Writing strategies:
SOP for approaching writing problems

Even a five paragraph essay is mega misery for novice writers and for struggling writers unless someone teaches them strategies they can memorize and reuse. For students who lack reusable problem-solving strategies, each new assignment is a new nightmare.

What is strategic thinking?

Strategic thinking is systematically thinking through the steps of a process designed to accomplish a specific, clearly targeted goal. To make the process efficient, the thinker must:

• Understand the strategy.

• Memorize the strategy.

• Use the strategy repeatedly.

A strategy is useful only when it is standard operating procedure.

Engaging in strategic thinking is rather like having little macros you run in your head to automate routine thinking tasks.

The process I teach for creating a thesis statement is a strategy. The process of creating a writing skeleton™ is another. In all, I teach nine strategies for nonfiction writing.

Who needs strategies?

Research shows that students who struggle with writing usually do little or no planning.

Not all struggling writers struggle because of learning disabilities or limited intelligence. Some struggle because they are very bright, have oodles of ideas, but lack strategies for narrowing their ideas to one idea to write about.

For struggling writers, learning effective strategies for preparing to write can make the difference between failing and passing.

Even students who have good writing skills can profit from learning strategic thinking skills that speed up the writing process.