The Writing Process

ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

You’ve probably heard the saying “good writing is rewriting.” It means
good writing requires coming up with ideas, reviewing and organizing them,
putting them into a cohesive written work, revisiting your work, editing it,
and revising it to make your words stronger. These steps are known as the
writing process.

No matter what you’re writing, whether it’s a blog post, a screenplay,

a research paper, or a book review, you’ll work through the writing process to
turn your rough ideas into a polished, publishable finished piece. Read on to
learn more about the writing process’ six steps in detail.

Brainstorming

The writing process actually starts before you put pen to paper or fingers to
keyboard. The first step is brainstorming.

Depending on the assignment, you may be given a topic or you may have to
create one yourself. Do an internet search for the topic you’ll be covering to
get a stronger grasp on it and all the potential directions your writing can take.

When you brainstorm, you think deeply about the topic you’ll be covering in
your writing and let your mind follow any and every lead it comes across. If
you’ve been assigned to write within a fairly broad area, this is the point where
you narrow your topic down to a specific thesis statement.

For example, if you’re writing about key events in American history during the
Gilded Age, you could decide to focus on the debate surrounding the gold
standard that occurred during that time. As you brainstorm, you might zero in
further on how it was portrayed in pop culture and decide to write your essay
on how L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz represented this debate
through specific imagery.

Jot down every idea you have while you brainstorm, even if it’s only
tangentially related to your topic. The goal here isn’t to create a coherent
piece of writing—it’s to clear a path for your writing.

Brainstorming isn’t just about developing a clear topic and set of supporting
content to cover; it’s about determining the most effective way to present your
information to your intended audience. Think about the type of writing you’re
doing and whom you’re writing it for. A video script that walks your viewers
through a specific knitting technique requires a much different tone, structure,
and vocabulary than an academic research proposal for your master’s
program in marine biology.

Once you have a clear central theme for your writing and a strong grasp on
your supporting arguments, it’s time to finesse your brainstorming results into
a logical outline.

Preparing to write

The next step in the writing process is preparing to write. In this stage,
you’re taking all the ideas, connections, and conclusions you encountered
during your brainstorming session and organizing them into an outline.

An outline is basically a skeleton of a finished piece of writing that maps the

topics you’ll cover and where each paragraph fits into the piece. It provides a
 structure that helps ensure your ideas flow logically and clearly. It can be
helpful to look at outline templates online, especially if you’ve been assigned a
type of writing that you haven’t done before.

Choosing authoritative sources

At this stage, you’ll also identify which sources to use. With certain types of
writing, you’ll need to cite your sources. If this is the case for your current
assignment, this stage is the point at which you should familiarize yourself
with the applicable style guide and its formatting requirements for citations.

Make sure your chosen sources are appropriate for your writing before you
decide to use them. For an academic writing assignment, the range of
acceptable sources you can use is typically limited to academic articles,
government or nonprofit research groups, and, if you’re writing a literature
review, the literary works you’re comparing in your writing. With other kinds of
writing, appropriate sources are relevant sources. For example, if you’re
writing an article about the rising popularity of mushroom-based health
supplements, effective sources may include:

 Sale statistics from retailers

 Insight on mushrooms’ health benefits from accredited health experts (think

nutritionists, doctors, and other healthcare providers)

 Data from health-supplement industry journals

Your sources’ job is to support your writing. Working with credible sources
gives your writing a strong foundation, while weak sources undermine the
position your writing takes.

Striking the right tone

This is also the stage where you clarify the tone you’ll use in your work.
Usually, figuring out the right tone for your writing is easy—if it’s an essay or
another piece of academic writing, it needs a formal tone. If it’s a promotional
piece, your tone needs to be engaging and highlight the benefits of whatever
you’re promoting. If it’s a cover letter, your tone should be confident, but not
arrogant. When you’re unsure about the right tone to use or how to achieve it,
do an internet search for examples of the type of writing you’re doing and
familiarize yourself with the structure, vocabulary, and overall tones used.

Writing your first draft

You’re finally ready to write!

Don’t worry about making your writing perfect just yet—at the rough
draft stage, your goal is to get words on the page, not to churn out something
that’s ready to publish.

Using the outline you created, start building your draft, sentence by sentence
and paragraph by paragraph.

Here’s a secret a lot of writers don’t realize: You don’t have to write your
rough draft from start to finish. If you know exactly what you want to say in
your third supporting paragraph but you’re not quite sure how to hook readers
in your intro, write that third supporting paragraph and come back to the intro
later. When you reach a challenging spot in your writing, it’s easy to get stuck
there and waste a lot of time trying to figure out what to write. Save yourself
the time and stress by writing the easiest parts first, then moving onto the
tougher spots.

Doing it this way can also make those tough spots a lot less daunting because
it reduces them from big, scary holes to fill up to small blanks to fill in.

Editing and revising

Once you have a completed rough draft, the next step in the writing process is
to shape it into a final draft. This is known as editing.

As you move through the writing process, you’ll employ different kinds of
editing. At this stage, you’re content editing, line editing, and copy editing.
Later, you’ll proofread your work and, depending on the content you’re
covering, you might fact-check it as well.

In some cases, you’re totally on your own with editing. In others, editing your
work involves incorporating feedback an editor or instructor left on your first
draft. When you’re facing the latter scenario, be sure to read the feedback
carefully and address or incorporate all of it.

Edit with fresh eyes

 Before you edit, give your work time to “cool off.” In other words, don’t jump
from writing the first draft to editing it unless you’re crunched for time and you
absolutely must. By taking time between writing and editing, you’re giving
yourself some distance from your work. This enables you to view it with “fresh
eyes” and catch mistakes and areas for improvement more easily than you
would if you hadn’t created that distance.

With fresh eyes, look for:

 Logical inconsistencies or fallacies

 Inconsistent and inappropriate tone

 Areas where your writing can be made more concise

 Opportunities to replace words with more effective synonyms

 Confusing phrases and sentences

One way to easily find areas where you can make your writing stronger is to
read it aloud. By listening to the rhythm of your writing, you can hear words
that feel out of place, awkward transitions, redundant phrases, inconsistent
tenses and tone, and points where you need more (or less) detail.

For example, you might find you used language that’s too formal for your blog
post that’s making your writing seem stiff and boring. Instead of “the balloon
was inflated,” try “we blew up the balloon.”

Or you might find your writing contains redundant phrasing, such as “In my
opinion, I think that’s a problem.” Change this to “That’s a problem” to make
your writing more direct and concise.
If the piece you’re writing is meant to be read aloud, like a speech or a
presentation, this part of the editing process is mandatory.

Pay attention to how effectively your supporting arguments prove and

strengthen your thesis statement. Even if the piece you’re writing doesn’t have
a formal thesis statement, it has a central theme or argument. The goal of
editing and revising your work is to optimize your writing to make that central
theme as clear and powerful as possible.

This is also the stage where Grammarly can really help you out. Not only does
the Grammarly Editor catch typos and grammar mistakes, but it can also
detect your tone and make word choice suggestions based on your specific
writing goals.

Once you’re finished editing, it’s time to revise your draft into its final version.
This is the process of implementing all the changes you noted during the
editing process.

Proofreading your final draft

The last stage of the writing process is proofreading your final draft. At this
stage, you’re finished writing, but you’re not quite ready to hand in your
assignment.

Proofreading is one last lookover to catch any spelling mistakes, grammar

errors, typos, formatting errors, or incorrect structure or syntax. Unless
something is egregiously wrong, you’re not changing any of your content—
you’re simply double-checking that everything is grammatically correct.
Ideally, you have enough time to proofread your work with fresh eyes.

After you’ve proofread your work, give it one last pass through Grammarly.
Grammar can catch any last-minute mistakes that slip past you and help you
avoid embarrassing, easily fixable errors in your work.

Publishing your finished work

Your work is ready to be shared with the world!

What it means to publish your work depends on the type of writing you’re
doing. If it’s a blog post, a story you’re self-publishing, a video you’ve written
and shot, or anything else where you’re the publisher as well as the writer, this
stage is essentially you uploading your own work and making it available to
others. If you just completed an academic assignment or a commissioned
piece for a journal, blog, or another outlet to which you’re a contributor, this
step is when you send it off to your professor or editor. Publishing can also
mean submitting your work to an academic journal, querying your novel, or
delivering a finished piece of content to your client.