writing process meaning essay

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Writing process, the writing process – research on composing.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida

The writing process refers to everything you do in order to complete a writing project. Over the last six decades, researchers have studied and theorized about how writers go about their work. They've found that the writing process can be seen in three main ways: (1) a series of steps or stages ; (2) a cognitive, problem-solving activity ; and (3) a creative, intuitive, organic, dialogic process that writers manage by listening to their inner speech and following their felt sense . Learn about scholarship on the writing process so you can understand how to break through writing blocks and find fluency as a writer, researcher, and thought leader.

Synonymous Terms

Composing process.

In writing studies , the writing process may also be known as the composing process . This may be due to the dramatic influence of Janet Emig’s (1971) dissertation, The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders . Emig’s research employed think-aloud protocols and case-study methods to explore the composing processes of high school students.

Creative Process

In creative writing and literature, the writing process may be known as the creative process .

In the arts and humanities the term creative process is reserved for artistic works, such as paintings, sculptures, performance art, films, and works of literature.

Related Concepts: Composition Studies ; Creativity; Felt Sense ; Growth Mindset ; Habits of Mind ; Intellectual Openness ; Professionalism and Work Ethic ; Resilience ; Self Regulation & Metacognition

What is the Writing Process?

The writing process refers to everything you do in order to complete a writing project.

People experience and define the writing process differently, according to their historical period, literacy history, knowledge of writing tools, media , genres — and more.

One of the takeaways from research on composing is that we’ve learned writers develop their own idiosyncratic approaches to getting the work done. When it comes to how we all develop, research , and communicate information , we are all special snowflakes. For example,

• Hemingway was known for standing while he wrote at first light each morning.
• Truman Capote described himself as a “completely horizontal author.” He wrote lying down, in bed or on a couch, with a cigarette and coffee handy.
• Hunter S. Thompson wrote through the nights, mixing drinking and partying with composing
• J.K. Rowling tracked the plot lines for her Harry Potter novels in a data.
• Maya Angelou would lock herself away in a hotel room from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. so she has no distractions.

Research on composing processes conducted over the past 60 years has led to three major distinct ways of defining and conceptualizing the writing process:

• prewriting , invention , research , collaboration , planning , designing , drafting , rereading , organizing , revising , editing , proofreading , and sharing or publishing
• The writing process refers to cognitive, problem-solving strategies
• The writing process refers to the act of making composing decisions based on nonrational factors such as embodied knowledge , felt sense , inner speech, and intuition.

1. The writing process refers to writing process steps

The writing process is often characterized as a series of steps or stages. During the elementary and middle-school years, teachers define the writing process simply as prewriting , drafting , revising , and editing . Later, in high-school and college, as writing assignments become more challenging, teachers introduce additional writing steps: invention , research , collaboration , designing , organizing , proofreading , and sharing or proofreading.

2. The writing process refers to Problem-Solving Strategies

As an alternative to imagining the writing process to be a series of steps or stages that writers work through in linear manner, Linda Flower and John Hayes suggested in 1977 that writing should be thought of as a “thinking problem,” a “problem-solving process,” a “cognitive problem solving process,” or a “goal-directed thinking process.”

3. The writing process refers to the act of making composing decisions based on flow, felt sense and other elements of embodied knowledge

For some writers, viewing the writing process as a series of steps or problems feels to mechanistic, impersonal and formulaic. Rather than view that the writing process to be a series of writing steps or problem solving strategies , Sondra Perl , an English professor, suggests that composing is largely a process of listening to one’s felt sense — one’s “bodily awareness of a situation or person or event:

“A felt sense doesn’t come to you in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single (though often puzzling and very complex) bodily feeling”. (Gendlin 1981, 32-33)

What are Writing Process Steps?

In elementary and middle schools in the U.S., the writing process is often simplified and presented at four or five key steps: prewriting , writing , revising , and editing –and sometimes and publishing or sharing . As students progress through school, the writing process is presented in increasingly complex ways. By high school, teachers present “the writing process steps” as

• Proofreading
• Sharing – Publishing

Is there one perfect way to work with the writing process?

No, there is no one ideal writing process. The steps of the writing process a writer engages in vary from project to project. At times  composing  may be fairly simple. Some situations  require little planning ,  research ,  revising  or  editing , such as

• a grocery list, a to-do list, a reflection on the day’s activity in a journal
• documents you routinely write, such as the professor’s letter of recommendation, a bosses’ performance appraisal, a ground-water engineer’s contamination report.

Over time, writers develop their own unique writing processes. Through trial and error, people can learn what works for them.

Composing  may be especially challenging

• when you are unfamiliar with the  topic ,  genre ,  medium ,  discourse community
• when the thesis/research question/topic  is complicated yet needs to be explained simply
• when you are endeavoring to synthesize other’s ideas and research
• when you don’t have the time you need to perfect the document.

What are the main factors that effect how writers compose documents?

Writers adjust their writing process in response to

• Writers assess the importance of the exigency, the call to write, before commiting time and resources to launching
• the writers access to information
• What they know about the canon, genre, media and rhetorical reasoning
• their writerly background
• the audience
• the schedule.

Why Does the Writing Process Matter?

The writing processes that you use to compose documents play a significant role in determining whether your communications are successful. If you truncate your writing process, you are likely to run out of the time you need to write with clarity and authority .

• Studying the writing processes of successful writers can introduce you to new rhetorical moves, genres , and composing processes. Learning about the composing processes of experienced writers can help you learn how to adjust your rhetorical stance and your writing styles to best accomplish your purpose .
• By examining your writing processes and the writing processes of others, you can learn how to better manage your work and the work of other authors and teams.
• By recognizing that writing is a skill that can be developed through practice and effort, you can become more resilient and adaptable in your writing endeavors.

[ For an example of  process pedagogy , see professional writing, which breaks the processes involved in writing a recommendation report down into a 15-week schedule. ]

Do experienced writers compose in different ways than inexperienced writers?

Yes. Experienced writers engage in more substantive, robust writing processes than less experienced writers.

• Experienced writers tend to have more rhetorical knowledge and a better understanding of composing steps and strategies than inexperienced writers.
• Experienced writers tend to be more willing than inexperienced writers to make substantive changes in a draft, often making changes that involve rethinking the meaning of a text. Some professional writers may revise a document hundreds of times before pushing send or publishing it.
• Experienced writers engage in revision as an act of internal conversation, a form of inner speech that they have with themselves and an imagined other–the internalized target audience. In contrast, inexperienced writers tend to confuse editing for revision . They tend to make only a few edits to their initial drafts, focusing primarily on surface-level changes such as correcting grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors.
• Experienced writers are adept at working collaboratively, leveraging the strengths of team members and effectively coordinating efforts to produce a cohesive final product. Inexperienced writers may struggle with collaboration, communication, and division of labor within a writing team

What is Process Pedagogy?

Process pedagogy, which is also known as the process movement, emerged in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In The Making of Knowledge in Composition , Steve North (1987) links the emergence of process pedagogy to

• Sputnik and America’s concern it was falling behind Russia
• the GI Bill and the changing demographics of undergraduate students in the post-war era.

Additionally, process pedagogy emerged in response to dissatisfaction with traditional, product-oriented approaches to teaching writing. In the current-traditional paradigm of writing, the focus of the classroom was on “the composed product rather than the composing process; the analysis of discourse into words, sentences, and paragraphs; the classification of discourse into description, narration, exposition, and argument; the strong concern with usage (syntax, spelling, punctuation) and with style (economy, clarity, emphasis)” (Young, 1978, p. 25).

The process movement reflected a sea change on the part of middle schools, high schools, and universities in the U.S. Traditionally, classroom instruction focused on analysis and critique of the great works of literature:

“The student is (a) exposed to the formal descriptive categories of rhetoric (modes of argument –definition, cause and effect, etc. — and modes of discourse — description, persuasion, etc.), (b) offered good examples (usually professional ones) and bad examples (usually his/her own) and (c) encouraged to absorb the features of a socially approved style, with emphasis on grammar and usage. We help our students analyze the product, but we leave the process of writing up to inspiration” (Flower and Hayes, 1977, p. 449).

In contrast to putting the focus of class time on analyzing great literary works,  the canon , process pedagogy calls for teachers to put the emphasis on the students’ writing:

• Students need help with prewriting , invention , research , collaboration , writing , designing , revising , organizing , editing , proofreading , and sharing
• Teachers do not comment on grammar and style matters in early drafts. Instead, they focus on global perspectives . They prioritize the flow of ideas and expression over correctness in grammar and mechanics.
• Students engage in prewriting and invention exercises to discover and develop new ideas
• Students repeatedly revise their works in response to self-critique , peer review , and critiques from teachers
• Teachers should provide constructive feedback throughout the writing process.

What does “teach the process and not the product mean”?

“Teach the process not the product ” is both the title of a Donald Murray (1972) article and the mantra of the writing process movement, which emerged during the 1960s.

The mantra to teach the process not the product emerged in response to the research and scholarship conducted by Donald Murray, Janet Emig, Peter Elbow, Ann Berthoff, Nancy Sommers, Sondra Perl, John Hayes and Linda Flower.

What does it mean to describe the writing process as recursive ?

The term  recursive writing process  simply means that writers jump around from one activity to another when  composing . For instance, when first drafting a document, a writer may pause to reread something she wrote. That might trigger a new idea that shoots her back to Google Scholar or some other database suitable for  strategic searching .

How do researchers study the writing process?

The writing process is a major subject of study of researchers and scholars in the fields of composition studies , communication, writing studies , and AI (artificial intelligence).

The writing process  is something of a black box: investigators can see  inputs  (e.g., time on task) or  outputs  (e.g.,  written discourse ), yet they cannot  empirically observe  the internal workings of the writer’s mind.

At the end of the day investigators have to jump from what they observe to making informed guesses about what is really going on in the writer. Even if investigators ask a writer to talk out loud about what they are thinking as they compose , the investigators can only hear what the writer is saying: they cannot see the internal machinations associated with the writer’s thoughts. If a writer goes mute, freezes, and just stares blankly at the computer screen, investigators cannot really know what’s going on. They can only speculate about how the brain functions.

Research Methods

To study or theorize about the writing process, investigators may use a variety of research methods .

Doherty, M. (2016, September 4). 10 things you need to know about banyan trees. Under the Banyan. https://underthebanyan.blog/2016/09/04/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-banyan-trees/

Emig, J. (1967). On teaching composition: Some hypotheses as definitions. Research in The Teaching of English, 1(2), 127-135. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED022783.pdf

Emig, J. (1971). The composing processes of twelfth graders (Research Report No. 13). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Emig, J. (1983). The web of meaning: Essays on writing, teaching, learning and thinking. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.

Ghiselin, B. (Ed.). (1985). The Creative Process: Reflections on the Invention in the Arts and Sciences . University of California Press.

Hayes, J. R., & Flower, L. (1980). Identifying the Organization of Writing Processes. In L. W. Gregg, & E. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Cognitive Processes in Writing: An Interdisciplinary Approach (pp. 3-30). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.  

Hayes, J. R. (2012). Modeling and remodeling writing. Written Communication, 29(3), 369-388. https://doi: 10.1177/0741088312451260

Hayes, J. R., & Flower, L. S. (1986). Writing research and the writer. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1106-1113. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.10.1106

Leijten, Van Waes, L., Schriver, K., & Hayes, J. R. (2014). Writing in the workplace: Constructing documents using multiple digital sources. Journal of Writing Research, 5(3), 285–337. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2014.05.03.3

Lundstrom, K., Babcock, R. D., & McAlister, K. (2023). Collaboration in writing: Examining the role of experience in successful team writing projects. Journal of Writing Research, 15(1), 89-115. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2023.15.01.05

National Research Council. (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.https://doi.org/10.17226/13398.

North, S. M. (1987). The making of knowledge in composition: Portrait of an emerging field. Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Murray, Donald M. (1980). Writing as process: How writing finds its own meaning. In Timothy R. Donovan & Ben McClelland (Eds.), Eight approaches to teaching composition (pp. 3–20). National Council of Teachers of English.

Murray, Donald M. (1972). “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” The Leaflet, 11-14

Perry, S. K. (1996).  When time stops: How creative writers experience entry into the flow state  (Order No. 9805789). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304288035). https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/when-time-stops-how-creative-writers-experience/docview/304288035/se-2

Rohman, D.G., & Wlecke, A. O. (1964). Pre-writing: The construction and application of models for concept formation in writing (Cooperative Research Project No. 2174). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University.

Rohman, D. G., & Wlecke, A. O. (1975). Pre-writing: The construction and application of models for concept formation in writing (Cooperative Research Project No. 2174). U.S. Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Sommers, N. (1980). Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers. College Composition and Communication, 31(4), 378-388. doi: 10.2307/356600

Vygotsky, L. (1962).  Thought and language.  (E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar, Eds.). MIT Press.  https://doi.org/10.1037/11193-000

Related Articles:

Discovering Your Unique Writing Process: A Guide to Self-Reflection

Problem-Solving Strategies for Writers: a Review of Research

The 7 Habits of Mind & The Writing Process

The Secret, Hidden Writing Process: How to Tap Your Creative Potential

The Ultimate Blueprint: A Research-Driven Deep Dive into The 13 Steps of the Writing Process

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• Joseph M. Moxley

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The Writing Process

The writing process is something that no two people do the same way. There is no "right way" or "wrong way" to write. It can be a very messy and fluid process, and the following is only a representation of commonly used steps. Remember you can come to the Writing Center for assistance at any stage in this process. 

Steps of the Writing Process

Step 1: Prewriting

Think and Decide

• Make sure you understand your assignment. See  Research Papers  or  Essays
• Decide on a topic to write about. See   Prewriting Strategies  and  Narrow your Topic
• Consider who will read your work. See  Audience and Voice
• Brainstorm ideas about the subject and how those ideas can be organized. Make an outline. See  Outlines

Step 2: Research (if needed) 

• List places where you can find information.
• Do your research. See the many KU Libraries resources and helpful guides
• Evaluate your sources. See  Evaluating Sources  and  Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• Make an outline to help organize your research. See  Outlines

Step 3: Drafting

• Write sentences and paragraphs even if they are not perfect.
• Create a thesis statement with your main idea. See  Thesis Statements
• Put the information you researched into your essay accurately without plagiarizing. Remember to include both in-text citations and a bibliographic page. See  Incorporating References and Paraphrase and Summary  
• Read what you have written and judge if it says what you mean. Write some more.
• Read it again.
• Write some more.
• Write until you have said everything you want to say about the topic.

Step 4: Revising

Make it Better

• Read what you have written again. See  Revising Content  and  Revising Organization
• Rearrange words, sentences, or paragraphs into a clear and logical order. 
• Take out or add parts.
• Do more research if you think you should.
• Replace overused or unclear words.
• Read your writing aloud to be sure it flows smoothly. Add transitions.

Step 5: Editing and Proofreading

Make it Correct

• Be sure all sentences are complete. See  Editing and Proofreading
• Correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
• Change words that are not used correctly or are unclear.
• APA Formatting
• Chicago Style Formatting
• MLA Formatting  
• Have someone else check your work.

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Resources for Writers: The Writing Process

Writing is a process that involves at least four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. It is known as a recursive process. While you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas.

• Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information (e.g., interviewing people, researching in the library, assessing data).
• Although prewriting is the first activity you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process.
• Drafting occurs when you put your ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Here you concentrate upon explaining and supporting your ideas fully. Here you also begin to connect your ideas. Regardless of how much thinking and planning you do, the process of putting your ideas in words changes them; often the very words you select evoke additional ideas or implications.
• Don’t pay attention to such things as spelling at this stage.
• This draft tends to be writer-centered: it is you telling yourself what you know and think about the topic.
• Revision is the key to effective documents. Here you think more deeply about your readers’ needs and expectations. The document becomes reader-centered. How much support will each idea need to convince your readers? Which terms should be defined for these particular readers? Is your organization effective? Do readers need to know X before they can understand Y?
• At this stage you also refine your prose, making each sentence as concise and accurate as possible. Make connections between ideas explicit and clear.
• Check for such things as grammar, mechanics, and spelling. The last thing you should do before printing your document is to spell check it.
• Don’t edit your writing until the other steps in the writing process are complete.

The Writing Process

Definitions.

• Stages of the Writing Process
• Strategies for Good Writing

The Writing Process is a cycle of activities that you complete as you generate ideas, compose those ideas into a document or presentation, and refine those ideas. It is a recursive process, meaning that at any one stage in the process, you may find that you have to return to previous steps to review and refine your methods.

To read more about the elements of the Writing Process, we recommend the following resource:

• Dziak, M. (2018). Writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing). Salem Press Encyclopedia. The writing process is the series of actions taken by writers to produce a finished work. Writers, educators, and theorists have defined the writing process in many different ways, but it generally involves prewriting tasks, writing tasks, and post-writing tasks. More specifically, these tasks include planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing, in approximately that order.

Benefits of following the Writing Process include:

• The ability to revisit previous work completed to find new ideas or refine existing ones.
• A more organized finished product.
• A less stressful experience, which is one cause of Writer's Block .
• Less time spent in the drafting stage.
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On your academic course you will need to engage in different types of writing, from extended essays and reports which may take two months to write, to short essays written under exam conditions. A mistake many students make is to start writing before they are ready, and to think they have finished once their first draft is done. In reality, there are many steps involved in producing a quality piece of writing, which begin when you first see the title, and end when you submit the work. These steps are called The Writing Process .

The exact process will vary according to the kind of writing you are working on. There are two main types, summarised below.

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Compare & contrast essays examine the similarities of two or more objects, and the differences.

Cause & effect essays consider the reasons (or causes) for something, then discuss the results (or effects).

Discussion essays require you to examine both sides of a situation and to conclude by saying which side you favour.

Problem-solution essays are a sub-type of SPSE essays (Situation, Problem, Solution, Evaluation).

Transition signals are useful in achieving good cohesion and coherence in your writing.

Reporting verbs are used to link your in-text citations to the information cited.

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8.3 Drafting

Learning objectives.

• Identify drafting strategies that improve writing.
• Use drafting strategies to prepare the first draft of an essay.

Drafting is the stage of the writing process in which you develop a complete first version of a piece of writing.

Even professional writers admit that an empty page scares them because they feel they need to come up with something fresh and original every time they open a blank document on their computers. Because you have completed the first two steps in the writing process, you have already recovered from empty page syndrome. You have hours of prewriting and planning already done. You know what will go on that blank page: what you wrote in your outline.

Getting Started: Strategies For Drafting

Your objective for this portion of Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” is to draft the body paragraphs of a standard five-paragraph essay. A five-paragraph essay contains an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. If you are more comfortable starting on paper than on the computer, you can start on paper and then type it before you revise. You can also use a voice recorder to get yourself started, dictating a paragraph or two to get you thinking. In this lesson, Mariah does all her work on the computer, but you may use pen and paper or the computer to write a rough draft.

Making the Writing Process Work for You

What makes the writing process so beneficial to writers is that it encourages alternatives to standard practices while motivating you to develop your best ideas. For instance, the following approaches, done alone or in combination with others, may improve your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:

• Begin writing with the part you know the most about. You can start with the third paragraph in your outline if ideas come easily to mind. You can start with the second paragraph or the first paragraph, too. Although paragraphs may vary in length, keep in mind that short paragraphs may contain insufficient support. Readers may also think the writing is abrupt. Long paragraphs may be wordy and may lose your reader’s interest. As a guideline, try to write paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than the length of an entire double-spaced page.
• Write one paragraph at a time and then stop. As long as you complete the assignment on time, you may choose how many paragraphs you complete in one sitting. Pace yourself. On the other hand, try not to procrastinate. Writers should always meet their deadlines.
• Take short breaks to refresh your mind. This tip might be most useful if you are writing a multipage report or essay. Still, if you are antsy or cannot concentrate, take a break to let your mind rest. But do not let breaks extend too long. If you spend too much time away from your essay, you may have trouble starting again. You may forget key points or lose momentum. Try setting an alarm to limit your break, and when the time is up, return to your desk to write.
• Be reasonable with your goals. If you decide to take ten-minute breaks, try to stick to that goal. If you told yourself that you need more facts, then commit to finding them. Holding yourself to your own goals will create successful writing assignments.
• Keep your audience and purpose in mind as you write. These aspects of writing are just as important when you are writing a single paragraph for your essay as when you are considering the direction of the entire essay.

Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is the most important key to writing success. If your purpose is to persuade, for example, you will present your facts and details in the most logical and convincing way you can.

Your purpose will guide your mind as you compose your sentences. Your audience will guide word choice. Are you writing for experts, for a general audience, for other college students, or for people who know very little about your topic? Keep asking yourself what your readers, with their background and experience, need to be told in order to understand your ideas. How can you best express your ideas so they are totally clear and your communication is effective?

You may want to identify your purpose and audience on an index card that you clip to your paper (or keep next to your computer). On that card, you may want to write notes to yourself—perhaps about what that audience might not know or what it needs to know—so that you will be sure to address those issues when you write. It may be a good idea to also state exactly what you want to explain to that audience, or to inform them of, or to persuade them about.

Writing at Work

Many of the documents you produce at work target a particular audience for a particular purpose. You may find that it is highly advantageous to know as much as you can about your target audience and to prepare your message to reach that audience, even if the audience is a coworker or your boss. Menu language is a common example. Descriptions like “organic romaine” and “free-range chicken” are intended to appeal to a certain type of customer though perhaps not to the same customer who craves a thick steak. Similarly, mail-order companies research the demographics of the people who buy their merchandise. Successful vendors customize product descriptions in catalogs to appeal to their buyers’ tastes. For example, the product descriptions in a skateboarder catalog will differ from the descriptions in a clothing catalog for mature adults.

Using the topic for the essay that you outlined in Section 8.2 “Outlining” , describe your purpose and your audience as specifically as you can. Use your own sheet of paper to record your responses. Then keep these responses near you during future stages of the writing process.

My purpose: ____________________________________________

____________________________________________

My audience: ____________________________________________

Setting Goals for Your First Draft

A draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is not the final version. The step in the writing process after drafting, as you may remember, is revising. During revising, you will have the opportunity to make changes to your first draft before you put the finishing touches on it during the editing and proofreading stage. A first draft gives you a working version that you can later improve.

Workplace writing in certain environments is done by teams of writers who collaborate on the planning, writing, and revising of documents, such as long reports, technical manuals, and the results of scientific research. Collaborators do not need to be in the same room, the same building, or even the same city. Many collaborations are conducted over the Internet.

In a perfect collaboration, each contributor has the right to add, edit, and delete text. Strong communication skills, in addition to strong writing skills, are important in this kind of writing situation because disagreements over style, content, process, emphasis, and other issues may arise.

The collaborative software, or document management systems, that groups use to work on common projects is sometimes called groupware or workgroup support systems.

The reviewing tool on some word-processing programs also gives you access to a collaborative tool that many smaller workgroups use when they exchange documents. You can also use it to leave comments to yourself.

If you invest some time now to investigate how the reviewing tool in your word processor works, you will be able to use it with confidence during the revision stage of the writing process. Then, when you start to revise, set your reviewing tool to track any changes you make, so you will be able to tinker with text and commit only those final changes you want to keep.

Discovering the Basic Elements of a First Draft

If you have been using the information in this chapter step by step to help you develop an assignment, you already have both a formal topic outline and a formal sentence outline to direct your writing. Knowing what a first draft looks like will help you make the creative leap from the outline to the first draft. A first draft should include the following elements:

• An introduction that piques the audience’s interest, tells what the essay is about, and motivates readers to keep reading.
• A thesis statement that presents the main point, or controlling idea, of the entire piece of writing.
• A topic sentence in each paragraph that states the main idea of the paragraph and implies how that main idea connects to the thesis statement.
• Supporting sentences in each paragraph that develop or explain the topic sentence. These can be specific facts, examples, anecdotes, or other details that elaborate on the topic sentence.
• A conclusion that reinforces the thesis statement and leaves the audience with a feeling of completion.

These elements follow the standard five-paragraph essay format, which you probably first encountered in high school. This basic format is valid for most essays you will write in college, even much longer ones. For now, however, Mariah focuses on writing the three body paragraphs from her outline. Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” covers writing introductions and conclusions, and you will read Mariah’s introduction and conclusion in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” .

The Role of Topic Sentences

Topic sentences make the structure of a text and the writer’s basic arguments easy to locate and comprehend. In college writing, using a topic sentence in each paragraph of the essay is the standard rule. However, the topic sentence does not always have to be the first sentence in your paragraph even if it the first item in your formal outline.

When you begin to draft your paragraphs, you should follow your outline fairly closely. After all, you spent valuable time developing those ideas. However, as you begin to express your ideas in complete sentences, it might strike you that the topic sentence might work better at the end of the paragraph or in the middle. Try it. Writing a draft, by its nature, is a good time for experimentation.

The topic sentence can be the first, middle, or final sentence in a paragraph. The assignment’s audience and purpose will often determine where a topic sentence belongs. When the purpose of the assignment is to persuade, for example, the topic sentence should be the first sentence in a paragraph. In a persuasive essay, the writer’s point of view should be clearly expressed at the beginning of each paragraph.

Choosing where to position the topic sentence depends not only on your audience and purpose but also on the essay’s arrangement, or order. When you organize information according to order of importance, the topic sentence may be the final sentence in a paragraph. All the supporting sentences build up to the topic sentence. Chronological order may also position the topic sentence as the final sentence because the controlling idea of the paragraph may make the most sense at the end of a sequence.

When you organize information according to spatial order, a topic sentence may appear as the middle sentence in a paragraph. An essay arranged by spatial order often contains paragraphs that begin with descriptions. A reader may first need a visual in his or her mind before understanding the development of the paragraph. When the topic sentence is in the middle, it unites the details that come before it with the ones that come after it.

As you read critically throughout the writing process, keep topic sentences in mind. You may discover topic sentences that are not always located at the beginning of a paragraph. For example, fiction writers customarily use topic ideas, either expressed or implied, to move readers through their texts. In nonfiction writing, such as popular magazines, topic sentences are often used when the author thinks it is appropriate (based on the audience and the purpose, of course). A single topic sentence might even control the development of a number of paragraphs. For more information on topic sentences, please see Chapter 6 “Writing Paragraphs: Separating Ideas and Shaping Content” .

Developing topic sentences and thinking about their placement in a paragraph will prepare you to write the rest of the paragraph.

The paragraph is the main structural component of an essay as well as other forms of writing. Each paragraph of an essay adds another related main idea to support the writer’s thesis, or controlling idea. Each related main idea is supported and developed with facts, examples, and other details that explain it. By exploring and refining one main idea at a time, writers build a strong case for their thesis.

Paragraph Length

How long should a paragraph be?

One answer to this important question may be “long enough”—long enough for you to address your points and explain your main idea. To grab attention or to present succinct supporting ideas, a paragraph can be fairly short and consist of two to three sentences. A paragraph in a complex essay about some abstract point in philosophy or archaeology can be three-quarters of a page or more in length. As long as the writer maintains close focus on the topic and does not ramble, a long paragraph is acceptable in college-level writing. In general, try to keep the paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than one full page of double-spaced text.

Journalistic style often calls for brief two- or three-sentence paragraphs because of how people read the news, both online and in print. Blogs and other online information sources often adopt this paragraphing style, too. Readers often skim the first paragraphs of a great many articles before settling on the handful of stories they want to read in detail.

You may find that a particular paragraph you write may be longer than one that will hold your audience’s interest. In such cases, you should divide the paragraph into two or more shorter paragraphs, adding a topic statement or some kind of transitional word or phrase at the start of the new paragraph. Transition words or phrases show the connection between the two ideas.

In all cases, however, be guided by what you instructor wants and expects to find in your draft. Many instructors will expect you to develop a mature college-level style as you progress through the semester’s assignments.

To build your sense of appropriate paragraph length, use the Internet to find examples of the following items. Copy them into a file, identify your sources, and present them to your instructor with your annotations, or notes.

• A news article written in short paragraphs. Take notes on, or annotate, your selection with your observations about the effect of combining paragraphs that develop the same topic idea. Explain how effective those paragraphs would be.
• A long paragraph from a scholarly work that you identify through an academic search engine. Annotate it with your observations about the author’s paragraphing style.

Starting Your First Draft

Now we are finally ready to look over Mariah’s shoulder as she begins to write her essay about digital technology and the confusing choices that consumers face. As she does, you should have in front of you your outline, with its thesis statement and topic sentences, and the notes you wrote earlier in this lesson on your purpose and audience. Reviewing these will put both you and Mariah in the proper mind-set to start.

The following is Mariah’s thesis statement.

Here are the notes that Mariah wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience.

Mariah chose to begin by writing a quick introduction based on her thesis statement. She knew that she would want to improve her introduction significantly when she revised. Right now, she just wanted to give herself a starting point. You will read her introduction again in Section 8.4 “Revising and Editing” when she revises it.

Remember Mariah’s other options. She could have started directly with any of the body paragraphs.

You will learn more about writing attention-getting introductions and effective conclusions in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” .

With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Mariah then looked at her sentence outline. She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline for the first body paragraph. The roman numeral II identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and arabic numerals label subpoints.

Mariah then began to expand the ideas in her outline into a paragraph. Notice how the outline helped her guarantee that all her sentences in the body of the paragraph develop the topic sentence.

If you write your first draft on the computer, consider creating a new file folder for each course with a set of subfolders inside the course folders for each assignment you are given. Label the folders clearly with the course names, and label each assignment folder and word processing document with a title that you will easily recognize. The assignment name is a good choice for the document. Then use that subfolder to store all the drafts you create. When you start each new draft, do not just write over the last one. Instead, save the draft with a new tag after the title—draft 1, draft 2, and so on—so that you will have a complete history of drafts in case your instructor wishes you to submit them.

In your documents, observe any formatting requirements—for margins, headers, placement of page numbers, and other layout matters—that your instructor requires.

Study how Mariah made the transition from her sentence outline to her first draft. First, copy her outline onto your own sheet of paper. Leave a few spaces between each part of the outline. Then copy sentences from Mariah’s paragraph to align each sentence with its corresponding entry in her outline.

Continuing the First Draft

Mariah continued writing her essay, moving to the second and third body paragraphs. She had supporting details but no numbered subpoints in her outline, so she had to consult her prewriting notes for specific information to include.

If you decide to take a break between finishing your first body paragraph and starting the next one, do not start writing immediately when you return to your work. Put yourself back in context and in the mood by rereading what you have already written. This is what Mariah did. If she had stopped writing in the middle of writing the paragraph, she could have jotted down some quick notes to herself about what she would write next.

Preceding each body paragraph that Mariah wrote is the appropriate section of her sentence outline. Notice how she expanded roman numeral III from her outline into a first draft of the second body paragraph. As you read, ask yourself how closely she stayed on purpose and how well she paid attention to the needs of her audience.

Mariah then began her third and final body paragraph using roman numeral IV from her outline.

Reread body paragraphs two and three of the essay that Mariah is writing. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

• In body paragraph two, Mariah decided to develop her paragraph as a nonfiction narrative. Do you agree with her decision? Explain. How else could she have chosen to develop the paragraph? Why is that better?
• Compare the writing styles of paragraphs two and three. What evidence do you have that Mariah was getting tired or running out of steam? What advice would you give her? Why?
• Choose one of these two body paragraphs. Write a version of your own that you think better fits Mariah’s audience and purpose.

Writing a Title

A writer’s best choice for a title is one that alludes to the main point of the entire essay. Like the headline in a newspaper or the big, bold title in a magazine, an essay’s title gives the audience a first peek at the content. If readers like the title, they are likely to keep reading.

Following her outline carefully, Mariah crafted each paragraph of her essay. Moving step by step in the writing process, Mariah finished the draft and even included a brief concluding paragraph (you will read her conclusion in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” ). She then decided, as the final touch for her writing session, to add an engaging title.

Writing Your Own First Draft

Now you may begin your own first draft, if you have not already done so. Follow the suggestions and the guidelines presented in this section.

Key Takeaways

• Make the writing process work for you. Use any and all of the strategies that help you move forward in the writing process.
• Always be aware of your purpose for writing and the needs of your audience. Cater to those needs in every sensible way.
• Remember to include all the key structural parts of an essay: a thesis statement that is part of your introductory paragraph, three or more body paragraphs as described in your outline, and a concluding paragraph. Then add an engaging title to draw in readers.
• Write paragraphs of an appropriate length for your writing assignment. Paragraphs in college-level writing can be a page long, as long as they cover the main topics in your outline.
• Use your topic outline or your sentence outline to guide the development of your paragraphs and the elaboration of your ideas. Each main idea, indicated by a roman numeral in your outline, becomes the topic of a new paragraph. Develop it with the supporting details and the subpoints of those details that you included in your outline.
• Generally speaking, write your introduction and conclusion last, after you have fleshed out the body paragraphs.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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A process essay is a step-by-step guide on how to do or make something. It is important to include every step of the process, even if something appears self-explanatory. Your audience might not be as familiar on the topic as you are.

What may be equally important, and is often overlooked, is what not to do. For example, the process of making caramel is deceptively simple. The sugar mixture needs to be swirled to prevent burning. However, stirring the mixture will cause the molecules to agitate, making the syrup crystalize into a solid unusable lump. So, when writing a process essay on caramel it is equally important to define swirling and to caution against stirring.

Since a process essay is a series of instructions, transition words are an important component. Transitions establish connections between ideas. They can be a single word that imparts a logical order or sequence to your writing, or it could be an entire sentence that connects one paragraph to the next.

Transition Words

If you have not been given a topic, choose one that you feel confident in explaining to your audience. Refer again to the introduction section of this guide to find information on progression and organization. Brainstorming and creating an outline will help you avoid missing any steps or directions. Here are a few topic suggestions for a process essay:

• Car Mechanic
• Cellular Structure
• Applying for a Green Card
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• Last Updated: Jan 23, 2024 2:52 PM
• URL: https://jefferson.kctcs.libguides.com/Essay

What is an Essay?

10 May, 2020

11 minutes read

Author:  Tomas White

Well, beyond a jumble of words usually around 2,000 words or so - what is an essay, exactly? Whether you’re taking English, sociology, history, biology, art, or a speech class, it’s likely you’ll have to write an essay or two. So how is an essay different than a research paper or a review? Let’s find out!

Defining the Term – What is an Essay?

The essay is a written piece that is designed to present an idea, propose an argument, express the emotion or initiate debate. It is a tool that is used to present writer’s ideas in a non-fictional way. Multiple applications of this type of writing go way beyond, providing political manifestos and art criticism as well as personal observations and reflections of the author.

An essay can be as short as 500 words, it can also be 5000 words or more.  However, most essays fall somewhere around 1000 to 3000 words ; this word range provides the writer enough space to thoroughly develop an argument and work to convince the reader of the author’s perspective regarding a particular issue.  The topics of essays are boundless: they can range from the best form of government to the benefits of eating peppermint leaves daily. As a professional provider of custom writing, our service has helped thousands of customers to turn in essays in various forms and disciplines.

Origins of the Essay

Over the course of more than six centuries essays were used to question assumptions, argue trivial opinions and to initiate global discussions. Let’s have a closer look into historical progress and various applications of this literary phenomenon to find out exactly what it is.

Today’s modern word “essay” can trace its roots back to the French “essayer” which translates closely to mean “to attempt” .  This is an apt name for this writing form because the essay’s ultimate purpose is to attempt to convince the audience of something.  An essay’s topic can range broadly and include everything from the best of Shakespeare’s plays to the joys of April.

The essay comes in many shapes and sizes; it can focus on a personal experience or a purely academic exploration of a topic.  Essays are classified as a subjective writing form because while they include expository elements, they can rely on personal narratives to support the writer’s viewpoint.  The essay genre includes a diverse array of academic writings ranging from literary criticism to meditations on the natural world.  Most typically, the essay exists as a shorter writing form; essays are rarely the length of a novel.  However, several historic examples, such as John Locke’s seminal work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” just shows that a well-organized essay can be as long as a novel.

The Essay in Literature

The essay enjoys a long and renowned history in literature.  They first began gaining in popularity in the early 16 th century, and their popularity has continued today both with original writers and ghost writers.  Many readers prefer this short form in which the writer seems to speak directly to the reader, presenting a particular claim and working to defend it through a variety of means.  Not sure if you’ve ever read a great essay? You wouldn’t believe how many pieces of literature are actually nothing less than essays, or evolved into more complex structures from the essay. Check out this list of literary favorites:

• The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
• Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
• High-Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never by Barbara Kingsolver
• Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• Naked by David Sedaris
• Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

Pretty much as long as writers have had something to say, they’ve created essays to communicate their viewpoint on pretty much any topic you can think of!

The Essay in Academics

Not only are students required to read a variety of essays during their academic education, but they will likely be required to write several different kinds of essays throughout their scholastic career.  Don’t love to write?  Then consider working with a ghost essay writer !  While all essays require an introduction, body paragraphs in support of the argumentative thesis statement, and a conclusion, academic essays can take several different formats in the way they approach a topic.  Common essays required in high school, college, and post-graduate classes include:

Five paragraph essay

This is the most common type of a formal essay. The type of paper that students are usually exposed to when they first hear about the concept of the essay itself. It follows easy outline structure – an opening introduction paragraph; three body paragraphs to expand the thesis; and conclusion to sum it up.

Argumentative essay

These essays are commonly assigned to explore a controversial issue.  The goal is to identify the major positions on either side and work to support the side the writer agrees with while refuting the opposing side’s potential arguments.

Compare and Contrast essay

This essay compares two items, such as two poems, and works to identify similarities and differences, discussing the strength and weaknesses of each.  This essay can focus on more than just two items, however.  The point of this essay is to reveal new connections the reader may not have considered previously.

Definition essay

This essay has a sole purpose – defining a term or a concept in as much detail as possible. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, not quite. The most important part of the process is picking up the word. Before zooming it up under the microscope, make sure to choose something roomy so you can define it under multiple angles. The definition essay outline will reflect those angles and scopes.

Descriptive essay

Perhaps the most fun to write, this essay focuses on describing its subject using all five of the senses.  The writer aims to fully describe the topic; for example, a descriptive essay could aim to describe the ocean to someone who’s never seen it or the job of a teacher.  Descriptive essays rely heavily on detail and the paragraphs can be organized by sense.

Illustration essay

The purpose of this essay is to describe an idea, occasion or a concept with the help of clear and vocal examples. “Illustration” itself is handled in the body paragraphs section. Each of the statements, presented in the essay needs to be supported with several examples. Illustration essay helps the author to connect with his audience by breaking the barriers with real-life examples – clear and indisputable.

Informative Essay

Being one the basic essay types, the informative essay is as easy as it sounds from a technical standpoint. High school is where students usually encounter with informative essay first time. The purpose of this paper is to describe an idea, concept or any other abstract subject with the help of proper research and a generous amount of storytelling.

Narrative essay

This type of essay focuses on describing a certain event or experience, most often chronologically.  It could be a historic event or an ordinary day or month in a regular person’s life. Narrative essay proclaims a free approach to writing it, therefore it does not always require conventional attributes, like the outline. The narrative itself typically unfolds through a personal lens, and is thus considered to be a subjective form of writing.

Persuasive essay

The purpose of the persuasive essay is to provide the audience with a 360-view on the concept idea or certain topic – to persuade the reader to adopt a certain viewpoint. The viewpoints can range widely from why visiting the dentist is important to why dogs make the best pets to why blue is the best color.  Strong, persuasive language is a defining characteristic of this essay type.

The Essay in Art

Several other artistic mediums have adopted the essay as a means of communicating with their audience.  In the visual arts, such as painting or sculpting, the rough sketches of the final product are sometimes deemed essays.  Likewise, directors may opt to create a film essay which is similar to a documentary in that it offers a personal reflection on a relevant issue.  Finally, photographers often create photographic essays in which they use a series of photographs to tell a story, similar to a narrative or a descriptive essay.

Drawing the line – question answered

“What is an Essay?” is quite a polarizing question. On one hand, it can easily be answered in a couple of words. On the other, it is surely the most profound and self-established type of content there ever was. Going back through the history of the last five-six centuries helps us understand where did it come from and how it is being applied ever since.

If you must write an essay, follow these five important steps to works towards earning the “A” you want:

• Understand and review the kind of essay you must write
• Brainstorm your argument
• Find research from reliable sources to support your perspective
• Cite all sources parenthetically within the paper and on the Works Cited page
• Follow all grammatical rules

Generally speaking, when you must write any type of essay, start sooner rather than later!  Don’t procrastinate – give yourself time to develop your perspective and work on crafting a unique and original approach to the topic.  Remember: it’s always a good idea to have another set of eyes (or three) look over your essay before handing in the final draft to your teacher or professor.  Don’t trust your fellow classmates?  Consider hiring an editor or a ghostwriter to help out!

If you are still unsure on whether you can cope with your task – you are in the right place to get help. HandMadeWriting is the perfect answer to the question “Who can write my essay?”

A life lesson in Romeo and Juliet taught by death

Due to human nature, we draw conclusions only when life gives us a lesson since the experience of others is not so effective and powerful. Therefore, when analyzing and sorting out common problems we face, we may trace a parallel with well-known book characters or real historical figures. Moreover, we often compare our situations with […]

Ethical Research Paper Topics

Writing a research paper on ethics is not an easy task, especially if you do not possess excellent writing skills and do not like to contemplate controversial questions. But an ethics course is obligatory in all higher education institutions, and students have to look for a way out and be creative. When you find an […]

Art Research Paper Topics

Students obtaining degrees in fine art and art & design programs most commonly need to write a paper on art topics. However, this subject is becoming more popular in educational institutions for expanding students’ horizons. Thus, both groups of receivers of education: those who are into arts and those who only get acquainted with art […]

The Writing Process

The Writing Process Podcast

The writing process transcript.

Greetings everyone. This is Kurtis Clements with another effective writing podcast. In this episode, I am going to talk about the writing process.

Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel Prizes, once said that in order to find one good idea, you need to have lots of ideas. What great advice! Pauling knew that finding something worth pursuing did not materialize out of thin air; in fact, he knew that in order to find an idea worth pursuing, one needed lots of less desirable ideas first. As you work toward finding an appropriate topic for your assignments, you would be wise to generate lots of potential topics before settling on one. And of course what this kind of exploration speaks to is the idea of writing as a process.

Many textbooks depict writing as a series of steps—first you do this and then you do this and then . . . . While this step-by-step linear approach may work for some (and if works for you, so be it!), in my experience writing is not at all a series of steps, though I definitely think there are different phases one is involved in when working on a piece of writing.

Have you ever thought about what your writing process looks like? When you go about writing, what exactly do you do? Too often people sit down to work on a writing project—a paper for class, a memo to a boss, a letter to a teacher—only to discover the words do not come easily. People assume that because they know the language, the words should simply march directly from the brain to the paper in a coherent and effortless manner. Not so. Writing, like most acts of skill, requires time and patience. Part of what takes time is finding a good topic, and to this end, I encourage you to use the writing process as a model to explore your ideas, discover what you want to say, and shape language in a way that expresses your thoughts as clearly and effectively as possible.

What exactly is the writing process? Well, there are many variations of what the writing process looks like, but Donald M. Murray, one of my writing mentors, puts it best for me. Murray defines the writing process as “using language to discover meaning in experience and communicate it” (1982, p. 73). Murray looks at the writing process in three phases: (1) prevision, (2) vision, and (3) revision.

The prevision stage is all the work that takes place prior to the composition of a first draft. Fundamentally, the writer uses writing to find a subject, narrow the focus, and then generate ideas relative to that focus. There are a number of useful strategies for this kind of exploratory writing such as listing, freewriting, mapping, and outlining to name a few. The point here is that you just don’t just sit down and start trying to write a draft; rather, you explore your thoughts via prevision techniques until you find a topic idea that seems promising. Then you explore that topic idea using prevision techniques again-¬and on and on until you have a clear idea in mind and you move to drafting, what Murray calls the vision stage.

In this second phase of the writing process, the writer takes the raw material from the prevision stage and composes a first draft. This draft is the writer’s first attempt at organizing thoughts and putting them down on the page. The purpose of the first draft, something Donald Murray calls the “discovery draft,” (p. 73) is to figure out what you have to say about your topic. To this end, you begin writing to sort out your ideas on the page to understand what you actually have to say about a topic. The writing in this first draft takes the form of paragraphs, but it is a mistake to try to write the paper the first time through, for you aren’t even sure of exactly what you have to say yet. The first draft is your initial attempt at transforming the raw material from prevision writing into the form of an essay. The first draft is for your eyes only. The writing may be peppered with all manner of mistakes and digressions and even new ideas and details, all of which are fine, for the purpose of this draft is to try out your ideas, begin to give them order, and figure out what you want to say about your topic, not to write the finished essay.

It’s also possible as you move toward drafting that you bounce back if you will to “prevision” and explore your thoughts on an idea that surfaced when you were drafting; in this way, you may move back and forth between the two phases as necessary.

Once you have the first draft written, the shaping of the content begins. This phase of the writing process is the revision phase, and it is here that you will spend the most time. Revision allows the writer to read over the draft and “re-see” (hence “re-vision”) what’s on the page. Revision allows the writer to look at the draft for content and meaning, and to begin the process of shaping the content to communicate meaning to an audience.

Part of the process is organizing the content you have developed into a coherent whole, and to this end, the techniques of paragraph organization will prove invaluable. Peter Elbow, the author of many books about writing, describes revision as “just a matter of adding, deleting, changing, and rearranging” content. Of course, this “adding, deleting, changing, and rearranging” is not always easy and will require a series of drafts, but through this part of the process, the meaning will become clearer and clearer on the page, and the writer will reach the point where only fine tuning, or editing, remains. Most writers dread the revision part of the process because it is the most time consuming, but in the words of Donald Murray “You can’t order good writing like a Big Mac.”

Any process is going to take time, and writing is no different. If you resign yourself to the fact that you can’t just sit down and produce a finished draft more or less the first time through, that you are going to have to work through a process in order to get better final results, then the better off you are going to be. The more you treat writing as a process-¬the more you embrace that process and understand your own writing process—the better off you are going to be.

Thanks for listening everyone. Happy writing.

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Revising Drafts

Rewriting is the essence of writing well—where the game is won or lost. —William Zinsser

What this handout is about

This handout will motivate you to revise your drafts and give you strategies to revise effectively.

What does it mean to revise?

Revision literally means to “see again,” to look at something from a fresh, critical perspective. It is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering your arguments, reviewing your evidence, refining your purpose, reorganizing your presentation, reviving stale prose.

But I thought revision was just fixing the commas and spelling

Nope. That’s called proofreading. It’s an important step before turning your paper in, but if your ideas are predictable, your thesis is weak, and your organization is a mess, then proofreading will just be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. When you finish revising, that’s the time to proofread. For more information on the subject, see our handout on proofreading .

How about if I just reword things: look for better words, avoid repetition, etc.? Is that revision?

Well, that’s a part of revision called editing. It’s another important final step in polishing your work. But if you haven’t thought through your ideas, then rephrasing them won’t make any difference.

Why is revision important?

Writing is a process of discovery, and you don’t always produce your best stuff when you first get started. So revision is a chance for you to look critically at what you have written to see:

• if it’s really worth saying,
• if it says what you wanted to say, and
• if a reader will understand what you’re saying.

The process

What steps should i use when i begin to revise.

Here are several things to do. But don’t try them all at one time. Instead, focus on two or three main areas during each revision session:

• Wait awhile after you’ve finished a draft before looking at it again. The Roman poet Horace thought one should wait nine years, but that’s a bit much. A day—a few hours even—will work. When you do return to the draft, be honest with yourself, and don’t be lazy. Ask yourself what you really think about the paper.
• As The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers puts it, “THINK BIG, don’t tinker” (61). At this stage, you should be concerned with the large issues in the paper, not the commas.
• Check the focus of the paper: Is it appropriate to the assignment? Is the topic too big or too narrow? Do you stay on track through the entire paper?
• Think honestly about your thesis: Do you still agree with it? Should it be modified in light of something you discovered as you wrote the paper? Does it make a sophisticated, provocative point, or does it just say what anyone could say if given the same topic? Does your thesis generalize instead of taking a specific position? Should it be changed altogether? For more information visit our handout on thesis statements .
• Think about your purpose in writing: Does your introduction state clearly what you intend to do? Will your aims be clear to your readers?

What are some other steps I should consider in later stages of the revision process?

• Examine the balance within your paper: Are some parts out of proportion with others? Do you spend too much time on one trivial point and neglect a more important point? Do you give lots of detail early on and then let your points get thinner by the end?
• Check that you have kept your promises to your readers: Does your paper follow through on what the thesis promises? Do you support all the claims in your thesis? Are the tone and formality of the language appropriate for your audience?
• Check the organization: Does your paper follow a pattern that makes sense? Do the transitions move your readers smoothly from one point to the next? Do the topic sentences of each paragraph appropriately introduce what that paragraph is about? Would your paper work better if you moved some things around? For more information visit our handout on reorganizing drafts.
• Check your information: Are all your facts accurate? Are any of your statements misleading? Have you provided enough detail to satisfy readers’ curiosity? Have you cited all your information appropriately?
• Check your conclusion: Does the last paragraph tie the paper together smoothly and end on a stimulating note, or does the paper just die a slow, redundant, lame, or abrupt death?

Whoa! I thought I could just revise in a few minutes

Sorry. You may want to start working on your next paper early so that you have plenty of time for revising. That way you can give yourself some time to come back to look at what you’ve written with a fresh pair of eyes. It’s amazing how something that sounded brilliant the moment you wrote it can prove to be less-than-brilliant when you give it a chance to incubate.

But I don’t want to rewrite my whole paper!

Revision doesn’t necessarily mean rewriting the whole paper. Sometimes it means revising the thesis to match what you’ve discovered while writing. Sometimes it means coming up with stronger arguments to defend your position, or coming up with more vivid examples to illustrate your points. Sometimes it means shifting the order of your paper to help the reader follow your argument, or to change the emphasis of your points. Sometimes it means adding or deleting material for balance or emphasis. And then, sadly, sometimes revision does mean trashing your first draft and starting from scratch. Better that than having the teacher trash your final paper.

But I work so hard on what I write that I can’t afford to throw any of it away

If you want to be a polished writer, then you will eventually find out that you can’t afford NOT to throw stuff away. As writers, we often produce lots of material that needs to be tossed. The idea or metaphor or paragraph that I think is most wonderful and brilliant is often the very thing that confuses my reader or ruins the tone of my piece or interrupts the flow of my argument.Writers must be willing to sacrifice their favorite bits of writing for the good of the piece as a whole. In order to trim things down, though, you first have to have plenty of material on the page. One trick is not to hinder yourself while you are composing the first draft because the more you produce, the more you will have to work with when cutting time comes.

But sometimes I revise as I go

That’s OK. Since writing is a circular process, you don’t do everything in some specific order. Sometimes you write something and then tinker with it before moving on. But be warned: there are two potential problems with revising as you go. One is that if you revise only as you go along, you never get to think of the big picture. The key is still to give yourself enough time to look at the essay as a whole once you’ve finished. Another danger to revising as you go is that you may short-circuit your creativity. If you spend too much time tinkering with what is on the page, you may lose some of what hasn’t yet made it to the page. Here’s a tip: Don’t proofread as you go. You may waste time correcting the commas in a sentence that may end up being cut anyway.

How do I go about the process of revising? Any tips?

• Work from a printed copy; it’s easier on the eyes. Also, problems that seem invisible on the screen somehow tend to show up better on paper.
• Another tip is to read the paper out loud. That’s one way to see how well things flow.
• Remember all those questions listed above? Don’t try to tackle all of them in one draft. Pick a few “agendas” for each draft so that you won’t go mad trying to see, all at once, if you’ve done everything.
• Ask lots of questions and don’t flinch from answering them truthfully. For example, ask if there are opposing viewpoints that you haven’t considered yet.

Whenever I revise, I just make things worse. I do my best work without revising

That’s a common misconception that sometimes arises from fear, sometimes from laziness. The truth is, though, that except for those rare moments of inspiration or genius when the perfect ideas expressed in the perfect words in the perfect order flow gracefully and effortlessly from the mind, all experienced writers revise their work. I wrote six drafts of this handout. Hemingway rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times. If you’re still not convinced, re-read some of your old papers. How do they sound now? What would you revise if you had a chance?

What can get in the way of good revision strategies?

Don’t fall in love with what you have written. If you do, you will be hesitant to change it even if you know it’s not great. Start out with a working thesis, and don’t act like you’re married to it. Instead, act like you’re dating it, seeing if you’re compatible, finding out what it’s like from day to day. If a better thesis comes along, let go of the old one. Also, don’t think of revision as just rewording. It is a chance to look at the entire paper, not just isolated words and sentences.

What happens if I find that I no longer agree with my own point?

If you take revision seriously, sometimes the process will lead you to questions you cannot answer, objections or exceptions to your thesis, cases that don’t fit, loose ends or contradictions that just won’t go away. If this happens (and it will if you think long enough), then you have several choices. You could choose to ignore the loose ends and hope your reader doesn’t notice them, but that’s risky. You could change your thesis completely to fit your new understanding of the issue, or you could adjust your thesis slightly to accommodate the new ideas. Or you could simply acknowledge the contradictions and show why your main point still holds up in spite of them. Most readers know there are no easy answers, so they may be annoyed if you give them a thesis and try to claim that it is always true with no exceptions no matter what.

How do I get really good at revising?

The same way you get really good at golf, piano, or a video game—do it often. Take revision seriously, be disciplined, and set high standards for yourself. Here are three more tips:

• The more you produce, the more you can cut.
• The more you can imagine yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be to spot potential problems.
• The more you demand of yourself in terms of clarity and elegance, the more clear and elegant your writing will be.

How do I revise at the sentence level?

Read your paper out loud, sentence by sentence, and follow Peter Elbow’s advice: “Look for places where you stumble or get lost in the middle of a sentence. These are obvious awkwardness’s that need fixing. Look for places where you get distracted or even bored—where you cannot concentrate. These are places where you probably lost focus or concentration in your writing. Cut through the extra words or vagueness or digression; get back to the energy. Listen even for the tiniest jerk or stumble in your reading, the tiniest lessening of your energy or focus or concentration as you say the words . . . A sentence should be alive” (Writing with Power 135).

Practical advice for ensuring that your sentences are alive:

• Use forceful verbs—replace long verb phrases with a more specific verb. For example, replace “She argues for the importance of the idea” with “She defends the idea.”
• Look for places where you’ve used the same word or phrase twice or more in consecutive sentences and look for alternative ways to say the same thing OR for ways to combine the two sentences.
• Cut as many prepositional phrases as you can without losing your meaning. For instance, the following sentence, “There are several examples of the issue of integrity in Huck Finn,” would be much better this way, “Huck Finn repeatedly addresses the issue of integrity.”
• Check your sentence variety. If more than two sentences in a row start the same way (with a subject followed by a verb, for example), then try using a different sentence pattern.
• Aim for precision in word choice. Don’t settle for the best word you can think of at the moment—use a thesaurus (along with a dictionary) to search for the word that says exactly what you want to say.
• Look for sentences that start with “It is” or “There are” and see if you can revise them to be more active and engaging.
• For more information, please visit our handouts on word choice and style .

How can technology help?

Need some help revising? Take advantage of the revision and versioning features available in modern word processors.

Track your changes. Most word processors and writing tools include a feature that allows you to keep your changes visible until you’re ready to accept them. Using “Track Changes” mode in Word or “Suggesting” mode in Google Docs, for example, allows you to make changes without committing to them.

Compare drafts. Tools that allow you to compare multiple drafts give you the chance to visually track changes over time. Try “File History” or “Compare Documents” modes in Google Doc, Word, and Scrivener to retrieve old drafts, identify changes you’ve made over time, or help you keep a bigger picture in mind as you revise.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Elbow, Peter. 1998. Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process . New York: Oxford University Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

Zinsser, William. 2001. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , 6th ed. New York: Quill.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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7.2: 2. The Process Essay

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Now that you have completed the  narrative essay , we are going to move on to “expository” writing. The rest of the essays you write will “explain” a topic. You will provide your reader with a specific thesis and then support that thesis through a series of related paragraphs, all tied together by the topic.

Your first expository essay will be the process essay. In some ways, this essay is similar to the narrative: you are writing about a moment in time, doing something that doesn’t take very long, and you are using chronological order. Your steps, identified in a series of paragraphs in the body of your essay, should be placed in a manner where your reader can begin with the first step and carry through to the last step.

There are two types of process essays: those that explain how to do something (how to tune a guitar; how to build a bird house; how to study for a test) and those that explain how something works (transmitting a fax; describing the growth of a cell; going through the steps of a piece of equipment at work). In the first, you are expecting your reader to complete the task and understand it fully. In the second, you may be providing information to satisfy your reader’s curiosity. In other words, you could describe the process of sending a fax, dialing the number and all the other physical steps; or you could describe how the fax actually transmits information from here to there- the hidden intricacies of the process.

There are also concrete and abstract processes. A concrete process is one that has clearly defined steps and obvious tools and equipment. Things like recipes and car repairs and craft work are concrete processes. Then there are processes that don’t have obvious tools involved: how to get rid of the blues; how to influence someone to like you; how to prepare for that test.

You need to be an expert at the process you choose to write about. Pick something you are interested in- a hobby or a skill you have, something you might do at work or have done often in school. You have to be able to develop your steps into complete, thorough paragraphs. An expository essay typically has well-developed paragraphs of 8 to 10 sentences each. If you have a series of paragraphs with only two or three sentences each, your reader will wonder why you don’t have more to say, will feel the info is incomplete.

I have a few pointers I’d like to share with you about developing process paragraphs. Using one or combining several might help you add depth and support to your writing:

• Be specific- Use exact amounts. Great chefs can approximate; we need to know exactly what to include. If you’re writing about how to build a campfire, give specific sizes for the wood you want your reader to gather. Large wood thrown on the fire early will only smother it. Be as specific as you possibly can be.
• Define terms- If you tell your reader to gather kindling for the fire, is your reader going to know what that means? If you have any doubts, explain what the term is. No one needs a definition for a screw driver, and very few would not know what a Phillips screwdriver is (you may just give a brief description: star-tipped). But if you have a complex tool that the reader won’t recognize, define it.
• Include reasons- Readers love to take short cuts. You have to be prepared to guide your reader through the steps correctly. So explain to them why they might be doing a step the way you want them to do it. In baking cookies, you may say “preheat the oven.” Most people ignore that. If you give a reason why it is important, your reader may be convinced to do as you say.
• Include don’ts- It’s not a good idea to check to see if the electricity is out by putting your finger in an empty socket while changing the light bulb. Advise your reader against it. Sometimes it’s easier to say what not to do than what to do. Warnings are wonderful influences.
• Mention possible pitfalls- Sometimes, things go wrong. Let your reader know before hand that success may sometimes be out of their control. They’ve got the cake in the oven and a big truck goes by outside. The vibrations cause the cake to fall. Knowing this before hand can at least reduce the heartache if something does go wrong.

As with all expository essays, this paper should have an introduction and a conclusion. The intro should state a thesis and give the reader some kind of background info that will attract his/her interest. The conclusion should suggest benefits to the process or point to related processes the reader may try in the future. Both intro and conclusion should be shorter than body paragraphs. They are more emphatic.

• Authored by : Jeff Meyers. Provided by : Clinton Community College. License : CC BY: Attribution