The Writing Process

There are different ways that you can tackle your writing assignment, but here are some things that may help you along the way.

• Think about the assignment. What is the prompt or the question you are to answer? Do you need to come up with your own thesis or idea for analysis?

• Know what your assignment is. Who is your audience and what is the purpose of the assignment? Is it to be narrative essay where you will have a story to tell? Are you writing a fictional story or a poem? Is it a research paper? Is it an analysis of other works?

• Plan out the assignment. Many times your teacher will give you steps to work on along the way. DO THESE STEPS! They will help you plan and organize your thoughts.

• Brainstorm your ideas. Write down things that you want to say in your essay, arguments you might make, stories you may tell.

• Do your research. This might mean researching about a topic. It could also be reading (or re-reading) the works you are analyzing. Even if you are writing a story or poem, you might want to do some background research about your topic.

• Take notes. If you find an idea in your research that you want to use in your paper, write it down or keep a log in a Google document. Make note of where you found the idea - the author, the name of the article or book, and the page number. You will need this information later.

• Make an outline. There are a variety of ways you can do an outline. You might want to start with your main idea (thesis) and then list the smaller ideas or arguments under it. Can you group those ideas? Use the notes you took and figure out what part of the outline they best fit into. Some of them may not fit into what you eventually write.

• Write a draft. It's hard to fix a paper that doesn't exist. Start by writing down the ideas from your outline. You may find yourself re-writing things as you go through it. If you are stuck on writing your introduction, write down your other ideas and come back later to your introduction. Include your evidence to support your ideas (if writing an essay or analysis) and make sure you include some reference to it as you write (you can come back later and fix how you reference it). As you write, remember to include textual evidence, develop strong paragraphs, and pay attention to style and language.

• Edit your draft. This is when you go back and look at what you've written and decide if you need to include more or stronger evidence. You may decide to change, move, or even delete sections you've written. You want the paper to make sense to the person reading it (your teacher!).

• Finalize your paper. Make sure your paper is formatted correctly. Proofread the paper for spelling, grammatical errors, and correct punctuation. Make sure citations are where they should be and in the proper format.

• Turn it in!