at first, but following these steps will save you time in the future. The more you plan in the beginning by reading and using prewriting strategies, the less time you may spend writing and editing later because your ideas will develop more swiftly. Basically, by the time you actually write the full paragraphs of your essay, you will have already completed the hard work, which is coming-up with and organizing your ideas.

Lesson Sections

This lesson about about the writing process is divided-up into five sections, which are listed below. You may access these sections in the menu on the left (or the top-left by clicking the three lines if viewing on a mobile devices).

Prewriting
Organizing Your Writing
Drafting Your Writing
Editing and Revising
Overcoming Writer's Block

Please, work-through each of these informational sections to learn the concepts of this lesson before checking your understanding of the material through the "comprehension quiz" provided in our class's Canvas shell.

While progressing through the sections above, if you find yourself confused or need additional clarity, please feel free to reach-out through any communication option available to our class (listed in the Home and Syllabus tabs in our class's Canvas shell) that best suits your needs and comfort.

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