The Writing Process

Most importantly, find a method that works best for your learning style. Here are some suggests for different stages of writing:

1. Pre-Writing: Discover valuable ideas by opening your mind to ALL ideas. Ask thought-provoking questions about your topic.
2. Thesis Statement: As the main idea of your entire essay, this statement should be truthful and persuasive.
3. Organization / Outline: Arrange your stages and details into the beginning, middle, and end of the paper.
4. Rough Draft: Focus on content, organization, and style. As you write, ask yourself, "who is my audience, and how should I write for them?"
5. Revising: Fix Logical mistakes, missing steps, clumsy transitions, confusing organization before fixing grammar and formatting. Use this guide.
6. Proofreading: Using a list of your common mistakes, read the paper BACKWARDS one sentence at a time and LOOK FOR ONE ERROR AT A TIME. Then read the paper OUT LOUD while following the text with your pen. Use this guide.
7. MLA Formatting: Now make your essay PERFECT. Make sure the essay is formatted correctly and meets the MLA style requirements.

All of the steps are important, but you do not HAVE to do them in this order. In fact, you might go back to certain steps several times. You can write your rough draft and then reverse outline, for instance. Or what if you have writer's block? Most important is making sure that you include all the parts of an essay in your final draft.