Chapter
Many inexperienced writers imagine that “good” writers compose their texts all at once, from beginning to end, and need only a small amount of attention to polish the grammar and punctuation before arriving at a final draft. In reality, however, the writing process (steps for creating a finished composition) is typically recursive. That is, it repeats steps multiple times, not necessarily in the same order, and the process is more messy than linear or systematic. You can think of the writing process in terms of these broad categories:
- Prewriting. You will end up with a stronger composition if you do some work before you begin writing. Before putting complete sentences on a page, take some time to think about the rhetorical situation for your writing, gather your thoughts, and consider how you might arrange your ideas. Use your brainstorming skills learned from the previous section in this book. Try some freewriting and then develop an outline once you have a good idea of what you want to do.
- Drafting. In the past, you may have dedicated most of your writing time to drafting or putting words into a document. When you have strong prewriting and revision habits, however, drafting is often a smaller portion of the writing process. Much of the work for writing is done in the prewriting and revision stages. In fact, it’s better to overwrite while drafting than not include enough information.
- Revision. After you have a draft, carefully consider how to make it more effective in reaching the audience and fulfilling its purpose. You can make changes that affect the piece as a whole, such as cutting out paragraphs for a stronger organization or even adding content. Such changes are often called global revisions. The revision stage is what makes overwriting more of a positive than not. When you have material to work from during this stage, it’s easier to shape how you want to communicate your thoughts. Not to worry if you wrote a bit short during the drafting stage. Part of the revision is finding out what may be needed. If you find holes in your communication, go back to the drafting stage to try to fill them.
- Editing. After making global changes to your piece, you must also make changes that affect the meaning of a sentence or a word; these changes can be called local revisions. In this stage, the focus is on strengthening grammar and mechanics and improving style and design. As you work through the editing stage, it’s more efficient and effective to look for one or two issues at a time instead of trying to fix every little punctuation mark or grammatical mistake.
For many, the editing stage is the most comfortable, but this really isn’t the most important part of putting together your project. While poor grammar and misplaced punctuation can be irritating, they don’t typically detract from the message. Don’t skip this step, but don’t confuse it with revision.
- Proof Reading. You definitely want to proofread your draft before submitting i