The writing process consists of a series of steps an author takes to compose text. While each writer has their own process that often comes naturally to them, there are a few steps that are universally referred to and followed while writing.
Benefits of Establishing a Writing Process
Writing an essay, a research paper, or a book report or engaging in any other kind of academic writing can be intimidating, especially for novice writers. But setting writing up as a process – by breaking it down into a series of manageable steps – can help students become more effective writers, as the way an author writes affects how well they write.
Moreover, being conscious of one’s own writing process can be helpful when authors find themselves struggling with a particularly tricky piece of writing. And a well-defined writing process can make all the difference. Following a proper process also helps writers clearly focus on each step, which in turn will be reflected in the quality of the final text. At the end, the writer can expect a well-written, properly-formatted, high quality text, free of spelling and grammatical errors.
This article aims to help students, especially those who are new to academic writing, learn how to write properly irrespective of whether they are writing a term paper, an essay, or a blog post for their website.
Stages of the Writing Process
Here are the 4 stages of the writing process:
1. Prewriting
At this stage, the writer identifies everything they need to do before starting on their rough draft. Many overlook this step altogether and jump straightaway into writing, without planning and organizing their ideas. The result ends up being a sub-standard piece that takes a lot more time to write and edit than they had foreseen. Spending more time prewriting helps writers gather material and ideas and prepare everything they need for the subsequent steps of the writing process.
This step can be divided into several smaller tasks:
- Identifying the idea or ideas on which the text will be based – this can be through the writer’s own imagination or in external sources of inspiration.
- Conducting research to understand the topic better and gathering relevant information.
- Identifying the target audience and understanding their needs and expectations to help the author narrow down their focus.
- Using popular prewriting strategies like freewriting, clustering, outlining, brainstorming, and mindmapping.
- Planning and structuring ideas, which involves sorting through all the ideas jotted down and choosing which ones to keep.
2. Drafting
After the author has thoroughly researched the topic and has an outline ready, they must create a rough draft. This is the first draft which will be revised and edited later. At the drafting stage, the writer only needs to focus on transferring their ideas into sentences without worrying too much about spelling, grammar, or vocabulary. Trying to perfect every word and sentence at this stage will only waste time and create unnecessary stress. They should work through the outline prepared earlier, strive to write complete and meaningful sentences and paragraphs, and resist the urge to look back and edit. By the end of this step, the author should have incorporated everything they want to say about the topic in a way that makes sense when it’s time to revise.
3. Revising
This is an important part of the writing process during which the author reexamines the first draft and revises it by changing and rearranging the content. At this stage, they can rewrite parts of the text or delete sentences or even whole paragraphs to correct errors and make the text more engaging.
Revisiting the draft allows authors to identify areas that need improvement and reinforcement and to do a little more thinking and research if necessary. At this stage, a fresh pair of eyes, a colleague or a peer for example, can provide new insight on something the author might have missed. Authors can revise their draft as many times as they want. They should, however, wait for a few hours, if not days, between attempts.
4. Editing
At this stage, authors fix the tone and style of the text and correct spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation errors. Since authors edit extensively during this stage, it is pointless to edit during the drafting stage – it doesn’t make sense to edit something they might delete or rewrite later. This is the author’s last chance to ensure the text delivers on the promise made by the title and meets the expectations of the target audience. As in the previous stage of revising, it would be helpful to get someone else, preferably a professional editor, to evaluate the text; they are more likely to find errors the author might have missed due to over-familiarity with the text.
At the end of the editing stage, the completed essay or manuscript should be ready for submission.
