The Essentials

Today's topic: Whitney's Writing Essentials

People sometimes ask me for a boiled-down, bare bones rundown of the essential steps to better writing.  If I could give only a few bits of writing advice, here are the bits I would choose.

#1: Read your work out loud.  This is probably the easiest thing you can do to improve your writing.  A wealth of research in the field of composition and rhetoric (academia-speak for writing) shows that when we read silently, we don't read every word.  We read enough to get the meaning of the words, but we don't "hear" how the sentences hang together.  We also tend to go a lot faster when we read silently, making it much more likely that we will miss typos, punctuation errors, and problems with grammar or sentence structure.

I used to tell my undergraduate writers that reading their work aloud might mean the difference between a C and a B, or a B and an A.  Many of them found this to be true.  Do yourself a favor and read your work aloud when you proofread.  I think you will be amazed at how much more you "catch."

#2: Use prewriting techniques.  "Prewriting" refers to the process that leads to the beginning of a first draft.  It can include brainstorming (techniques such as freewriting and clustering/mapping, which I covered in last week's post), literature searches, outlining, and making notes on source material (keeping careful notes on the details of each source to make citation easy later on).  You may not always need to go through all of these steps; it depends on the writing project.  However, at a bare minimum, I strongly recommend making an outline for each paper you write. 

There are various techniques for outlining, many of which are covered in an excellent three part tutorial on the Purdue OWL website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/1/  Also, I have a PowerPoint presentation on outlining and other prewriting techniques that I plan to post on the Blackboard Writing Resources site in the next few days.  I may devote a future "tip of the week" to outlining; in the meantime, I recommend looking at the Purdue OWL's guide.

Some writers prefer to use full sentences in their outlines, while others use short phrases.  Some make neatly ordered lists while others like to cover a wall with Post-It notes.  You may want to experiment with several different types of outlines to see which one is most useful to you.  Make sure, though, that whatever format you choose, you find some way to distinguish between main ideas and supporting details.  This will help you make sure that you have enough support for each main idea.

Outlining is important because it helps you to carefully plan what content you want to include in your paper, and how to organize it most effectively.  Outlines can suggest possible headings and subheadings and help you see the relationships between complex ideas and how you might transition from one idea to the next.  Outlines can also keep you focused as you write.

#3: Remember that every paper needs a clear purpose or thesis statement.  The lack of a clear purpose statement may be the most common problem I see in the papers I read.  It can be an easy mistake to make; after all, when we are writing a paper, WE know what we are trying to say, and where our paper will eventually lead readers.  The problem is that our readers don't live inside our heads.  If they don't have a clear purpose statement to tell them where your paper is heading, they may get confused and lose interest.

I could (and will, at some point) devote a whole post to purpose statements.  In fact, I could teach an hour-long workshop on this topic.  In a nutshell, a purpose statement (a.k.a. thesis statement) should clearly, completely, and concisely state the paper's main idea/s.  Think of the purpose statement as the hub of a wheel, or as an umbrella that covers everything in the paper.  It should leave no room for doubt about the paper's purpose and main point/s.  A purpose statement should not include anything that isn't part of the body of the paper, and the body of the paper should not include anything major that isn't part of the purpose statement.

In some disciplines it is frowned upon to start the thesis statement with a phrase like "The purpose of this paper is to..." but in scientific writing this is fine, even preferred.  Keep in mind that a purpose statement does not have to be limited to one sentence, but it shouldn't take more than a few sentences to express your paper's purpose.  If it does, consider whether you are trying to take on too much.  The statement should come early in the paper, usually at the end of your introduction or background section.

#4: Pay close attention to organization.  Unfortunately, many writers give little or no thought to the organization of their papers.  This is a huge mistake.  Logical organization, or "flow," is essential.  This is one reason why outlines are so useful; they give you a chance, before you even sit down to write your first draft, to think strategically about how you will build your paper.

In a well-ordered paper, one idea flows logically into the next.  There should never be a point where readers wonder how you got from one point to another.  Keep in mind that the organization you choose for your first draft might not be the smoothest or most logical, since a first draft tends to be a jumble of all the information and ideas you have about your topic.  You will go on to refine many of those ideas; make sure you refine your organization as well.  Think about how your ideas relate to one another, and don't hesitate to experiment with the order of your sections or paragraphs. 

#5: Revise, and use revision techniques. NO ONE writes a perfect first (or even second) draft.  Remember that writing is a process, and it is a thinking process as well as a means to a finished product.  If you talk to any of our widely published faculty, they will tell you that the articles they publish go through a long revision process.  Sometimes an article will go through ten or fifteen drafts before it is published.  This is not unusual, and it doesn't mean that the author doesn't know what s/he is doing.  It is crucial to let a paper evolve, to give yourself time to think through your topic, to experiment with new approaches, to make sure your paper is taking you where you want to go.

Build revision into your writing process. Make sure you allow yourself time to do this; this means avoiding procrastination.  There are a number of techniques to help you revise your work successfully.  In fact, I devoted one of my earlier "tip of the week" posts to revision techniques (see "Revision Tips").

There they are, my top five bits of writing advice.  I hope this post has been helpful.  Please let me know if you'd like to review my earlier post on revision techniques.  And look for my new PowerPoint presentation on prewriting.  I'll be posting it on Blackboard soon.  Happy scribbling!

Whitney Kurtz-Ogilvie, MFAW