1. You choose a topic: you are only limited by your imagination and your course of study. If you are in our Culinary program, then you probably are not going to write about gun control in a Food Prep 101 class, unless you can tie it to the restaurant industry.

You may have to narrow your focus:

• subject--general area of investigation or thought, slavery
• topic--one narrow aspect of slavery, privileges of slave mistresses' children

Generate ideas for your topic:

• brainstorm/freewrite or
• make lists or research; caution-make sure your researched ideas do not end up in your paper, unless you have cited and documented.

2. Instructor chooses a topic: you are limited by the instructor and your course of study. English teachers will choose stories and poems. Music teachers will choose periods and musicians. Biology teacher will choose topics about cells, marine life, etc.

The purpose for writing can sometimes be communicated with the topic that is chosen for you. If you choose the topic, then you need to determine why you are writing about this particular subject matter.

Purposes:

• to inform--you tell all you know about a subject. You may be asked to explain, discuss, name, talk about causes/effects, compare/contrast. This is also known as expository writing.
• to persuade--you want to convince someone of a position. You may be asked to argue for a program or against a proposal. You will certainly explain the program or proposal in your argument, so the purposes will overlap.
• to express--you respond to a work in a critique or tell about your feelings or ideas in narratives.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) lists only two Purposes

Audience means the people you intend to read your paper. Many students narrowly think that they are writing for the instructor. You should imagine readers for your paper.

1. General audience: readers from diverse backgrounds with diverse points of view, such as newspaper readers.
2. Specific audience: readers specializing in an area, such as doctors reading the Journal of American Medical Association.

For supplemental reading, see LBH Chap. 1 "Assessing the Writing Situation" pp. 2-16.

Definition: the thesis statement is a statement of opinion that presents the main idea of the paper. It is what the paper will prove or illustrate.

The three-point thesis statement contains the thesis plus the three main points that will develop the thesis.

Thesis: Some of the difficulties of finding a job in Memphis are competition for positions, location of jobs, and applicants' lack of experience. In this example, the thesis is the difficulties of finding a job in Memphis. The three main points are competition, location, and lack of experience.

You can read further about the thesis in your Little, Brown Handbook, pages 26-29 or Creating a Thesis Statement

We use formal outlines as organizing tools. They are road maps for your essay. And as with any journey, writers, like drivers, are free to detour or change directions.

Support

• LBH, "A Formal Outline," pages 36-37
• Handout, Outline Examples

Structure

• Use simple sentence outline, rather than topic or phrase outlines. Sentence: The princess storylines make women dependent. Not a sentence: Making women dependent.
• Thesis statement: the main idea of the essay in one sentence, which may preview the main points.
• Main points are designated by a roman numeral, I, II, III, IV (made with capital I and V)
• Sub points are designated with capital letters, A, B, C, etc.
• Details and examples are designated with 1, 2, 3, etc.
• Introductions and conclusions are not part of the outline
• if you sub-divide, you must sub-divide at least twice. So you cannot have I without II, A without B, or 1 without 2.

Example of Structure

Thesis statement:

1. Main point
   1. Sub point
      1. detail/example
      2. detail/example
   2. Sub point
      1. detail/example
      2. detail/example
         
         
2. Main point, etc.

Few writers can pull ideas from their heads to paper to submission. If you are like most writers, you will have multiple drafts of a paper. This process is made easier with word processing.

Rough draft--definition: this is the paper that you are working on, adding ideas to, deleting ideas from, and rearranging ideas within. Sometimes students submit a rough draft for review either by peers or the instructor.

Final draft--definition: after revising, editing, and proofreading, students submit the polished paper, not done perhaps, but due. It is to be graded by the instructor.

 

When you revise a document, you look at the big picture: assignment requirements, organization, development, and style. Sometimes your instructor will provide a handout to guide you; sometimes not.

Assignment--it is a good idea to keep the assignment requirements handout nearby as you draft to make sure that you are meeting the minimum requirements of topic, pattern of development, and word count.

Organization:

• essays have an organizational pattern of intro, body, and conclusion. Make sure all parts are present.
• ideas should be in a logical order: first to last, most important to least or vice versa.
• the order that you present main points in your thesis is the same order that you present them in your essay.

Development:

• each paragraph should have a topic sentence that develops one main point of thesis statement.
• you should have enough supporting sentences or details to prove your point.
• check for coherence: logical order, transitional expressions, relevant details/examples.

Style:

• you should not write like you talk, but your writing voice is like a fingerprint: it is different from mine or sources on the Internet. While your writing voice is more formal and correct than your speaking voice, it should reflect your personality.
• do not clutter your sentences with empty phrases: I think, I believe. It is your paper; it has your name on it; we know that you think and believe whatever you have written, unless you attribute the words/ideas to someone else.

Editing is done on the sentence level. Sometimes students confuse revision with editing. However, once you are done with revising, looking at the big picture, then you edit for correctness. Some students want to start with this part of the process  when they are told to revise, but why waste time editing a sentence that you will remove in the revision process?

• edit for sentence variety. You want a mixture of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. All simple sentences makes you sound like an elementary-school writer and all compound-complex tires the reader.
• edit for sentence clarity. If the sentence does not make sense to you, it won't make sense to your readers.
• edit for grammar and word usage. If you have a comma splice problem, then you certainly want to pay particular attention to your punctuation. If you confuse they're and their, then you look for instances of those words in your paper.
• See Grammar and Usage Errors in Writing Center Module.

This is the last step in the writing process, but not the least. Some people read aloud for this step; some read silently. Whatever you prefer, do not skip this step.

• Read the very last sentence of the essay for correctness.
• Read the next sentence up, and the next, until you get to the very first sentence of the essay.
• Reading this way will take the essay out of context and force you to see what is there, errors and omissions, rather than what is supposed to be there.