How to Begin a Writing Assignment
Prewriting: How to Research and Organize
Writing is a process. The formula good writers follow consists of prewriting, writing, and rewriting, or revising and editing. This allows their work to emerge in a series of small manageable steps.
Your main purpose in writing is to inform, persuade, or entertain. Defining your purpose or goal is the first step. Select a topic that is narrow enough to be explained within your page limitations. A thesis, unlike a topic, is a single statement that makes an assertion about a topic. It is usually placed somewhere in the introduction of an essay. Often, a thesis sentence will give the reader a clear overview of the essay by stating the main ideas. Generally, if you choose a topic that is interesting to you, then your reader will find it interesting too.
Although it is a process, writing doesn't progress as neatly from one step to the next as does, for example, baking a cake or changing a tire. Roughly speaking, when you write you
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Decide on a topic (or have a topic assigned to you)
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Explore ideas about the topic through thinking, reading, listening, and so on
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Formulate a thesis or main idea and decide what points you want to make to support it
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Select details and examples (from reading, research, personal experience)
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Decide on the order in which you'll present your ideas and examples
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Write a first draft; edit and revise for content, style, and writing mechanics; write a final draft
At any time during this process, you may need to stop and go back several steps. For example, when you're selecting details and examples, you may realize your topic is too broad or your thesis statement weak. Or when you're organizing your points, you may see that the thesis you thought you were developing isn't the one that you are developing. Often the act of writing itself generates new ideas you may want to pursue. Even as late as your final draft you may decide that the organization isn't working, or you may spot a flaw in your argument that causes you to throw out much of what you've written and rework the rest. The most realistic way to view writing is not as a straight line but as a back-and-forward movement. Take that into account when deciding how long you'll need to finish a writing assignment.
