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Understanding the Writing Process Sometimes writing can seem overwhelming. How do you move from an idea to a finished essay? And how do you know when your essay is complete? It helps to think about writing as a series of steps. Then you can focus on one step at a time. When you've gone through all the steps, you'll have a solid piece of writing. All together, the steps make up the writing process. The writing process helps you tackle a writing assignment in a particular order. But the process is flexible too. You can return to earlier steps anytime you need to. Next, you'll watch a video about writing. It shows that writing is a process you practice all the time. Writing is also something you can improve with time.

Writing a Research Paper

In this lesson, you'll practice skills for writing a research paper. A research paper is an essay that presents an argument or analyzes a point of view. The argument or the analysis is supported by research sources. The structure of the paper is similar to other essays. It includes an introduction, body, and conclusion. While writing, you'll use a common writing process. This process follows these steps: brainstorm outline draft review revise edit (proofread) publish In the next activity, you'll learn about the writing prompt for your paper. Then you'll find research sources and prepare an outline for your paper.

Revising a Research Paper

Once your paper is written, you need to revise it. Revising is a way for you to improve the quality of your writing. It also helps you improve your paper's organization and the flow of your ideas. The revision step can focus on a section or the entire paper. You may need to revise your paper more than once. The goal is to end up with a polished final paper. During revision, look closely at your thesis statement, ideas, and supporting details. You may find that you need to rethink and rewrite parts of the paper to improve it.

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The writing process can be broken down into seven steps: brainstorming outlining drafting reviewing revising proofreading publishing As you write, you'll do the steps in this order. But you can also return to earlier steps to rethink your writing. In this lesson, you'll go through the brainstorming, outlining, and drafting stages. Later, you'll finish the rest of the writing process in the activity for this unit. The unit activity will guide you through the reviewing, revising, and proofreading steps.

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Persuasive Essays A persuasive essay is meant to persuade readers to accept a point of view or to drive them to take action. Persuasive essays are written for a number of reasons. For example, they might express disapproval of unethical behavior, such as an opinion piece against wearing animal fur. They might promote a specific goal, such as an argument for saving a town's movie theater. Or they might argue for a type of change, such as an essay urging people to recycle plastic rather than throw it away. Think of a persuasive essay as a written debate. Writers express an opinion and try to convince their readers to agree. A good persuasive essay will define the issue, show both sides of the argument, and take a clear stand on the topic. Note that if your main goal is to inform an audience about a topic or offer a critique, a persuasive essay probably won't suit your needs.

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The revision stage is the time to identify major problems and make the big changes needed to keep your paper on topic. It's also the time to ensure that your argument is logical and convincing to the reader. While revising, don't look for smaller issues such as spelling and grammatical errors. Instead, focus on big-picture problems such as flaws in your argument, insufficient evidence or information, or poor organization of ideas. Tackle spelling and grammar after you finish revising, when you edit and proofread your paper. There is no right or wrong way to go about revising a paper. Develop and practice a process that works best for you. Next, you'll review some how-to tips to help you fine-tune your own revision process

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Understanding Your Audience Before you start writing a persuasive essay, it's important to understand your audience. The same topic can be covered in different ways depending on who your audience is. Consider a persuasive essay arguing that more people should follow a vegetarian diet. It would be written differently for an audience of 9-year-olds than for a group of 20-year-olds. The essay for younger readers might feature very simple text with easy language. The essay for older readers would likely contain more complex text with bigger words and longer sentences. Sometimes your assignment will tell you who your audience is. If it doesn't, guess who your audience is likely to be. Ask yourself the following questions before writing: What is the age group of your audience? What are the general likes, dislikes, and priorities of your audience? Why should the audience care about what you have to say? What do you have to offer? What topics, examples, and images are most likely to attract the audience's interest?

Good Writing Versus Bad Writing

What Makes a Good Writer? Writing is just work—there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes—it's still just work. —Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) Writing comes naturally to some people. For most, however, writing is an acquired skill that requires hard work. Good writers know that practice makes them better. They develop a writing strategy and manage their time so that they have enough time to research and write a high-quality paper. A good writer takes advantage of graphic organizers to get thoughts and ideas organized. Once, for example, the outline is completed, it provides a framework to fill in all the information and ideas that have been gathered on the topic. At this stage, a best practice is to focus on the flow of ideas and information presented rather than on writing style or choice of words. Polishing up the writing style and presentation will come at a later stage

Other Mistakes in Writing

Ambiguous This and That It's important not only to write correctly, but also forcefully. Try to eliminate weak words and phrases. Often, the words this and that are used to connect arguments or to draw conclusions in a vague way. Here's an example: Ray's Italian grandmother taught him how to cook. This is why his sauce tastes better than anything you could get out of a jar. The second sentence makes a weak connection between Ray's pasta sauce and jarred sauces. To strengthen this connection, replace this with a reiteration of the supporting point. Ray's Italian grandmother taught him how to cook. Her traditional recipe is why his sauce tastes better than anything you could get out of a jar. You can also fix an ambiguous that using a conjunction: Maya read that bad oral hygiene is linked to heart disease. That is why she has taken to flossing every day. Stronger: Maya has taken to flossing every day after she read that bad oral hygiene is linked to heart disease. When dealing with an ambiguous this or that, use specific information to make your sentence stronger and clearer.

Good Writing Versus Bad Writing

Good writers do not write a paper or an article all at once, from start to finish. A good writer will complete several rounds of revisions before an essay is ready for submission. Most good writers will tell you that the first draft of a paper is usually not good enough; a self or peer review can help during the revision process. Louis Brandeis, former associate justice of the US Supreme Court, said, "There is no great writing—only great rewriting." Some writers try to be perfectionists; they want to be absolutely sure their paper has no errors. Perfection is an elusive goal, however. Being a good writer means knowing when it's time to hand in your paper for review by a peer or your teacher. There's no point in writing a great paper if you're going to lose points turning it in late. Good writers also develop the ability to take constructive criticism and use it to better their future writing assignments. You should be able to look at your work objectively and also receive feedback that can help improve your writing and your paper.

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Expository Essays An expository essay provides the reader with information about a particular topic. The writer of an expository essay investigates the topic, evaluates evidence, develops the idea, and puts forward the thesis. An expository essay may draw comparisons, provide definitions, give examples, or analyze the cause and effect of a concept. Expository essays are focused on analyzing the topic and not putting forth an argument with the intent to persuade readers. An expository essay usually begins with a thesis statement in the first paragraph. The writer needs to explain this key idea further in the essay. The next few paragraphs contain evidence to support the thesis. The last paragraph typically repeats the thesis statement and ends with a conclusion derived from the evidence and the main ideas presented in each body paragraph. An expository essay topic asks you to explain a topic of interest. For example, you may be asked to describe the skills required to be a good leader. Read the expository essay "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain. As you read, note how Twain structures the essay.

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Narrative Essays A narrative essay describes an event as a story. Autobiographies, memoirs, and book reports are types of narrative essays. A narrative essay is usually written in the first person I. It has an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Like any story, a narrative essay also has a well-developed plot, characters, and setting. To make a narrative essay more interesting to read, writers usually use vivid imagery that engages the five senses. An assignment for a narrative essay might be to describe an event from your life. You might choose a topic such as "The best day of my life so far." Read the first five paragraphs of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass. As you read this essay, pay attention to how the writer describes the events of his life.

Sentence Fragments

Read this sentence and see if there's an error: Went to the store to buy milk and eggs. As you probably noticed, this sentence is incomplete. Although it exhibits characteristics of a sentence, such as initial capitalization, a finite verb, and a period at the end, it doesn't make complete sense because it doesn't have a subject. You might scribble this as a note and stick it on the fridge to let your parents know where you've gone, but you wouldn't use it in academic writing. You can correct this fragment by adding a subject: I went to the store to buy milk and eggs. As the name suggests, sentence fragments are sentence scraps that get separated from the main clause. This error happens when you write in a hurry or are in the habit of writing really long sentences with several clauses. Sentence fragments also occur when you start a thought, but you do not complete it. Consider how a fragment interrupts the flow here: Edgar Allan Poe was a nineteenth-century poet. His poem "The Raven" is among the most famous poems ever written. Wrote several mystery stories. Fragments can be corrected simply by checking that each sentence you have written has a subject and a predicate and adding whichever is missing. For instance, read this: Harvard, a member of the Ivy League, with 10 separate academic units. This is a fragment that does not have a finite verb. It can be corrected simply by adding is: Harvard is a member of the Ivy League with 10 separate academic units. Errors such as these can be easily caught and corrected when you make a habit of proofreading what you write.

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Revising: Why and How Writing is a process. It involves learning about and exploring a topic through writing. When you craft your first draft for an essay, you're trying to get all of your ideas down. If you take a break from your paper and return to it with a fresh mind, you might discover problems that you hadn't noticed before. You could find that your thesis is weak, that the evidence you've provided isn't convincing enough, or that your writing doesn't convey what you really intended to say. These situations call for revising your paper. The revision stage helps rid your paper of other inconsistencies, including a lack of connection between your ideas, poor organization, and unnecessary information. This stage is also a time to add details and ideas to fill in any gaps. Think of revision as a re-vision of your paper: it gives you the opportunity to examine your writing and your ideas critically, with fresh eyes. Ask yourself the following questions when you're revising a paper: Is this what I really wanted to say? Is this worth saying? Does it help prove my thesis? Will my readers understand my point?