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Effective Writing Center (EWC)

Online Guide to Writing and Research

Chapter 2 Table of Contents


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Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Prewriting

The purpose of prewriting is to generate an abundance of raw material and notes that will give you some strategies for writing your first draft. For most students, starting a draft too soon, without the results of the prewriting phase, leads to poorly constructed writing, often with weak generalities. Papers tend to reflect superficial treatment of the assignment. Prewriting is not an isolated event, but the way to look ahead to drafting and revising, enabling a piece of writing to grow.

Prewriting is a systematic thinking process that helps you probe what you will write. Prewriting techniques help you determine what rhetorical approach to take and how to plan for implementing it. Prewriting planning enables you to explore a topic from different perspectives, engage your imagination and creativity, discover original ideas, and perceive not-so-obvious relationships between and among ideas.

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