Planning & Structuring Overview
Estimated Time: 5 minutes
🗣 “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
- Abraham Lincoln
Planning
Planning is the first step of the writing process. The goals of the planning step are to 1) clarify the purpose of your writing, 2) think about who your audience is and how you can adapt your writing to them, 3) gather the information that you will need to support your writing, and 4) identify the best channel to transmit your writing —all before you start creating the content of your message.
| Typical Tasks | Typical Problems |
|---|---|
| Determine the purpose of the writing | Unclear purpose, or too many competing purposes |
| Determine the audience of the writing and their interests and needs | Lack of audience awareness |
| Determine the topic of the writing | Selecting the wrong audience for the chosen purpose |
| Gather information that you might need to achieve your purpose | Not having the information needed to support your purpose |
| Select an appropriate communication channel | Selecting the wrong channel for communication |
| Drafting content without planning first |
Structuring
Structuring is the next step of the writing process. The goal is to determine how to organise your information to achieve your chosen purpose for your specific audience.
| Typical Tasks | Typical Problems |
|---|---|
| Select an appropriate organizing pattern that supports the purpose of your writing | Use of chronological order as opposed to a more appropriate logical order |
| Create an outline to guide the drafting process | Not creating an outline, and thus not being able to define the sections and flow of the text |
| Paragraphs lack coherence | |
| Key points do not stand out in the text |