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WebTycho Effective Writing Center (EWC)
Chapter Links:
- Chapter 1: College Writing
- Chapter 2: The Writing Process
- Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies and Writing Patterns
- Chapter 4: The Research Process
- Chapter 5: Academic Integrity and Documentation
- Chapter 6: Using Library Resources
- Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing
- Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers
Appendix Links:
- Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing
- Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing
- Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan
- Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule
Other Links:
Online Guide to Writing and Research
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Chapter 2: The Writing Process
Prewriting
Where do ideas come from? For most writers, writing is recursive, even messy. Writers step into the writing process wherever they can get a foothold to begin. How students develop their own writing process usually depends on their learning styles, personalities, and work habits.
Although everyone begins with the assignment, each writer engages the writing process at a different place and gets to the finished product by a somewhat different means—depending on the assignment, purpose, audience, and what the writer already knows about the subject matter. If you are a manager in the banking industry taking the capstone course in business management, you may be able to start with a thesis and an outline. If you are a first-year student with little writing experience, you might start with the prewriting questions about audience, purpose, and topic.
Although successful writers follow different paths that enable them to think about their writing, create and frame ideas, and draft and revise their writing, there are enduring and natural ways of apprehending writing.
Writers have used many different techniques to generate ideas and get started. These techniques can even overcome barriers to writing, known as writer's block. Writers can use these techniques at any point in their writing, not just at the beginning. When a writer runs out of ideas after a writing project is underway, these techniques can help him or her to get moving again.
Among several widely used techniques for probing a topic and teasing out various ideas for writing, here’s the best short set of techniques to fit a variety of thinking styles.
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