The Writing Process

Five Stages

1st Stage: Pre-writing

• In Prewriting, you think about your subject and purpose and organize those thoughts onto paper.

• At the end of the prewriting stage, you should know what you want to say and how you want to organize your points.

Two methods you can use are:

• Graphic Organizers-to organize

• Free-writing

WRITE THIS DOWN!!!1. Identity the following:

• Topic• Purpose• Audience

• What you have to write2. Brainstorm ideas using the Introductory text and your own experiences and observations3. Use our graphic organizer to organize these ideas.

Graphic Organizer

2nd Stage: Drafting• You don't have to include

everything that was in your prewriting!  Pick your best ideas.  Make sure they relate to each other and your topic.

• WRITE!  WRITE!  WRITE! Don't stop once you start writing.  Revising and editing come later.  Just let the ideas flow.  

• When YOU feel that you have completed your ideas, you are then ready to go to the next stage.

So…….

• You take your ideas and begin writing including your introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion.

• Write your draft on a note book sheet of paper.

WRITE THIS DOWN!!!

3rd Stage: Revising

Revising is . . . • making decisions about how you

want to improve your writing

• looking at your writing from a different point of view

• picking places where your writing could be clearer, moreinteresting, more informative and more convincing.

WRITE THIS DOWN!!!

Ask yourself these questions…

• Is there a catchy hook statement?  • Does your thesis contain the topic, purpose, and is a

complete statement?• Does your paragraphs have only ONE topic?• Are there places in your paragraphs where you did

not “stick to the point?”• Do supporting details support only the topic

sentence of that paragraph? • In your conclusion, did you restate the topic and

leave the reader thinking?• Is proper format followed throughout? • Are all sentences complete or are there sentence

fragments? • Can you read it out loud without stumbling?

4th Stage: EditingEditing is . . .

• spelling • capitalization • punctuation • grammar • sentence structure • subject/verb agreement • consistent verb tense • word usage

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Good tip…Self Edit

Read your own work backwards. Read the last sentence, then the secondlast sentence, etc. Does each sentence make sense when you read it on it's own?  Do you see or hear any errors in the sentence?

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Skipping the Pre-writing stage leads to compositions with

these problems :

• Lack of a clear direction• Paragraphs contain sentences that

are off topic• Composition is too short • Ideas are undeveloped• Conclusion does not END the

composition.

Skipping the revision stage leads to compositions with these problems:

•Unorganized paragraphs

•Unsupported ideas• Incorrect format

Skipping the editing stage leads to compositions with these

problems:

• Contains serious grammatical errors

5th Stage: Publishing

Publishing means writing the FINAL draft.

• Composition should be written neatly.

• Paragraphs are indented.• Composition is written ONLY on lines

given.

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