The Writing Process

Estimated Time: 30 minutes

🗣 "Managing writing is largely a matter of managing time. Writing is a process, occurring over time, and like any process, it can be done efficiently or inefficiently. Unfortunately, most of us have a pretty inefficient writing process."

• Kenneth Davis

📺 Watch the following video on the writing process.

Note: This video uses slightly different terminology than what we will be using in this course. What is called "Invention" in the video is the same step as our "Planning" step. While what is called "Planning" in the video, is the same step as our "Structuring" step.

Exploring the Steps of the Writing Process

Similar to how communication can be broken down into steps, writing can also be decomposed into a sequence of actions. These actions allow a writer to efficiently navigate the journey from formulating an idea in their head to transmitting it effectively to an audience in written form. This writing process is made up of five main steps: 1) Planning, 2) Structuring, 3) Drafting, 4) Revising, and 5) Editing & Proofreading, shown in the image below.

1. Planning (Week 3)

   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 tailor your writing to them, 3) gather the information that you will need to support your purpose, and 4) identify the best channel to transmit your writing; all before you start creating the content of your message.

2. Structuring (Week 3)

   The goal of the structuring step is to determine how to organise your information to achieve your chosen purpose for your specific audience.

3. Drafting (Week 4)

   The goal of the drafting step is to create the first draft of your communication.

4. Revising (Week 5)

   The goal of the revising step is to evaluate your draft to see if it achieves your purpose. If not, you can revise the content until it does.

5. Editing & Proofreading (Week 5)

   The goal of the editing and proofreading steps is to correct any remaining errors and finalise your text.

Why Use a Process?

It is helpful to separate planning, structuring, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading into distinct steps. The alternative is an overwhelming writing method in which you are trying to remedy all writing issues simultaneously. For example, trying to draft text while thinking about the most coherent logical flow and paying attention to grammar and spelling errors. Unfortunately, this often leads to doing all the writing tasks poorly, or at the very least, inefficiently. Instead, when using this process, you can focus on the task at hand in each step.

The writing process pushes you to be intentional and focused in the way in which you write. For example, how often do you ask yourself what you want to achieve with a particular piece of writing before you start? The simple act of asking this question can significantly impact the effectiveness of your writing. Or, when you want to communicate something, how often do you stop to consider the best channel for your communication? Do you take time to think about who will be receiving the message and the impact that has on the message content? Starting with a planning step can help you consider these things first and avoid the communication barriers that result in miscommunications.

While planning before you start writing is excellent for setting your intention, sometimes even the best intentions do not go to plan. Therefore, having a distinct revision step allows you to review what you have written and compare it to your intention. You can ask yourself the question: Does what I have written achieve my purpose?

Finally, saving the proofreading step to the end is a great way to be more efficient. There is often no point in proofreading your text for perfect spelling and punctuation while writing because you might end up deleting whole sections of text that you have meticulously proofed. Therefore, view proofreading as the final polishing step that you use to remove any last distractions from your text. Modern technology also means that there are a variety of tools that you can use to help with this proofreading step, further freeing you to focus on the other more critical parts of the writing process.

You may have noticed that the Flowers Paradigm aligns well with this model of the writing process.

• During the planning step, you will wear your Madman hat for some actions.
• During the structuring step, you will wear your Architect hat.
• During the drafting step, you will wear your Madman and Carpenter hat.
• During the revising, editing, and proofreading steps, you will wear your Judge hat.

It is also helpful to think about the amount of time you should be spending in each of these phases. For example, if you have 1 hour to create and finalise a written text, you should ideally spend around 40% of the time in the Planning and Structuring stages, 20% of the time in the Drafting stage, and 40% of the time in the Revising, Editing, and Proofreading stage. However, as you personalise the writing process to suit your needs, you should adjust these distributions so that they make the most sense for you.

How to Use the Writing Process: The Law of the Next Action

It is great to have a process with a defined set of steps that you can follow, but you might ask, "how do you use the process?" To operationalise the writing process, you can think of the law of the next action. This means that instead of being overwhelmed by the text that you are trying to create or the step of the writing process that you are supposed to be in, you can instead ask yourself, "what is the next thing that I need to do to get myself closer to completing this piece of writing." The nine tasks are shown below, along with the central question that guides each task.

1. Determine your purpose (Planning)
   • Guiding question: What is my purpose for writing? What do I want to accomplish?
2. Analyse your audience (Planning)
   • Guiding question: Who will read my writing, and what implications does this have on achieving my purpose?
3. Gather your information (Planning)
   • Guiding question: What information and evidence do I need to include in my writing to achieve my purpose?
4. Select your channel (Planning)
   • Guiding question: What is the best channel for me to communicate my message to achieve my purpose?
5. Organise your message (Structuring)
   • Guiding question: How should I organise the content of my message to achieve my purpose?
6. Draft your text (Drafting)
   • No guiding question. Just write!
7. Revise your draft (Revising)
   • Guiding question: Does my message achieve my purpose? If not, what changes do I need to make so that it fulfils my purpose?
8. Edit your draft (Editing)
   • Guiding question: What changes do I need to make to improve my message? Are there any errors that should be corrected?
9. Polish your draft (Proofreading)
   • Guiding question: Are there any errors left in my message that I need to remove to achieve my purpose?

You will notice that the word purpose appears in almost every task! If you are writing to communicate with other people, you must know what you are trying to accomplish. Having a clear purpose, or having multiple purposes and knowing which ones are of highest priority, is critical because it shapes every other decision you will make during the writing process. It will also give you the criteria with which to measure your work. Good writing is writing that achieves its purpose.

Finally, while the diagram above may make it seem like writing is linear. There will be a lot of back and forth between steps, especially between the organising, drafting, and revising as you try to ensure that what you have written achieves your purpose. This is also apparent with the arrows in the original diagram of the 5-step writing process.

Over the following three lessons of this course, we will deep dive into each step of the writing process to explore the goal of each step, the tasks you should focus on, typical troubles that writers have, and tools at your disposal.

🗣 "Too often, we make major communications decisions without thinking them through at all. Or we just say or write whatever first comes to mind...There are always choices to be made. The most effective [communicators] will make them quickly, but also wisely."

• Francis J. Kelly and Heather Mayfield Kelly

References

Davis, Kenneth. (2010). The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Business Writing and Communication, Second Edition. McGraw Hill.

Flower, L. S. & Hayes, J. R. (1980): The Dynamics of Composing. Making Plans and Juggling Constraints. In: L.W. Gregg & E. R. Steinberg (Hrsg.): Cognitive Processes in Writing. Hillsdale. S. 31‐50.