Start Writing
There is no single best way to begin a writing project. What's best is what gets you going and builds momentum for the journey ahead. You may want to start right in on a draft or do some pre-planning.
Often, simply Choosing a Subject can be a challenge. You could start Freewriting to locate your subject and generate ideas. Or you might prefer to first gather information from Outside Sources, or to brainstorm using The Journalists' Questions.
Whether you're writing an informal essay, a technical report, or the next great American novel, the suggestions in Discovering What to Write will help you get going.
Write Strong Sentences
Effective sentences are vital to your writing. They are fundamental carriers and shapers of meaning—the pulse of style. If you want to work on your sentences, try the following Paradigm sections: Basic Sentence Concepts, Expanding the Basic Pattern, Six Problem Areas, Designing Effective Sentences.
For help with punctuation, try Basic Punctuation.
Word Processing Outliners
As the user of a word processor, you have access to the program's Outline feature, which you may find useful. It's often found on the View or Tools menu. Once you become familiar with it, the outliner can help you establish and arrange complex organizational categories and subcategories.
Read more ...Six Problem Areas
The following guidelines are easier for some to follow than for others, but they can, with a little work, be learned by almost anyone. Once learned, they'll become part of your permanent knowledge base like the multiplication tables or your best friend's phone number. You won't have to learn them twice.
Read more ...Creating Emphasis
If writing is like making a movie, emphasis could be compared to a photographer's zoom lens, moving in for a close-up one moment and back for a wide-angle shot the next. Emphasis allows you to create similar special effects by magnifying, reducing, or even eliminating certain details. By controlling emphasis, you can focus your readers' attention on what is most important.
Read more ...Occasions for Informal Essays
A thoughtful letter to an old friend, a reflection on your education or ethnic heritage, a childhood reminiscence—these could all be informal essays. In writing, informality depends less on subject or structure than on the writing context. Informal essays assume a personal stance. They suggest close connections among writer, reader, and subject.
Read more ...A Learning Cycle
As you begin to identify key issues and problems for further exploration, you may wish to consider the learning cycle model below. It is based on the work of the French learning theorist, Jean Piaget.
Read more ...Occasions for Argumentative Essays
Argumentation is everywhere—in congress and courtrooms, in corporate board rooms, at garden club meetings, and in millions of essays, reports, theses, and dissertations written at colleges and universities throughout the world.
Read more ...Revising your Thesis
One major purpose of the thesis is to predict what will follow. It does this for both writer and reader. It provides the writer with purpose and direction throughout the composing process. For the reader it creates expectations about the form and content of what's to come, and the reader's satisfaction with the final essay will depend largely upon whether these expectations have been satisfied.
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