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Prewriting of nonfiction should be a strategic planning process.
Writing a thesis and support essay involves learning and using
a series of what educators call critical thinking strategies.
Each strategy is directed toward achievement of a clearly defined
objective.
I teach students nine expository writing strategies. All nine
are listed below. Of the nine, seven clearly belong to the prewriting
(or precomposition) stages.
When I teach, I also embed the eighth and ninth strategies in
the planning process. Although they are not, strictly speaking,
part of planning, it is useful for students to see when those
activities are most appropriate.
1. Creating a working thesis statement
from a topic
The thesis statement
has its own thread because developing and using the thesis
is the foundation of all expository nonfiction writing.
2. Developing a sentence outline
from a thesis statement (writing skeleton™)
I refer to the strategy for developing a sentence outline from
a working thesis statement by my trademarked term writing
skeleton™.
Pages about development and use of the writing skeleton™
on this thread are:
Some pages about specific uses of the writing skeleton are found
on other threads on this website. Wherever you encounter them,
the pages will be identified by a photograph of a skeleton.
3. Assessing the potential sources
of evidence for thesis development (ripple strategy)
I use the term ripple strategy for my strategic
planning process for systematically examining ideas that come
from sources increasingly distant from the writer. The evidence
unearthed in the process becomes the meat of the body paragraphs.
Pages that discuss ripple strategy are:
Each of the pages that discuss ripple strategy on this or any
other thread can be identified by a photograph of ripples.
Steps 1 through 4 are incorporated in Talk
It Out, a duplication master and teacher materials to
support students' collaborative preparation of essays built on
the thesis and support pattern. Read user
reviews.
4. Researching based on thesis
statement keywords
Using keywords from the working thesis statement as search terms
results in a much smaller pool of information to sort through
than does searching by the topic alone. For discussion of this
topic, see keyword
search strategy.
5. Expanding a writing skeleton™
into a full working outline (comprehensive plan)
I use an outline template that lets students expand their writing
skeleton™ into a comprehensive plan for that keeps all the
information they will need for composing their papers in one place.
Pages about the outline template and comprehensive plan are:
6. Recording evidence in summary
form
Summarizing, an essential skill for writers, is discussed on
the reading and
writing thread.
7. Recording citations
Writers need to record enough information about their sources
so that they have the essential data described in the evidence
waltz strategy (see #8 below) at hand when they sit down
to compose.
In addition, writers need to be taught how to use a style guide
to determine what additional data they should record for use in
a bibliography, if the paper requires one.
8. Presenting support material
(evidence waltz strategy)
The evidence
waltz is a simple three-step strategy for presenting evidence
in the composition stage of writing. The strategy is used in everyday
conversation as well as academic writing.
The easiest way for students to learn the evidence waltz is for
you to teach it as part of the strategic planning process. That
way they will have the material at hand when they need to use
it.
9. Editing for a single error
at a time (one-thing-at-a-time strategy)
One-thing-at-a-time editing strategy is a post-writing
process that for strategic teaching reasons I have students apply
at the end of every stage of the writing process.
The cumulative effect of editing at the end of each stage of
the strategic planning process is that when students get to the
composition stage, they already have a significant number of sentences
written and edited that they can use in their compositions.
Editing is discussed on the
writing process thread on this site.
