Forget the writing process
Make a strategic choice

What people call "the writing process" is a grab bag of techniques and strategies for all writing genres.

Writers may have one set of procedures they use more often than others to present material, but good writers know more than one process.

Picking a process to use should be a strategic decision. Writers should select a writing process that suits the project they have in mind, very much the way knitters select knitting needles for a project they have in mind.

Rather than bore or confuse students with theory, good teachers immerse them in learning a set of strategies suited to one specific writing genre until they can produce competent writing in that genre.

If you've been at this site before, you know I teach students to write using the thesis-and-support or persuasive essay format. The writing process I teach is one I specifically designed to fit situations that call for writing a persuasive essay.

Writing process components

All the procedures that are collectively called a writing process have five components:

• Finding some topic to write about.

• Deciding what to say about that topic.

• Deciding how to organize the information.

• Developing the central idea.

• Presenting the idea in accordance with appropriate writing conventions.

The effort and time required to complete any of the stages varies with the type of writing required.

A typical nonfiction writing prompt . . .

• Includes a topic.

• States or hints what the assigner expects the writer to say on that topic.

• Indicates the organizational pattern to be followed.

In such cases, writers move quickly to developing their central ideas.

By contrast, the directions for an imaginative piece, like a short story or poem, will be far more open-ended. So writers of imaginative pieces take more time on the first three components of the writing process.

Organizational schemes

A big part of any writing process is organizing information so the finished product includes the necessary information in a sensible arrangment.

There are six logical schemes for organizing material. Some of these ways of organizing information are more useful than others, but all have value.

• Alphabetical arrangement

• Numerical order

• Spatial order

• Chronological order

• Inverted pyramid

• Thesis-and-support (also called essay format or persuasive pattern).

Good writers learn to use all of these schemes either to help them think through material or to present their material.

Writing terms students need

Even though writing instruction is mostly about doing rather than about knowing, there are certain terms people use to discuss writing that students have to learn to use by the end of high school.

Rather than give a complete list, I will mention just those that you are likely to use in distinguishing the kind of writing students must do from the much wider range of material they must read in their English classes.

• Nonfiction

• Fiction

• Expository writing

• Persusive writing

• Creative writing

• Imaginative writing

• Genre

• Narrative writing

Some of the terms have more than one meaning, which makes them confusing unless you use them in the context of teaching students to read various kinds of writing.

In the final analysis, it is more important for students to know how to use the writing process appropriate to the writing they must do regularly than to about the hodgepodge English texts like to call "the" writing process.