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.
Arranging and Ordering
Unlike pyramid charts and cluster maps, which can show complex organizational relationships in a single glance, your writing itself is sequential. Readers don't encounter your ideas all at once but one after another.
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 ...Opening and Closing
Beginnings serve two important purposes. The first is to get you started writing. The second is to get your readers started reading. Early in your writing you're concerned more with the first purpose: getting off to a good start, maybe with enough push to carry you into the heart of the essay. Yet the beginning that gets you going won't always be best for getting readers involved. That's okay. You can take care of that later, after you've seen how the essay is taking shape.
Read more ...Trying Out Ideas
By now, your project should be well underway. You've got a subject that genuinely interests you, and you've found a focus to guide your explorations. Now you need to begin systematically probing and exploring.
Read more ...Stating your Proposition
Sensing your argument's overall scope and direction, you can consider stating your main point. As you do, however, remember that your writing process has barely begun. You don't yet need a final proposition statement for your finished paper, but one to point you forward and help focus your efforts.
Read more ...Subject to Thesis
Often your subject will be determined by your teacher, your employer, or the writing context itself. Other times you may be free to choose your own subject. Either way, the subject itself is only a starting point, which won't make or break your paper.
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