Stages of the Writing Process

Stages of the Writing Process

Writing can’t be done without going through certain stages. All writers go through their own unique writing processes before they make their final drafts. Usually, writers start with choosing topics and brainstorming, and then they may outline their papers, and compose sentences and paragraphs to make a rough draft. After they make a rough draft, writers may begin revisingtheir work by adding more sentences, or removing sentences. Writers may then edit their rough draft by changing words and sentences that are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate for a topic.

Brainstorming

Before you start writing, you will think about what to write, or how to write. This is called,brainstorming. When you brainstorm for ideas, you will try to come up with as many ideas as you can. Don't worry about whether or not they are good or bad ideas. You can brainstorm  by creating a list of ideas that you came up with, or drawing a map and diagram, or just writing down whatever you can think of without thinking about grammar. Think of this like the erratic thunder and lightning that comes from a thunderstorm.

Outlining

Next, you may want to outline your paper based off of the ideas you came up with while you were brainstorming. This means that you will think about the structure of your paper so that you can best deliver your ideas, and meet the requirements of writing assignments. You will usually outline your paper by beginning with its three major parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. The specific structure of each essay may vary from assignment to assignment. Many writers call this a skeleton unto which you develop or “flesh out” the paper. Once you have the skeleton in place, you can start thinking about how to add additional detail to it.    

Rough Draft

Your professors or instructors will often require you to submit a rough draft of your paper. This usually means that your work is still in progress. In the rough draft, readers want to see if you have a clear direction in your paper. When you are required to submit a rough draft, it doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be complete. That means, you shouldn't be missing any of the major parts of the paper. 

Revise and Edit your writing

What is the difference between revise and edit?

Revision lets you look at your paper in terms of your topic, your ideas, and your audience. You may add more paragraphs or remove paragraphs to better fit into a given genre or topic. In a word, revising means that you organize your writing better in a way that your audience can understand your writing better. You may want to read our resource on basic rhetorical elementsto help guide your revision.

Editing typically means that you go over your writing to make sure that you do not have any grammatical errors or strange phrases that make it difficult for your readers to understand what you are trying to say. In other words, editing means that you take care of minor errors in your writing. This is a lot like polishing your writing.

Polish your writing

We often hear professors or instructors say that you need to “polish your writing.” What do you mean by polish?

The word polish originally meant to make something smooth and shiny, as in “she polished her leather shoes.” In writing, polish can mean to improve or perfect, or refine a piece of writing by getting rid of minor errors. In other words, when your professors or instructors say, “polish your writing,” it means that you should go over your writing and make sure you do not have any errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and to make sure that you do not have any sentences that do not make sense. 

Improving Your Writting

How to Improve Your Writing

1: Write, write, write!

I think to improve your writing you really need to write something in English more or less every day. In my experience, it's best not to be too hard on yourself, but just write a few lines about what you did or about your opinion of something. If you're studying for an exam, you probably need to do more writing, perhaps writing the answer to an exam question at least twice a week.

2: Get your writing checked.

If you attend an English class, ask your teacher who will probably be happy to help. Otherwise you could try www.italki.com or www.lang-8.com, which both offer free corrections.

3: Learn the correct version.

When you find a mistake in your writing, it's a good idea to learn the correct version by heart. Otherwise it's easy to keep making the same mistakes (I know!). I like to use flashcard software like Anki to do this. You can also practise any grammar points that you make mistakes with here.

4: Keep adding phrases to your vocabulary.

You also need to keep reading (more about reading here) and studying vocabulary to gradually make your language more sophisticated. I strongly recommend studying collocations as much as possible rather than single words when you're learning vocabulary (more about collocations here).

5: Take care when you're writing.

Finally, I often see writing that could be improved by taking care about very basic things. Easy ways to make your writing better include making sure that you've used capital letters and full stops where you need them and checking your spelling. Also, it's not a good idea to use abbreviations like 'u' instead of 'you' (except possibly in very, very informal text messages if you are a teenager).