THE WRITING PROCESS Writing

1
THE WRITING PROCESSWriting
What, Why, and How?
4
DraftingRevising Creating Essay Titles
Editing/ProofreadingSample final essayEssay
Checklist

2
WHAT IS DRAFTING? After you do some good
prewriting and write up an outline, its time to
start writing the paper the first writing stage
is called drafting. In this stage, get your
ideas down as quickly as possible and dont focus
too much on grammar, punctuation or spelling.
This is the ideas stage. Focusing too much on
correctness can bog your ideas down and give
you writers block. At this stage, you start
getting ideas down on paper, extending some
ideas, limiting others that aren't panning out.
Many writers say that they didn't know what they
thought until they saw what they thought. You
might discover what you think as you write on a
topic and your argument might change and evolve
as you write.
WHY DRAFT?It takes the pressure off to think of
your initial writing as drafting which is more
low stakes. It doesnt have to be perfect
because no one is reading it at this stage but
you, so drafting allows you to explore your topic
using your creativity and analysis. Writing the
first draft also gives you the opportunity to see
how well your arguments support your tentative
thesis and how the differing perspectives or
opposing viewpoints will affect your position.
3
HOW DO I DO IT?- Post your tentative thesis and
paper assignment prominently above your work
space, so you can refer to them as you
write. - Review your outline and the notes you
have made on the text/topic you are writing on. -
In a draft, you want a clear beginning, middle
and end even if they arent set in stone. - In
drafting, some use a linear approach starting
with the introduction and writing sequentially
to the conclusion. Others prefer a more
recursive approach where they work on one section
for a time, move on to another part of the
essay, and then return to the earlier section.
Use the approach that works best for you. -
Once you feel you have covered what you want to
cover, read through again to make sure that
the organization and development are logical. One
strategy for doing this is to note in the
margin in a few words the point of each
paragraph. Take those brief phrases and look at
them to see whether they follow logically or
require reorganizing. Is anything necessary
omitted? Make any appropriate changes to your
organization and development. - As you look over
your draft, try reading it out loud. It will
help you hear what flows and what does not.
When you complete your draft, here are some
questions to ask yourself - Is your argument
(thesis) clear? - Do your main arguments give the
reasons for why your thesis is so? - Have you
supported these with credible and relevant
evidence and your own analysis? - Have you
adequately addressed alternative perspectives? -
Is there additional reading or research you need
in order to strengthen your thesis and arguments?
4
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample DRAFT of a paper in response to
Chapter VII
in Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass
5
EXAMPLE
Sample DRAFT continued
6
EXAMPLE
Here is the first draft of the Works Cited
Note3 sources are listedsome sources in the
paper are missing from the Works Cited and none
of the citations is properly formatted yet.
7
WHAT IS REVISING? Revising means what is says
it is a re-vision of your paper. To revise is to
see again, to re-conceive your original essay.
When you revise a paper, the larger elements of
writing generally receive attention firstthe
focus, organization, paragraphing, content, and
overall strategy. Improvements in sentence
structure, word choice, grammar, punctuation, and
mechanics come later when you edit the paper.
In revising, you make global revisions that
address the larger elements of writing. Usually
they affect chunks of text longer than a
sentence, and frequently they can be quite
dramatic. Whole paragraphs might be dropped,
others added. Material once stretched over two
or three paragraphs might be condensed into one.
Entire sections might be rearranged. Even the
content might change dramatically, for the
process of revising stimulates thought.
WHY REVISE? Past Supreme Court Justice, Louis
Brandels said There is no such thing as good
writing, only good rewriting. American writer
E.B. White echoed these sentiments when he said
simply, The best writing is rewriting. When
you revise or rewrite your draft, you are able to
bring a higher level of clarity and development.
8
HOW DO I DO IT?Here are some guiding questions
you can use to revise your draft
TITLE - Does your title give readers a good idea
of what's to come? ("Assignment 3" is not a
proper title)
INTRODUCTION - Is your thesis statement clearly
stated? - Does the introduction lead in
smoothly and establish the importance of and
context for the topic? Is there too much?
Too little? By the end of the introduction, is it
clear to the audience what kind of material will
follow? If so, are these expectations
fulfilled?
BODY PARAGRAPHS - Is it clear where your
introduction ends and body begins and where the
body ends and the conclusion begins? In
other words, are your paragraph indents
meaningful? - Are there transitions between all
sections and paragraphs to create flow and
unity? - Does each body paragraph have a topic
sentence? If you took your thesis and all your
topic sentences, would that correspond to
what you want to say in your paper? If not, do
you need to revise your thesis or re-examine
your supporting points? - Do the topic sentences
(1) make a connection back to the thesis, (2)
establish a link with the previous
paragraph's content, and (3) give enough
information that the audience could guess where a
particular paragraph's development would
lead? - Does the order of paragraphs make sense?
- Are your paragraphs too short or too long?
Can you combine or separate any content? - Are
your examples reliable, representative, and
convincing? Are there enough of them or too
many? - Are your sources convincing? Is there
enough balance between your own insights and
expert opinions? - Are all sources and direct
quotations explained or have you left them
standing on their own? - Has anything that goes
off topic or is not essential been cut?
CONCLUSION - Does the conclusion say something
different from your introduction? - Does the
conclusion leave a good lasting impression? -
Does the conclusion end the paper on a strong and
interesting note?
9
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample REVISION of a paper in response
to Chapter VII in Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass
DRAFT
REVISED
10
EXAMPLE
DRAFT
Sample REVISION continued
REVISED
11
EXAMPLE
DRAFT
Sample REVISION continued
REVISED
12
EXAMPLE
DRAFT
Sample REVISION continued
REVISED
The revision of paragraph 3 is continued on next
page
13
EXAMPLE
REVISED
Sample REVISION continued
DRAFT
REVISED
14
EXAMPLE
Sample REVISION continued
OVERVIEW
15
EXAMPLE
DRAFT
Revised Works Cited
REVISED
16
WHAT SHOULD ESSAY TITLES LOOK LIKE? After you
revise your essay and are moving onto the editing
and proofreading stage in the writing process,
its time to pay closer attention to the title of
your essay. Essay titles should let your reader
know what your essay will be about and
immediately draw in your readers interest.
Titles should also be specific enough to prepare
the reader for your particular argument, so avoid
vague titles like Racism or Hope. Also,
never turn in a formal essay with a generic
title like Paper 2 and dont use the title of
the work you are writing on as your own title
like The Great Gatsby. It is often easier to
write or revise your title after you have written
your essay and have settled on the central
themes and thesis.
WHY ARE TITLES IMPORTANT?Creating a strong,
clear, appealing title is an important part of
any writing task. The title is the readers
first introduction to your piece of writing, and
first impressions matter. Therefore, you want to
create a title which pulls in your readers
interest and makes him or her want to keep
reading. In a college class, you want your title
to make your essay stand out from the stack and
make your peers and your professor drawn to read
your essay.
HOW CAN I CREATE A GOOD TITLE?You normally want
to include the following features in your
title (1) It should convey the topic of the
paper. In other words, your reader should know
what the paper is going to be about from
the title. (2) Many titles, but not all,
reflect in some way, what point you are going to
make about your topic. What argument are
you presenting about your topic? Oftentimes,
titles briefly reflect the argument or
thesis of a writing piece. (3) A good title
should also be creative, thought-provoking, and
make the reader keep reading.
17
PRACTICE
For their first writing assignment, a college
writing class was posed with the following paper
topic
Take a look at the gender images that surround us
in the media and analyze their various meanings.
What roles and stereotypes are most commonly
depicted? Do you find them accurate? Harmful?
Limited? Helpful? Describe the affect you feel
these gender images have on us as a society using
specific examples, ads, etc. as evidence.
Here are the titles of the papers students
created in response to this writing assignment
Harmful Stereotypes Genders in Society Male
and Female Roles and Stereotypes Stereotypes
Between Genders Advertising and
Stereotypes Seeing Stereotypes Harmful
Stereotypical Views of Women Stereotypes
Stereotypes and Roles Gender Images
Stereotypes Silly and Harmless Are you a Man
or a Woman? The Roles of Males and
Females Societies Stereotypes Todays
Stereotypes on Opposite Genders Stereotyping
Differences in Gender Stereotypes The Power
of Society Gender Stereotypes How Society
Categorizes Men and Women Surrounded By
Stereotypes
18
PRACTICE
Most of these titles clearly conveyed the topic
of the assignment but they are repetitive and
unoriginal. Now lets try to refine a few of
these titles so they are more individually
tailored to the writers argument. Below are
several of the thesis statements for these
papers. Create an effective title for each paper
containing such a thesis statement
(1) Thesis statement In film, men are always
portrayed as tough, macho figures, and this
image ultimately harms men as they are forced
to live up to this aggressive, emotionless
ideal.   Possible Title(s)
(2) Thesis statement Because the media depicts
men and women in such narrow and
stereotypical roles, people get a distorted image
of what careers they can and cannot
pursue.   Possible Title(s)
(3) Thesis statement Television, which seems to
continuously show women as sexual
objects, limits their potential and damages their
sense of self worth.   Possible Title(s)
(Pause)
19
ANSWERS
Here are some potential titles for these thesis
statements
(1) Thesis statement In film, men are always
portrayed as tough, macho figures, and this
image ultimately harms men as they are forced
to live up to this aggressive, emotionless
ideal.   Possible Title(s) Men in
Film Macho on the Outside, Crying on the
Inside

How Movies are Making Men Tough but Emotionally
Dead
(2) Thesis statement Because the media depicts
men and women in such narrow and
stereotypical roles, people get a distorted image
of what careers they can and cannot
pursue.   Possible Title(s) Be Anything
You Want to Be! Not If the Media Has Any Say
Mechanics, Surgeons and Pilots
versus Nannies, Nurses and Secretaries
How the Media Keeps Our
Jobs Divided by Gender
(3) Thesis statement Television, which seems to
continuously show women as sexual
objects, limits their potential and damages their
sense of self worth.   Possible Title(s)
Womens Heightened Sexy Factor and Lowered
Self-Esteem
Woman or Thing? How TV is Changing Women into
Objects
20
WHAT IS EDITING/PROOFREADING? When you get to
this stage, the hardest part is over. At the
editing/proofreading stage, you are looking at
sentence clarity, grammar, punctuation, spelling
and any other sentence level issues or careless
mistakes that distract your readers from your
main ideas. Wait to edit and proofread until you
are at the finishing stage, so you dont waste
time carefully fixing each sentence in a
paragraph you might end up removing entirely in
the revision stage.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?You dont spend a long time
picking out a nice gift for someone and then wrap
it in newspaper. You spent a long time on your
essay, so you want the final presentation of it
to be inviting and impressive. An essay that
contains careless or excessive errors will tell
your reader that you did not invest much time or
effort and will make your reader uninterested in
reading your paper.
21
HOW DO I DO IT?Check out your verb tenses.
Don't feel you have to completely avoid the
"passive" tense (e.g., "the ball was caught") but
definitely try to have MORE subject-verb "active"
sentences they add power and agency to your
writing (e.g., "Billy caught the ball"). Also
make sure your verbs are in the right tense. If
you're talking about literature, keep the tense
in what is called "the literary present." So a
sentence in your essay to set up an example would
read "When Hana tells Caravaggio about the
English patient..." If you're writing a
historical paper though, past tense is more
suitable. Read your essay out loud to listen
for either awkward or long sentences that could
be clarified or broken up to read better. Check
your punctuation. Fix any errors with quotation
marks, commas, semicolons, colons, dashes,
etc. Look for grammatical flaws. Be especially
on the alert for mistakes you make often. Check
your diction (word choice). If you're looking for
a better word, look up some possibilities in a
thesaurus or if you're having usage problems
(affect vs. effect for example), then check out a
writers handbook (there are many accessible
online). Now you can check your spelling both
with a computer spell-checker and with your own
eyes to catch those words that are spelled right
but used in the wrong context (like there vs.
their vs. they're). Someone else's eyes are great
at this point because you're probably too close
to your own writing. Work on the presentation
of your paper double space your lines, maintain
1 inch margins, and prepare a title page with an
original title and your vital student info. Also
make sure your font is very readable (Times New
Roman is the most common) and in 12 point.
22
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample of EDITING/ PROOFREADING in a
paper in response to Chapter VII
in Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass
23
EXAMPLE
Sample of EDITING/PROOFREADING continued
24
EXAMPLE
Sample of EDITING/PROOFREADING continued
25
EXAMPLE
Sample of EDITING/PROOFREADING continued
26
EXAMPLE
Sample of EDITING/PROOFREADING continued
27
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample FINAL VERSION of an essay.
In these lessons, you have seen all the writing
stages that went into building this
paperannotating Douglasss text, freewriting,
brainstorming, journalist questions, listing,
clustering, creating a thesis, outlining,
drafting, revising, editing and proofreading.
28
EXAMPLE
FINAL VERSION continued
29
EXAMPLE
FINAL VERSION continued
30
EXAMPLE
FINAL VERSION continued
31
EXAMPLE
FINAL VERSION continued
32
EXAMPLE
Final Works Cited
33
ESSAY CHECKLIST
Before turning in a final essay, use a checklist
to make sure the essay is strong and complete.
This checklist is based on the writing advice in
the Rhetoric and on the essay grading criteria in
the grading rubric.
34
that concludes
THE WRITING PROCESSWriting
4