Writing is a Process
Sometimes a Very Long Process, Like Building a House.
How long does it take to build a house? My educated guess is anywhere from six months to a year. It takes a while to build a house, because it is a process. Well, so is writing. Writing is a process, just like building a house. In order to make it clear how this process works, here we’ll use the analogy of building a house.
Pre-write and Explore (The Madman Phase)
So, you want to build a house? Where do you start? There is so much to decide! What kind of house is it going to be? A single-family house? Two-story or one? How many rooms do you want to have in the house? What kind of style of house do you want to build? Maybe there are ten different styles of house that you like…list them all! What kind of furniture do you want in your house? Maybe there are ten different types of furniture styles that you prefer…list them all! During the first stages of building a house, you have to consider all of the options you like! You have to explore them! You cannot limit yourself in anyway. This is called the madman phase.
Writing has a madman phase too. During the madman phase of writing, you jot down any and all possible topics for writing. This is called prewriting. During your prewriting phase you can write whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to make sense! The idea of prewriting is to get your ideas flowing on your topic.
Free Writing
Free writing is just jotting down whatever pops into your brain! It’s crazy and fun! You might start by asking your self a question. Simply say, (to yourself), “what would a perfect world look like?”
Example of my Free Writing on that question:
Education for everyone! Everyone gets a house. Everyone eats well. People are kind to one another, educated, well-informed. Society is such that everyone is allowed to pursue his/her dream. The resources are available for everyone to do this. Artists can paint! Writers can write! Entrepreneurs can create the businesses of their dreams. Everyone wins!
Visualize and Imagine What You Want to Write About (Include all 5 senses)
The purpose of visualizing what you are going to write is to make it clear inside of your own head. If you can see it, if you can run the images inside your own head as a film, then you should be able to write about what you see. We will not always be able to visualize everything that we write about. For example, when we begin writing our research papers on civil rights and human rights, it will be difficult to visualize those rights. But one thing that you will be able to visualize are the people who have had their civil rights or human rights violated. You will be able to do that because we will be watching films about these people.
Draw
Some people like to draw pictures of what they are going to write about, or they create word maps. Turn to page 28, of TLW to see an example of a word map. With a word map, you could put a circle with your major topic in the center, and then have the other subtopics branching off of the major topic.
Read!
Read over a writing sample, (I’ve provided samples for you) of the kind of writing that you have to do. If you are asked to write in a descriptive manner, then you want to review the works of other writers who are good with description. If you are asked to write using another style of writing, then, once again, you want to find a sample of that kind of writing and review it. Reading a sample of the kind of writing you will be asked to do definitely helps with the writing process. When you review a sample of the writing, you get all kinds of ideas about how you should approach your own writing assignment.
Drafting and Crafting- Architect and the Builder Phase
Okay, so you have thought about, you’ve done some prewriting to get your ideas flowing. Start taking the basic ideas and creating your written product. Just as an architect, would draw up plans for a house. You must put the pieces together in an organized format. So, for this part of the writing process, you need to figure out how many pieces there are to this particular writing assignment. Just like an architect would need to figure out how many rooms a house has. For a basic essay, there are five major pieces: an introduction, three content paragraphs and a conclusion. For a personal narrative, there are at least three major pieces, a beginning (introduction of conflict), a middle (escalation of conflict) and an end (resolution of conflict.) For a research paper, just like an essay, there will be an introduction and a conclusion, but there will be many more paragraphs in between. The paragraphs will be more complicated than those you’ve written in your essays, because they will incorporate research (facts, statistics, quotations). But the basic idea is the same, a research paper is just longer than an essay, and it includes research.
In the drafting phase, you start putting your ideas into their proper places. This is like a builder putting certain items in a house. What goes in first? The kitchen sink or the kitchen cabinets? Well the cabinets have to go in first because the sink rests on the cabinets. Just like a builder must consider what items go into a house initially, a writer has to think about which ideas to present first, and which ones to present last. What is the most appropriate way to organize the piece of writing: chronologically, simple-to-complex, least emotional to most emotional? You want to organize your subtopics in a manner that makes sense. There are thousands of ways you can organize a piece of writing, try to select one that flows naturally and is interesting. Remember to find ways to capture the reader and keep him/her interested.
Revision Stage (Interior Designer)
So the basic house has been built, the builder had followed the architect’s plan. Almost all major items are in the house, now, it’s time to hire an interior designer to make everything look pretty. Where does the sofa go in the living room, against the large windows, or against the wall? What kinds of curtains will match the sofa, the brown ones, or the pink ones, or the orange ones? Maybe all three. The interior designer has to play with all of the furniture and accessories to get just the right look. To get the right look, the designer might have to rearrange the rooms several times.
The revision state of writing is like decorating a house. It is all about trial and error. It is all about rewriting. Once you write a first draft, you typically will have to write another, and another, and another. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a really good essay. It takes practice, a lot of practice to learn how to write anything well whether it be an essay, a story, a research paper, a magazine article, a screenplay or a book.
Just like an interior designer for a house, a writer is going to need to try out different choices. A writer has to play around with words. A writer has to play with sentence structure, topic sentences, and paragraph structure until everything reads and sounds just right. When people have long and complicated run-on sentences, I tell them that it is like jamming twenty sofas into one room! Too much!
When you are revising your work, you need to read it out loud to hear how the writing sounds. Does it make any sense? Are you using too many words? Do you need to find a larger word to replace several small ones that make your sentence sound awkward? Are you sure you’re using the right words? Are your ideas organized? Do you have topic sentences and transition sentences?
After you have read the writing out loud to your self, read it out loud to someone else, in your group! This is called peer review. This is how writers get better. You cannot simply read your writing to yourself and expect to catch your own mistakes! A writer must allow others to read his writing, before he delivers the final product to an instructor. Other people will see and hear mistakes that the writer has missed. Having others review your writing is absolutely critical to the writing process. Reviewing others writing is also critical to the writing process! We are all quick to judge someone else’s mistakes, and slow to recognize our own. (This applies to life, as well as writing!) But, when we see mistakes in others writing, we then begin to recognize those same mistakes in our own.
Proofreading (The Inspectors and Critics)
So your house is all finished. Now is the time to bring in the builder inspectors and final critics who will inspect every room in the house with a fine-tooth comb. Is every electric outlet covered? Is every nail completely hammered in? Are there no loose screws anywhere? How does the entire design look? Are there ten sofas in one room? If so, get rid of nine of them! Is everything up to code? When you get to the final stages of your writing process, you are going to have to mind the details. You are going to have to literally dot your Is and cross your Ts. You are going to have to check over all of the items on checklist under form. Once you get feedback from your first writing assignment, you will be aware of the kind of mistakes that you make in your writing. Knowing the kinds of mistakes is half of the battle. Once you become aware of the mistakes, next, all you have to do is learn how to correct them.
Like a building inspector, you have to catch and correct all of the small things. A lot of small things can add up to one big thing. Too many uncovered electric outlets can start a fire. To many mechanical and grammatical errors will destroy your writing.
Your final written product should be like a well-designed, beautifully furnished house. Everything should be in its perfect place.
The Nova Rhetorical Style 