Flowers’ Model
of the Writing Process
Standard model
•
•
•
•
Get ideas
Draft
Revise
Polish
Parts / Whole
Original Star Trek
Spock
McCoy
reason
intuition
Kirk
executive function
Your writing energies
Creator
Drafter
Planner
Editor
Flowers’ model
Or if you prefer…
Flowers
Role
Variation
Lunatic
What if…?
Why not…?
Artist
Architect
What’s the plan?
Architect
Carpenter
Build it!
Carpenter
Judge or
Janitor
Clean it up!
Inspector
Words of wisdom
Each of these four characters needs
time alone on the stage.
If you shortchange any of them,
your writing will suffer.
Garner (1997)
Enemies and allies
Natural enemies
Natural allies
Your writing energies
 Which is strongest?
 Describe any conflicts
you experience
between the
four energies.
 If you wish,
share strategies
that you find helpful
in resolving conflicts.
Creator
Planner
Drafter
Editor
Cultivating the Creator
Separate drafting and editing.
Focus on capturing ideas.
Promise the Judge a chance to comment later.
Focus on potential
Trust order will emerge
Cultivating the Planner
Follow a model.
Create an outline or other overview.
Use linear logic or web thinking,
whichever works for you.
Step- or web-thinker?
Follow a model.
Create an outline or other overview.
Use linear logic or web thinking,
whichever works for you.
Cultivating the Carpenter
Create the draft.
Separate writing and editing.
Go with the flow.
Leave gaps for later.
Write, then edit
Tolerate the mess
It ain’t where you start,
it is where you finish.
Gen. Colin Powell
Cultivating the Judge
Judge = “inspector for quality control”
(Garner, 1997)
Cultivating the Judge
First, deal with global issues.
Have you said what you wanted to say?
Are things in the right order?
Then switch to your readers’ point of view.
Have you anticipated questions?
Will readers understand?
Do they have a reason to care?
Finally, fix errors.
Do a “dental draft”
A friend of mine says that the first
draft is the down draft—you just
get it down. The second draft is
the up draft—you fix it up. And
the third draft is the dental draft,
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
where you check every tooth, are needed to see this picture.
to see if it’s loose or cramped
or decayed, or even, God help
us, healthy.
Anne Lamott
What have you learned?
Creator
Planner
Drafter
Editor
Genealogy
(Flowers, n.d.)
(Garner, 1997)
References
Flowers, B. S. (n.d.). Madman,
architect, carpenter, judge: Roles
and the writing process.
Retrieved from
https://webspace.utexas.edu/
cherwitz/www/ie/b_flowers.html
(Munzenmaier,
2010)
You
Garner, B. A. (1997). Using the
Flowers paradigm to write more
efficiently. Retrieved from
http://www.wsba.org/media/publicati
ons/barnews/nov08-garner.htm
Resources
 Flowers, B. S. (n.d.). Madman, architect, carpenter,
judge: Roles and the writing process.
Retrieved from https://webspace.utexas.edu/
cherwitz/www/ie/b_flowers.html
 Garner, B. A. (1997). Using the Flowers paradigm to
write more efficiently. Retrieved from
http://www.wsba.org/media/publications/barnews/no
v08-garner.htm
 Simpson, T. (2009). The toolkit. Retrieved from
http://www.win-more-cases.com/toolkit/
introduction/artist-inspector-architect-carpenter.html