ESSAY WRITING: AN ESSAY WRITING: AN OVERVIEW OF THE JOURNEYOVERVIEW OF THE JOURNEY

Presto Chango? I Don’t Think So!Even for the most experienced writers, the writing process is not instantaneous. Final essays are not the results of magic tricks.

-Writing is a creative process. Just like a good contractor approaches a building project with a plan, writers approach essays with a plan. Contractors do not make things up as they go along, and neither should writers.

Learn the Assignment Objective!

Learn the writing assignment in question. Are you writing a narrative? Are you comparing and contrasting two items? What is the assignment objective? What should your essay accomplish? Who will be your audience?

Brainstorm!

• Once you learn the assignment objective, don’t let a blank screen take control. Instead, take the blank screen by storm. Engage in the brainstorming process!

Let Your Mind Become a Whirlwind!

• Once you have a general topic and purpose selected, set your mind into a frenzy; write down everything that you can think of about your topic. Use mind-mapping clusters. Take scattered notes. Unleash random thoughts.

Brainstorming Can Leave Quite a Mess!Brainstorming will leave the writer with more ideas than he or she can reasonably use. The writer must narrow down the ideas into a single, focused topic.

Narrow Down That Subject!

• Suppose that you were brainstorming for an essay about Baseball. You may come up with the following topics:

• Steroid use

• The Hall of Fame

• Salary Caps

• How to Build a Winning Team

You won’t be able to write about all of those topics at once, so you’re going to have to think carefully. Given the purpose of the assignment, you will need to make a decision.

After much thought, you decide that you want to write about the Hall of Fame. Still, even this topic is still too broad.

You must then ask yourself the question, “In what sense will I discuss the hall of fame?”

Take Out That Funnel!

Funnel your topic into a smaller idea. You could write about:

Criteria that sports writers use when they vote.

Eligibility requirements.

Whether controversial players such be allowed into the Hall of

Fame.

Notable players who have made the Baseball Hall of Hame.

Decide on the subtopic, and think about your primary idea.

Suppose that you want to write about the criteria that sports writers use to vote for the Hall of Fame. How will you take this concept and come up with a focused idea?

When To Stay Home, and When to Venture into the

Library• You may have your own pool of common

knowledge when it comes to this topic. In other words, you may know that Baseball writers probably vote players in on the basis things like home run counts and batting averages.

• On the other hand, you may not know the finer details, and you may have other gaps in your knowledge. As such, you may want to visit the library and see what other writers have said on this subject.

With much determination, use your knowledge and research to come up with a focused thesis statement. This will be your main idea: Example Thesis: When voting for the baseball hall of fame, writers often consider the player’s individual stats and number of championships, as well as the overall character and integrity of the player.

Next, take that thesis and turn it

into a skeleton!

In other words, take your thesis and place it in outline form. This is where you will take your main idea and build the basic “skeleton” of your essay.

Outlines are not full paragraphs. They contain a well organized list of the most important points in your essay. In this case, the outline would be organized around the three points in your main idea. Here is a blank template for how an outline might look:

1) Player statistics A) Subdetails

1. Supporting evidence 2. Supporting Evidence

B) Subdetails 1. Supporting Evidence 2. Supporting Evidence

2) How many championships a player has won A) Subdetails

1. Supporting evidence 2. Supporting Evidence

B) Subdetails 1. Supporting Evidence 2. Supporting Evidence

(The same format would be used for your third point~)

Drafting!

Next, you will enter the drafting stage.

This is where you take the major points from your outline and develop them into focused paragraphs.

A general rule of thumb is that each paragraph should only cover one point. This means that a paragraph on player stats should avoid a discussion of the player’s integrity.

Once you’ve finished a first draft, be prepared. There are bound to be mistakes, as well as areas that need improvement. This is where you will engage in the final steps of the writing process….

Revision and Editing

• When you revise your draft, your focus will be on the content of the essay. You will ask questions such as: Is my thesis clear and focused? Do my paragraphs begin with concise, pointed topic sentences? Does the order in which my paragraphs appear make sense? Do I need to add more supporting details? Do I need to eliminate irrelevant information?

• When you edit your draft, the concerns will be much more technical. You will ask questions like: Am I using proper sentence structure? Are my sentences too wordy? Is my use of APA formatting correct? Am I citing my sources correctly by using in-text citations and a reference page?

Once you have finished editing, you will be ready to hand in your final draft. Though all writers approach the process a little differently, the fundamentals behind these steps must appear in some form or another.

Thank you for viewing this presentation. We will discuss this process in further detail as the course progresses!