Help
Add this page to your book
Show collection (0 pages)
Suggest pagesRhetoric and Composition/The Stages of the Writing Process
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Writing is a complicated and often mysterious process. Although we may think of it as little more than arranging letters and words on a page, a few moments' reflection reveals that it is much more than that. On the one hand, writing is an art -- we don't say Shakespeare's language is "correct" but rather that it is beautiful. On the other hand, writing is a science -- we want the instructions that came with our DVD player to be accurate, precise, and easy to understand.
Then there is the matter of what makes writing "good writing." Although we might say that both an instruction manual and a play are "well written," we appreciate them for different reasons. A play written in the clear, unambiguous language of an instruction manual would not be a hit on Broadway. In other words, writing must be judged according to its context -- what is its purpose and audience? Finally, even readers with a great deal in common may not agree about the quality of any particular text, just as people's opinions differ about which bands are really great. We really don't know why people have such preferences and can't make accurate predictions about what they will like or dislike. Simply put, writing isn't simple.
If writing is so complicated and mysterious, can it be taught? Since Aristotle, great teachers have taught complicated processes to their students by breaking them up into smaller, more understandable processes. Aristotle realized that effective communication skills, like good math skills, can be learned and taught. Math teachers don't teach integral calculus to their elementary students; instead, they begin with addition and subtraction. Everything else builds on those simple processes. No one is born a mathematician. Similarly, while luck certainly plays a role in any successful writer's career, it is wrong to assume that good writers (or speakers) are simply born into the role and everyone else is fated to flunk English class. You can learn to write with substance and style. It takes work, but it is within your power. You have already taken the first step.
Most of what we know about writing is also true of speaking. Aristotle wrote a famous treatise on the subject of effective communication called The Rhetoric. Although this book is meant for speakers, teachers and students have long used it to help polish their writing. This treatise is still widely read and applied today by people desiring to learn how to speak and write more convincingly to an audience. Your first-year composition course may even have the word "rhetoric" or "rhetorical" as part of its title. Aristotle taught that rhetoric isn't necessarily knowing exactly how to get what you want from an audience. Instead, rhetoric is the ability to determine all the available means of persuasion at your disposal. Ultimately, it's up to you to guess the best course of action, but at least rhetoric helps you make this an educated guess.
Compared to speaking, writing is a much more recent phenomenon, and for many centuries it was assumed that the best way to learn to write well was either to pray, entreat the muses, or carefully imitate writings that were already considered great. Eventually, as more people desired to write, teachers began creating rules to help them write "correctly." Unfortunately, this heavy emphasis on correctness and writing according to a narrow set of rules did little to improve student writing. Simply knowing how to write grammatically correct prose is important, but it is not enough. Indeed, too much attention to correctness can result in unintentionally comical writing. Legend has it that Winston Churchill grew so irritated at pedants telling him not to end sentences with prepositions that he told one, "Madame, that is a rule up with which I shall not put."
Since the '70s, writing instructors have been teaching writing not as adherence to fixed rules but as a dynamic process -- that is, a set of distinct steps that writers follow to produce texts. Whereas before these steps were taught sequentially, now writing scholars emphasize the recursivity -- the back and forth nature -- of the process. In other words, while we still think of writing as taking place in various steps of a process, writers tend to switch frequently among them as they work. An insight gained while editing a chapter might convince the writer that an additional chapter is needed; thus, she might re-enter the drafting phase. Likewise, failure to secure a publisher for a book might lead the author all the way back to the planning and pre-writing stage. In short, while it is very useful to conceive of writing as a process, it is not step-by-step. It involves a series of actions, each with its own defining characteristics.
[edit] Five Evaluation Criteria
There are five criteria we can use to evaluate any piece of writing. These criteria are Focus, Development, Organization, Style, and Conventions. The following definitions come from the Oxford English Dictionary Online (www.oed.com) and will provide clarification on what these terms mean in the writing context.
Focus:
"The centre of activity, or area of greatest energy, of a storm, volcanic eruption, etc."
This definition works well to describe the criterion of focus as it pertains to writing because once you've defined a clear thesis or position statement, you'll want to keep your evidence and analysis focused on that thesis. Tangential ideas and paragraphs can confuse the reader and detract from the development of your argument; you'll want to keep all ideas and discussion relevant to your "area of greatest energy," or focus.
Development:
"A gradual unfolding, a bringing into fuller view; a fuller disclosure or working out of the details of anything, as a plan, a scheme, the plot of a novel."
This definition works well to describe development because it is clearly different from "organization," and these two criteria can sometimes seem very similar to writers and (peer or otherwise) editors. Development is the way writers explain their arguments to their readers; organization is a key component of development but, while organization largely refers to the order in which writers present their arguments, development refers not only to organization but also to analysis.
Organization:
"The action or process of organizing, ordering, or putting into systematic form; the arrangement and coordination of parts into a systematic whole; spec. the action of banding together or gathering support for a political cause."
This definition works well to describe organization because as you write, you'll want to keep in mind the specific "arrangement and coordination of parts into a systematic whole;" whether you're writing persuasively, informatively, humorously or otherwise, you'll want a logical—which doesn't necessarily mean chronological—progression of ideas for your reader to follow.
Style:
"A form of words, phrase, or formula, by which a particular idea or thought is expressed; those features of literary composition which belong to form and expression rather than to the substance of the thought or matter expressed."
Style is a term that, as it pertains to writing, is difficult to define. Individual writers often exhibit unique styles through diction, sentence structure, and tone; generally speaking, style should be consistent in any written work and is often consistent across several written works by the same author.
Conventions:
"A rule or practice based upon general consent, or accepted and upheld by society at large; an arbitrary rule or practice recognised as valid in any particular art or study; a conventionalism."
In writing, the term "conventions" refers to the commonly accepted grammatical and structural rules of standard, formal, usually academic writing. Conventions are not, however, hard and fast rules; writers frequently play with conventions in the name of style or voice.
Throughout this book we will refer to these criteria and discuss how you can make your text more suitable for its intended audience. You will think about these criteria during each step of the writing process. This wikibook contains a chapter on individual activities in the writing process. Below is a brief description of each activity and a link to the corresponding chapter.
[edit] Planning and Prewriting
Writers generally plan their documents in advance. This stage, often called "prewriting," includes everything from making a tentative outline, brainstorming, or chatting with friends or colleagues about the topic. For some writers, the prewriting stage is mostly internal--they think about their projects, but do not write until they are ready to start the actual document. Others plan extensively and map out exactly how they want their document to look when it's finished.
This chapter describes common planning and prewriting strategies and should help you "hit the ground running" when starting out your writing projects.
[edit] Collaborating
While there is a long history of thinking of writing as a wholly individual act, most workplace compositions (and composing in many disciplines) involve collaboration. If you're working on a collaborative text, this chapter will help you develop a collaboration plan, establish strengths and weaknesses in the group, assign roles, and do what ever else will help in producing a co-authored text.
This chapter offers some helpful tips and strategies for collaborating on documents.
[edit] Researching
Writers frequently require reliable information to support their documents. A writer's personal opinions and experience are sufficient evidence for many types of documents, but audiences will often demand more. Seeking out the information required to support your writing is called "research," and it comes in many forms.
One form of research is the interview, in which you call up or meet with someone who has information on the topic you are pursuing. Another type, "field research," involves travel to places where the topic can be studied first-hand. You might also circulate a survey. These three examples are all part of what is called "primary research" -- research you conduct yourself.
While many writing teachers assign primary research to their students in the process of writing a "research paper," much of the research that writing at the college level asks you to do is "secondary research" -- exploring other people's writing in the form of books, scholarly journals, newspapers,magazines, websites, and government documents.
This chapter describes different research strategies and provides you with the tools you'll need to properly back up the claims you make in your writing.
[edit] Drafting
When at least you start putting sentences and paragraphs on paper, you're drafting. Successful writers realize it's OK to write recursively--that is, they don't often start at page one and proceed all to the end without going back and changing what they wrote before. On the other hand, good drafters don't get so hung up on returning over and over to polish page one that they never reach page two.
This chapter describes drafting strategies and how to avoid common pitfalls like perfectionism and writer's block.
[edit] Editing
You can't edit what hasn't been written. That's why editing comes after drafting. For our purposes, it's important to distinguish between deciding what needs to be improved and actually making the changes. We'll call the decision-making process "editing" and making the changes the "revising" process.
Unlike publishers, who hire professional editors to work with their writers, student writers do most of their own editing, with occasional help from peer reviewers.
This chapter describes macro editing (editing at the level of content and arrangement) and micro editing (editing at the sentence level), and provides strategies for improving your text.
[edit] Reviewing
Having other people review your writing is essential to producing the best piece you possibly can. We often don't make the best "readers" of our own work because we are so close to it. Reviewers, on the other hand, bring valuable perspective we can't get any other way. A reviewer is anyone who is willing to look at your work and provide feedback. You're a reviewer, too -- for others' texts.
This chapter explains how to successfully review a document as well as how to make the most of the feedback you receive from other reviewers.
[edit] Revising
Revising is making the changes you determined were necessary during the editing process. Revising is hard work, but it's probably some of the most valuable work you can do to become a better writer. Dive into the task with the willingness to wrestle with your writing and bring out the best in it, and you will learn why revising is often considered the "meat" of the writing process.
This chapter examines the revision process and identifies some strategies that will help you improve your documents and reduce the likelihood of creating even bigger problems. This chapter will also cover proofreading, or carefully scanning a document for typos and other simple errors.
[edit] Publishing
What's the point of writing if no one will ever read it? Though some of us are content to write diaries or notes to ourselves, most writers desire for others to read and hopefully enjoy or benefit from their documents. This is where publishers come in: They help connect writers to readers. The Internet has introduced countless new ways for writers to publish their own documents electronically, but print publishing is still the preferred avenue for most professional writers. Of course, getting your documents accepted for publication can be a long and frustrating ordeal. We've all heard the stories of now-famous novelists who were rejected time and time again by unimaginative or overly-cautious publishers.
This chapter describes the print and electronic publishing industry, then identifies strategies that will help you distribute your documents to their intended audience. We will also discuss why so many authors fail to ever secure a publisher for their work.
