A Short Summery on the Process of Writing an Essay
The writing process looks different for everyone, but there are five basic steps that
will help you structure your time when writing any kind of text.
Step 1: Prewriting
Before you start writing, you need to decide exactly what you’ll write about and do
the necessary research.
Coming up with a topic
If you have to come up with your own topic for an assignment, think of what you’ve
covered in class—is there a particular area that intrigued, interested, or even confused
you? Topics that left you with additional questions are perfect, as these are questions
you can explore in your writing.
The scope of your topics depends on what type of text you’re writing—for example,
an essay, a research paper or a dissertation. Don’t pick anything too ambitious to
cover within the word count, or too limited for you to find much to say.
Narrow down your idea to a specific argument or question. For example, an
appropriate topic for an essay might be narrowed down like this:
Step 2: Planning and outlining
Especially in academic writing, it’s important to use a logical structure to convey
information effectively. It’s far better to plan this out in advance than to try to work
out your structure once you’ve already begun writing.
Creating an essay outline is a useful way to plan out your structure before you start
writing. This should help you work out the main ideas you want to focus on and how
you’ll organize them. The outline doesn’t have to be final—it’s okay if your structure
changes throughout the writing process.
An outline for a literary analysis essay might look something like this:
Step 3: Writing a first draft
Once you have a clear idea of your structure, it’s time to produce a full first draft.
This process can be quite non-linear. For example, it’s reasonable to begin writing
with the main body of the text, saving the introduction for later once you have a
clearer idea of the text you’re introducing.
To give structure to your writing, use your outline as a framework. Make sure that
each paragraph has a clear central focus that relates to your overall argument.
Hover over the parts of the example, from a literary analysis essay on Mansfield Park,
to see how a paragraph is constructed.
The goal at this stage is to get a draft completed, not to make everything perfect as
you go along. Once you have a full draft in front of you, you’ll have a clearer idea of
where improvement is needed.
Step 4: Redrafting and revising
Now it’s time to look critically at your first draft and find potential areas for
improvement. Redrafting means substantially adding or removing content, while
revising involves making changes to structure and reformulating arguments.
Evaluating the first draft
It can be difficult to look objectively at your own writing. Your perspective might be
positively or negatively biased—especially if you try to assess your work shortly after
finishing it.
Redrafting and revising
Once you’ve decided where changes are needed, make the big changes first, as these
are likely to have knock-on effects on the rest. Depending on what your text needs,
this step might involve:
Making changes to your overall argument.
Reordering the text.
Cutting parts of the text.
Adding new text.
Step 5: Editing and proofreading
Editing focuses on local concerns like clarity and sentence
structure. Proofreading involves reading the text closely to remove typos and ensure
stylistic consistency.
Editing for grammar and clarity
When editing, you want to ensure your text is clear, concise, and grammatically
correct. You’re looking out for:
Grammatical errors.
Ambiguous phrasings.
Redundancy and repetition.
In your initial draft, it’s common to end up with a lot of sentences that are poorly
formulated. Look critically at where your meaning could be conveyed in a more
effective way or in fewer words, and watch out for common sentence structure
mistakes like run-on sentences and sentence fragments.
