11 The Writing Process
The best writing doesn’t happen all at once. Instead, it is a process that might take a long time!
That’s right–almost every writer can tell you that, for every word they publish, they have written at least five words that they did not publish. This is because it takes time to make good writing! Simply sitting down and writing something at the last minute will not give you good results.
We use the writing process because it makes your writing better!
What Is the Writing Process?
The writing process is a series of steps that will help you think of good ideas for your writing, organize those ideas well, and look at your work many times to make sure that it is as good as it can be. There are five main steps in this process:
- Brainstorming: In this step, you spend some time thinking of the best topic for your writing. You start with a very general idea, and then you begin to focus on something more specific.
- Outlining: Here, you will start to think of everything you want to say about your chosen topic. You will write down some of your main ideas and decide how you want to organize them. You will also start thinking about how you want to begin and end your writing.
- Drafting: This is the step that usually takes the longest. In this step, you actually write the sentences and paragraphs. These should be based on the outline that you created, but you might realize that some things still need to be moved around or changed. That’s okay!
- Revising: The word revising means “to look again” (“re” means again, and “vise” means look, like the word vision). This means that at this step, you read over what you wrote–sometimes many times–and think about what works well and what doesn’t. This can be a very hard step! It’s good to ask other people for feedback and advice at this stage.
- Proofreading: Proofreading is the final step, but it is very important! This is when you make sure that your grammar, spelling, and page formatting is correct. This is also when you pay close attention to the vocabulary you are using. Are all the words saying what you want them to say? Are there places where you can change them to make your work stronger?
