The Three-step Writing Process

Planning Analyze Study your purpose, lay out your writing schedule, and then profile your audience. Writing Organize Define your main idea, limit the scope, group your points, and choose the direct or indirect approach Completing Revise Evaluate content and review readability, editing, and rewriting for conciseness and clarity.

Investigate Gather information through formal or informal research methods.

Compose Control your style through level formality and conversational tone. Choose your words carefully so that you can create effective sentences and paragraphs.

Produce Use effective design elements and suitable delivery methods. Proofread Review for errors in layout, spelling, and mechanics.

Adapt Choose the right channel and medium; then establish a good relationship with your audience.

Define the main idea

theme
a statement about the

topic that explains your purpose for writing.

Explore ideas for writing topics

To initiate thinking and

generate possible writing topics

Examples of prewriting techniques & strategies

Journalistic approach Question-and-answer chain

approach Free-writing Brainstorming

Prewriting techniques
Journalistic approach
1 2

3
4 5

ask six questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

Journalistic approach
Q 1 Who is involved?: Who are the participants? Who is affected? Who are the primary actors? Who are the secondary actors?

Journalistic approach
Q2 What?:
What is the topic? What is the significance of the topic? What is the basic problem? What are the issues? What happened and what were the results?

Journalistic approach
Q3 Where?:
Where does the activity take place? Where does the problem or issue have

its source? At what place is the cause or effect of the problem most visible?

Journalistic approach
Q4 When?: When is the issue most apparent? (past? present? future?) When did the issue or problem develop? What historical forces helped shape the problem or issue and at what point in time will the problem or issue culminate in a crisis? When is action needed to address the issue or problem?

Journalistic approach
Q5 Why?:
Why did the issue or problem arise?

Why is it (your topic) an issue or

problem at all? Why did the issue or problem develop in the way that it did?

Journalistic approach
Q6 How?: How did it happen? How is the issue or problem significant? How can it be addressed? How does it affect the participants? How can the issue or problem be resolved?

Prewriting Techniques
Question-and-answer chain approach the audiences perspective and ask questions such as

What is the audiences main question? What do they need to know? Any additional questions?

Prewriting strategies
1 Free-writing 2 Brainstorming

Freewriting
Two types of freewriting: 1 Unfocused You either sit down at the keyboard or grab a pencil and piece of paper and begin writing whatever comes to mind.

Free-writing
2 Focused Focused free-writing is similar, but instead of writing about anything, try to stay focused on the topic you are to write about.
Write down everything that comes to mind on

the topic, without stopping to consider whether an idea is worthwhile.

Brainstorming
Brainstorming means using a variety of

methods to stimulate your thought process.

just jot down ideas that seem related

to your topic.

eg Write some about Winnie Hau

Appearance

Personality

Winnie Hau

Religion

Education background

Organizing your ideas

2 Using an outline a working outline might be only an informal list of topics and subtopics which you are thinking of covering in your paper
three levels of ideas the main points,

subpoints, and supporting details, illustrations and evidence

Example
Theme

Main Point

Main Point

Main Point

Evidence

Supporting Details

Evidence

Supporting Details

 The MLA Handbook suggests the

following "descending parts of an outline":

Example of an outline

Organizational approaches Direct approach The main idea comes first, Followed by the evidence.

Organizational approaches Indirect approach The evidence comes first, and the main idea comes later.

Composing your message

Drafting
A draft is a work in progress.
what you want to communicate

Composing your message Writing style controlling your style and tone selecting the best words creating effective sentences developing coherent paragraphs

Composing your message

Drafting
A draft is a work in progress.
what you want to communicate

Completing business messages

make sure your message matches the

purpose

make sure your message projects a

good image of yourself.

Completing business messages

revise,
produce,

proofread and
evaluate what you have written

Completing business messages

make sure your message matches the

purpose

make sure your message projects a

good image of yourself.

Revising the message

1 - content - organization - flow

2 - style - readability 3 - mechanics - format

Proofreading the message

Leave plenty of time to proofread. If

you can, put your essay aside for a few days, and then come back and look at it with fresh eyes.

make sure everything is 100% right.

Some proofreading tips:

Try reading your essay backwards (last

sentence first) to catch fragments or other glaring errors.

Have another pair of eyes read it as well to catch errors in spelling and grammar.

Some proofreading tips:

Look for Writing Errors:
Typing errors

Misspelled words
Grammatical errors Punctuation mistakes

Some proofreading tips:

Look for Missing Elements:
Missing text sections

Missing exhibits (drawings, tables,

photographs, charts graphs etc Missing source notes, reference items

Some proofreading tips:

Look for Design and Formatting Mistakes:

Incorrect or inconsistent font selections Column sizing, spacing and alignment Margins Special characters Clumsy line and page breaks Page numbers Page headers and footers