What, Why, and How?
4
THE WRITING PROCESS
Writing
Drafting
Revising
Creating Essay Titles
Editing/Proofreading
Sample final essay
Essay Checklist
WHAT IS DRAFTING?
After you do some good prewriting and write up an outline, it’s time to start writing
the paper; the first writing stage is called drafting. In this stage, get your ideas
down as quickly as possible and don’t focus too much on grammar, punctuation
or spelling. This is the ideas stage. Focusing too much on “correctness” can bog
your ideas down and give you writer’s block. At this stage, you start getting ideas
down on paper, extending some ideas, limiting others that aren't panning out.
Many writers say that they didn't know what they thought until they saw what they
thought. You might discover what you think as you write on a topic and your
argument might change and evolve as you write.
WHY DRAFT?
It takes the pressure off to think of your initial writing as “drafting” which is more
low stakes. It doesn’t have to be perfect because no one is reading it at this
stage but you, so drafting allows you to explore your topic using your creativity
and analysis. Writing the first draft also gives you the opportunity to see how
well your arguments support your tentative thesis and how the differing
perspectives or opposing viewpoints will affect your position.
HOW DO I DO IT?
- Post your tentative thesis and paper assignment prominently above your work space, so you
can refer to them as you write.
- Review your outline and the notes you have made on the text/topic you are writing on.
- In a draft, you want a clear beginning, middle and end even if they aren’t set in stone.
- In drafting, some use a linear approach starting with the introduction and writing sequentially
to the conclusion. Others prefer a more recursive approach where they work on one section
for a time, move on to another part of the essay, and then return to the earlier section. Use
the approach that works best for you.
- Once you feel you have covered what you want to cover, read through again to make sure
that the organization and development are logical. One strategy for doing this is to note in
the margin in a few words the point of each paragraph. Take those brief phrases and look at
them to see whether they follow logically or require reorganizing. Is anything necessary
omitted? Make any appropriate changes to your organization and development.
- As you look over your draft, try reading it out loud. It will help you “hear” what flows and what
does not.
When you complete your draft, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Is your argument (thesis) clear?
- Do your main arguments give the reasons for “why your thesis is so“?
- Have you supported these with credible and relevant evidence and your own analysis?
- Have you adequately addressed alternative perspectives?
- Is there additional reading or research you need in order to strengthen your thesis and arguments?
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample
DRAFT of a paper
in response to
Chapter VII
in Narrative of the
Life of Frederick
Douglass:
EXAMPLE
Sample DRAFT
continued
EXAMPLE
Here is the first
draft of the
Works Cited
Note:
3 sources are
listed—some
sources in the
paper are
missing from
the Works
Cited and none
of the citations
is properly
formatted yet.
WHAT IS REVISING?
Revising means what is says: it is a re-vision of your paper. To revise is to see
again, to re-conceive your original essay. When you revise a paper, the larger
elements of writing generally receive attention first—the focus, organization,
paragraphing, content, and overall strategy. Improvements in sentence
structure, word choice, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics come later when
you edit the paper.
In revising, you make global revisions that address the larger elements of writing.
Usually they affect chunks of text longer than a sentence, and frequently they can
be quite dramatic. Whole paragraphs might be dropped, others added. Material
once stretched over two or three paragraphs might be condensed into one.
Entire sections might be rearranged. Even the content might change
dramatically, for the process of revising stimulates thought.
WHY REVISE?
Past Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandels said: “There is no such thing as
good writing, only good rewriting.” American writer E.B. White echoed these
sentiments when he said simply, “The best writing is rewriting.” When you
revise or rewrite your draft, you are able to bring a higher level of clarity and
development.
HOW DO I DO IT?
Here are some guiding questions you can use to revise your draft:
TITLE
- Does your title give readers a good idea of what's to come? ("Assignment #3" is not a proper title)
INTRODUCTION
- Is your thesis statement clearly stated?
- Does the introduction lead in smoothly and establish the importance of and context for the topic? Is there
too much? Too little? By the end of the introduction, is it clear to the audience what kind of material will
follow? If so, are these expectations fulfilled?
BODY PARAGRAPHS
- Is it clear where your introduction ends and body begins and where the body ends and the conclusion
begins? In other words, are your paragraph indents meaningful?
- Are there transitions between all sections and paragraphs to create flow and unity?
- Does each body paragraph have a topic sentence? If you took your thesis and all your topic sentences,
would that correspond to what you want to say in your paper? If not, do you need to revise your thesis or
re-examine your supporting points?
- Do the topic sentences (1) make a connection back to the thesis, (2) establish a link with the previous
paragraph's content, and (3) give enough information that the audience could guess where a particular
paragraph's development would lead?
- Does the order of paragraphs make sense?
- Are your paragraphs too short or too long? Can you combine or separate any content?
- Are your examples reliable, representative, and convincing? Are there enough of them or too many?
- Are your sources convincing? Is there enough balance between your own insights and expert opinions?
- Are all sources and direct quotations explained or have you left them standing on their own?
- Has anything that goes off topic or is not essential been cut?
CONCLUSION
- Does the conclusion say something different from your introduction?
- Does the conclusion leave a good lasting impression?
- Does the conclusion end the paper on a strong and interesting note?
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample
REVISION of a
paper in
DRAFT
response
to Chapter
VII in Narrative
of the Life of
Frederick
Douglass:
REVISED
EXAMPLE
Sample
REVISION
continued
REVISED
EXAMPLE
Sample
REVISION
continued
REVISED
EXAMPLE
Sample
REVISION
continued
REVISED
The revision of
paragraph 3 is
continued on
next page…
EXAMPLE
Sample
REVISION
continued
DRAFT
REVISED
EXAMPLE
Sample
REVISION
continued
OVERVIEW
EXAMPLE
DRAFT
Revised
Works Cited
REVISED
WHAT SHOULD ESSAY TITLES LOOK LIKE?
After you revise your essay and are moving onto the editing and proofreading stage in the
writing process, it’s time to pay closer attention to the title of your essay. Essay titles should let
your reader know what your essay will be about and immediately draw in your reader’s interest.
Titles should also be specific enough to prepare the reader for your particular argument, so
avoid vague titles like “Racism” or “Hope.” Also, never turn in a formal essay with a generic
title like “Paper #2” and don’t use the title of the work you are writing on as your own title like
The Great Gatsby. It is often easier to write or revise your title after you have written your
essay and have settled on the central themes and thesis.
WHY ARE TITLES IMPORTANT?
Creating a strong, clear, appealing title is an important part of any writing task. The title is the
reader’s first introduction to your piece of writing, and first impressions matter. Therefore, you
want to create a title which pulls in your reader’s interest and makes him or her want to keep
reading. In a college class, you want your title to make your essay stand out from the stack
and make your peers and your professor drawn to read your essay.
HOW CAN I CREATE A GOOD TITLE?
You normally want to include the following features in your title:
(1) It should convey the topic of the paper. In other words, your reader should know what
the paper is going to be about from the title.
(2) Many titles, but not all, reflect in some way, what point you are going to make about your
topic. What argument are you presenting about your topic? Oftentimes, titles briefly
reflect the argument or thesis of a writing piece.
(3) A good title should also be creative, thought-provoking, and make the reader keep reading.
PRACTICE
For their first writing assignment, a college writing class was
posed with the following paper topic:
Take a look at the gender images that surround us in the media and analyze
their various meanings. What roles and stereotypes are most commonly
depicted? Do you find them accurate? Harmful? Limited? Helpful?
Describe the affect you feel these gender images have on us as a society
using specific examples, ads, etc. as evidence.
Here are the titles of the papers students created in response to this writing
assignment:
Harmful Stereotypes
Male and Female Roles and Stereotypes
Advertising and Stereotypes
Harmful Stereotypical Views of Women
Stereotypes and Roles
Stereotypes: Silly and Harmless
The Roles of Males and Females
Today’s Stereotypes on Opposite Genders
Differences in Gender
The Power of Society
How Society Categorizes Men and Women
Genders in Society
Stereotypes Between Genders
Seeing Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Gender Images
Are you a Man or a Woman?
Societies’ Stereotypes
Stereotyping
Stereotypes
Gender Stereotypes
Surrounded By Stereotypes
PRACTICE
Most of these titles clearly conveyed the topic of the assignment but they are repetitive and
unoriginal. Now let’s try to refine a few of these titles so they are more individually tailored
to the writer’s argument. Below are several of the thesis statements for these papers.
Create an effective title for each paper containing such a thesis statement:
(1) Thesis statement: In films, men are always portrayed as tough, macho figures, and this
image ultimately harms men as they are forced to live up to this aggressive, emotionless
“ideal.”
Possible Title(s):
(2) Thesis statement: Because the media depicts men and women in such narrow and
stereotypical roles, people get a distorted image of what careers they can and cannot
pursue.
Possible Title(s):
(3) Thesis statement: Television, which seems to continuously show women as sexual
objects, limits their potential and damages their sense of self worth.
Possible Title(s):
(Pause)
ANSWERS
Here are some potential titles for these thesis statements:
(1) Thesis statement: In films, men are always portrayed as tough, macho figures, and this
image ultimately harms men as they are forced to live up to this aggressive, emotionless
“ideal.”
Possible Title(s):
Men in Film: Macho on the Outside, Crying on the Inside
How Movies are Making Men Tough but Emotionally Dead
(2) Thesis statement: Because the media depicts men and women in such narrow and
stereotypical roles, people get a distorted image of what careers they can and cannot
pursue.
Possible Title(s):
Be All You Can Be! Not If the Media Has Any Say
Female Firefighters and Male Secretaries: How the Media Limits Our Career Choices
(3) Thesis statement: Television, which seems to continuously show women as sexual
objects, limits their potential and damages their sense of self worth.
Possible Title(s):
Women’s Heightened Sexy Factor and Lowered Self-Esteem
Woman or Thing? How TV is Changing Women into Objects
WHAT IS EDITING/PROOFREADING?
When you get to this stage, the hardest part is over. At the
editing/proofreading stage, you are looking at sentence clarity,
grammar, punctuation, spelling and any other sentence level issues or
careless mistakes that distract your readers from your main ideas.
Wait to edit and proofread until you are at the finishing stage, so you
don’t waste time carefully fixing each sentence in a paragraph you
might end up removing entirely in the revision stage.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
You don’t spend a long time picking out a nice gift for someone and
then wrap it in newspaper. You spent a long time on your essay, so
you want the final presentation of it to be inviting and impressive. An
essay that contains careless or excessive errors will tell your reader
that you did not invest much time or effort and will make your reader
uninterested in reading your paper.
HOW DO I DO IT?
Check out your verb tenses. Don't feel you have to completely avoid the "passive" tense (e.g., "the ball was
caught") but definitely try to have MORE subject-verb "active" sentences; they add power and agency to
your writing (e.g., "Billy caught the ball").
Also make sure your verbs are in the right tense. If you're talking about literature, keep the tense in what
is called "the literary present." So a sentence in your essay to set up an example would read "When Hana
tells Caravaggio about the English patient..." If you're writing a historical paper though, past tense is more
suitable.
Read your essay out loud to listen for either awkward or long sentences that could be clarified or broken
up to read better.
Check your punctuation. Fix any errors with quotation marks, commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, etc.
Look for grammatical flaws. Be especially on the alert for mistakes you make often.
Check your diction (word choice). If you're looking for a better word, look up some possibilities in a
thesaurus or if you're having usage problems (affect vs. effect for example), then check out a writer’s
handbook (there are many accessible online).
Now you can check your spelling both with a computer spell-checker and with your own eyes to catch
those words that are spelled right but used in the wrong context (like there vs. their vs. they're). Someone
else's eyes are great at this point because you're probably too close to your own writing.
Work on the presentation of your paper: double space your lines, maintain 1 inch margins, and prepare a
title page with an original title and your vital student info. Also make sure your font is very readable (Times
New Roman is the most common) and in 12 point.
EXAMPLE
Here is a sample
of EDITING/
PROOFREADING
in a paper in
response to
Chapter VII
in Narrative of the
Life of Frederick
Douglass:
EXAMPLE
Sample of
EDITING/
PROOFREADING
continued
EXAMPLE
Sample of
EDITING/
PROOFREADING
continued
EXAMPLE
Sample of
EDITING/
PROOFREADING
continued
EXAMPLE
Sample of
EDITING/
PROOFREADING
continued
EXAMPLE
Here is a
sample FINAL
VERSION
of an essay.
In these lessons,
you have seen all
the writing stages
that went into
building this paper:
annotating
Douglass’s text,
freewriting,
brainstorming,
journalist
questions, listing,
clustering, creating
a thesis, outlining,
drafting, revising,
editing and
proofreading.
EXAMPLE
FINAL
VERSION
continued:
EXAMPLE
FINAL
VERSION
continued:
EXAMPLE
FINAL
VERSION
continued:
EXAMPLE
FINAL
VERSION
continued:
EXAMPLE
Final
Works Cited
ESSAY
CHECKLIST
Before
turning in a
final essay,
use a
checklist to
make sure
the essay
is strong
and
complete.
This
checklist is
based on
the writing
advice in
the Rhetoric
and on the
essay
grading
criteria in
the grading
rubric.
that concludes
4
THE WRITING PROCESS
Writing