The writing process/ The stages of writing

Every piece of writing has a hidden struggle of its writer to come to the final draft. But the skilled hands smoothen up that struggle of moving through the various ideas to the proper placement of words leaving no spots of that frustration. Although there is no proper formula for good writing- moreover, for any creative work- applying some techniques and approaches can be more helpful than simply starting the writing task. As students of college, we need to work for a great deal of writing. Whatever may be the writing assignments, they can be easier if we are familiar with the writing process. Thus, writing process can be segmented to the following three stages: Invention Arrangement Drafting and Revision

1. Invention: Writing about anything is an innovative process which always invents the message and ways of expression for itself. As part of a prewriting activity, invention plays a significant role to make the entire writing process convincing. In this process, we decide what to write and how to make it convincing. To make a piece of writing good and strong, one has to understand what is to be written. For this, there should be suitable knowledge and interest. Therefore, in the stage of invention of every piece of writing, one has to be careful about the assignment. Moreover, we should be equally careful about many other things such as, limits of writing, moving to the topic, thesis statement etc. Even though people ignore the fact that the assignments mean anything if there is good piece of writing, but they really mean a lot. Clear understanding of the assignment only leads to get better scores. No matter, how well written is a piece of writing; it does not get good scores if it fails following the instruction of the guide or instructor. Setting limits of a piece of writing in the case of students depends on the type of assignment. There are various limits for a piece of writing to be set which mainly concentrates on the length , purpose, audience and occasion of the writing as well as knowledge of the writer. Even though the teacher may usually give us the possible length or any other limit for the writing

piece, but quite often topic of writing sets most of the limits in the cases when there is no suggestion from the teacher in this matter. It is quite common factor that the students are easily fascinated by high sounding words and areas of writing, but the problem lies with these broad areas or the subjects of writing. In this regard, moving from the subject to the topic is an important step. This needs skills of narrowing the subject to a specified topic. Thus, to proceed to a specified topic from a broad subject, we have to adapt the techniques of asking some minute questions as part of probing the writing project so that they could be answered throughout the entire writing generating a strong thesis. The first technique of asking questions for probing is quite helpful to keep our ideas move around certain frame of questions because they reflect those ways in which our mind operates. By going through such questions, we can explore the subject systematically in the order of these questions. The second technique known as free-writing is quite important for looping to a great deal of useful information and sometimes to the thesis statement too. But an important factor regarding free-writing is that it can be useful at any stage of writing. Apart from this, making a piece of writing good is not just the process of weaving words into meaningful sentences. For this, ideas and their logical connection is much essential. What is our thesis statement and what is the thing we want to bring forth should be very clear, therefore, we have to be able to manage what we want to say. In this regard, brainstorming and journal writing can be helpful to find out the things to be said. These processes help us to generate useful ideas throughout the process of writing. Brainstorming mainly helps to narrow down the topic and find out something specific to bring forth. Similarly, keeping journal helps in jotting down experiences or exploring ideas. Thus, these both techniques can be highly worthwhile at any stage of writing process. After we find the things to be brought forth through our writing, we have to focus on the grouping and clustering the connecting ideas. Moreover, assembling and grouping of all the ideas is essential once we prepare our topic and find something to say. Doing this can be helpful to us to discover the logical connection of the collected ideas by the help of various techniques mentioned earlier. To do this, we can adapt the process of clustering with a logical linkage among all obtained ideas. In the same way, making an informal outline of the topics and possible subtopics can be another invaluable effort in this process.

More importantly, thesis statement and the supportive details in a piece of writing make a lot of sense to furnish the effects of a piece of writing. The main idea of an essay is its thesis. If our writing has to deal with a larger area or a diverse field of ideas, it is highly possible that we may go off track easily. Therefore, we should always keep the thesis statement and its supportive details in mind and try to find out logical connection between those. This kind of writing is easily marked and readers find it highly persuasive. For a strong and reliable thesis, it should be: Specific Tactful Clear Persuasive Even though it is considered good to have an explicit thesis for the beginners, an implicitly stated thesis is more subtle than the former one.

2. Arrangement: Once we get a working title and major thing to have been enforced throughout the entire essay, we have to recognize the pattern of it. The dominance of a certain pattern throughout an essay is depended on the probing questions. Thus, the patterns of an essay can be narrative, descriptive, compare and contrast etc. As we determine the possible pattern of the essay, we have to construct a formal outline of the issues and events to be substantiated throughout the body of the essay. For this, we should follow not more than three general headings. No matter what pattern or the ideas we choose into our essay, our essay has to have a beginning part introducing the subject matter along the topic, a middle part elaborating and supporting the major idea of the essay and a logical ending part concluding the main ideas of the essay. Among many other features, introduction has the major idea of the essay. In fact, its main objective is to familiarize and orientate the readers towards the topic of the essay. Thus, it may follow one of the given ways: It can give background information to the thesis statement It can begin with definitions of relevant terms or concepts It can begin with a question or a quotation

Body paragraphs, unlike the introduction, dont need to familiarize anything to the readers; rather, they should always seek a logical connection that helps to support the thesis statement. These paragraphs should be: * Coherent * Unified * Well-developed * Following a particular pattern of development * Supporting the thesis statement clearly As the readers become aware of the things stated at last, a writer has to be aware of the fact that their thesis is reinforced at last. Thus, the ending part of an essay should be highly effective. A conclusion, therefore, should be short precise and markedly brief. Nevertheless, conclusion of an essay should be consistent to the content of the body paragraphs that either restates the thesis, or summarizes the essays main ideas, or reviews the major trends and concepts brought into body paragraphs. To make it clearer, this can be listed into the following points: By restating the thesis or reviewing the major points from the essay By recommending a course of action By predicting some consequences By citing an appropriate quotation that helps to reinforce the essays thesis statement

3. Drafting and revision: As we decide on a subject and its tentative thesis for the writing project, we move to arrange our ideas finding some kind of linkage between the ideas. Yet, we have to do a concrete work of writing a first draft. The purpose of this is to get the ideas on the paper so that there can be further works possible. This is quite often nothing more than a work in progress. Drafting a piece of writing needs the following cautions: Begin with body paragraphs Get the ideas down quickly Take regular breaks while writing Write with revision in mind Leave enough time to revise

As we finish drafting our essay, we should not get hurried to revise it. Firstly, we should get a little time, at least, for cooling-off then starts our next job of revising the essay. Revision is not something that starts only finishing the first draft; rather, it is a continuous process that we can do at any stage of writing. In revision, we simply do not focus on proof-reading or editing for replacing certain words with some others, but we focus on the logic and clarity of our ideas as well as their effective and correct expression. By applying the following techniques we can make effective revision of a piece of writing: Maintaining a cooling-off period Working with a typed or a printed draft for convenience Reading the draft aloud so as to attain higher concentration Taking advantages of getting feedback Being no more overwhelmed Revising in the stages (from idea, paragraphs, sentences to the words) Despite we give a lot of time to revise our first draft, there can be a lot of problems until we take this task systematically. To make it more reliable, we can adapt various other ways of revision such as revising with a check list, revising with an outline and revising with a peer critique. Thus, as we revise from paragraphs to the words, we may need to edit all parts of the essay since we may change many things in the course of revision of the parts of the essay. This avoids the possible mistakes of mismatching existing in the level of paragraphs, sentences or words. To sum up, writing an essay looks highly fascinating subject but the struggles of a writer remain hidden underneath that come along inventing the things to be written to the final edited draft prepared to be submitted to a teacher or a publisher.