THREE MAIN POINTS OF BOOK WRITING:
1. FREE WRITING (5 TO 10’ a day)
2. take the reader point of view, REORGANIZE IN UNFOLDING SEQUENCES
3. EDITING (spelling, grammar, etc...)
STEPS IN WRITING A COMPOSITION
1- Analyze your purpose for writing, consider your probable readers, and select your subject accordingly.
2- Find the point you are interested in making about your subject by reasoning either from a general topic or from a group of particulars. Phrase your point as an arguable statement. Include an "although" clause that acknowledges another approach to your thesis.
3- Check whether your statement is worth proving and whether you have enough evidence to develop it persuasively. If so, write it down as the working statement of your thesis. (Remember that your working thesis is an organizational tool that need not appear in those words in your paper).
4- Analyze your thesis statement to determine exactly what you will need to demonstrate. Select from your thesis the key words and phrases that ill need to be supported, and compose an organizational plan based on these key ideas. Find that needed support (in your inventory of ideas or elsewhere), and in your written plan subordinate that support under the appropriate points.
5- Give further thought to the relationship you want to maintain with ;your reader in discussing this partic;ular subject and to the voice most appropriate for this essay to project. Begin to write your essay.
6- Decide upon a meaningful and/or appealing way to introduce your subject, and lead into a stetement of your thesis toward the end of the introduction.
7- Support your thesis in the body of the paper by composing paragraphs from the ideas outlined in your organizational plan. Each supporting or amplifying point should be stated clearly in a topic sentence at or near the head of a paragraph (or paragraph cluster). Be sure to demonstrate and/or develop each of these points concretely and specifically.
8- Read through what you have written. Reconsider and perhaps revise.
9- Draw you conclusion out from what you have already written. You ending should probably include restatement of your central point.
10- Edit your paper. Revise. Correct. Rewrite.
11- Proofread.
To find your thesis inductivlely, gather information on the subject and make an inventory of ideas. You can gather information by doing research of all kinds -by observing the world about you, by talking to people, by experimenting, by readin, or by summoning the information from your own memory. Form categories until you begin to see a pattern and the thesis begin to take shape.
Make you plan brief so that your mind can comprehend it as a whole. Restrict yourself to four to seven major headings (including the introduction and the conclusion). Restrict the subheadings as well: (5 or six).
Keep the plan (and thus the composition it will produce), unified and pointed toward its thesis.
Deal with the "although" clause first -that is, clear the opposing arguments out of the way so that by the conclusion your point of view indisputably prevails.
Your writing should sound like you.
Frequent use of "I think" or "I believe", introduces a hesitancy to your writing. The simple fact of your autorship identify the statement as your opinion.
Except in the most informal of essays -write "you" yhen you truly mean "you, my reader".
If you are like most of us, once you have written something on the page, almost anything at all, the blank-page jitters begin to subside.
To get started with writing your introduction, you might ask yourself such questions as these :
1- What idea or event got me interested in this topic to begiin with? Might it not also interest my readers?
2- What about my topic or my approach to my topic is relevant ot readers at this time? Does my topic relate in some way to a subject of particular interest right now? (For example, to the women’s movement? The election campaign? the coming of winter?)
3- What do I need to explain about my topic before my readers can understand my thesis?
4- Would expanding the "although"clause of me thesis make an interesting introduction?
Once you have decided upon the approach t;o your subject that might most intrigue your reader, compose your introduction so that it leads quickly from presentation of the ideas to statement of your thesis.
Appropriate supporting detail is the key to success. Sources for backup of this kind
that you may find most useful include:
. Facts
. Statistics
. Anecdotes
. Analogies and comparisons
. well-reasoned arguments
. Evidence of the five senses
. Quotations
The conclusion should carry the essay’s strongest, most persuasive phrasing of the writer’s point of view.
To discover new ideas you might use free writing. Just keep writing until a st time is up. When you are free wree writing, you must not stop to think, to rest your fingers, to relax your muscles: you must just keep writing. You should not look back at what you’e written, should not make corrections. If you cannot think what to say, just repeat the last phrase over and over until a new idea comes. When you have completed your free writing period, underline ideas that may be worth pursuing. Mark all graceful turns of phrase that you may want to incorporate when you actually rrite your essay. Use your annotated free writing as you would use an inventory of ideasc and think it through. Does a principle begin to form that seems to incorporate most of the ideas or to which most of them can be subordinated?
Often it is helpful to try another free-writing session as a follow-up to the fist. This time ;you begin by writingdown the idea ( or ideas) that seem to stand out in your first free writing and then let your mind wander fom there.
:You can use the Ws to expand your inventory of ideas.
Support for any subject could be discovered by considering that subject in terms of:
You can also use 3 to 5 minutes free writing to list answers to these questions or the W’s.1- Definition: What kind of thing is my subject? To what grouping or category does it belong? How is it distinguished form other members of that group?
2- Comparison: How is this subject similar to others in its group? How does it differ from them?
3- Causal relationships: What does the subject cause or bring about?
4- Authority: What do the experts have to say about my subject?
/ Synthesis, a compromise).
Good writers build tension between their main statement and their "although" clauses that will attract and maintain their readers’ interest. And an interesting paper almost always results from resolving such tension.
Because the accepted idea often bores while the paradowical notion almost invarisbly intrigues, you would probalbly choose one of these contradictions for your thesis or else find a similar contrast.
The more controversial the thesis, the more care, and usually space, you will need to devote to the although clause.
Root you points of controversy in the broadest base of agreement you can manage.
NOTE TAKING PROCEDURE
STEP 1: MAKING BIBLIOGRAPHY CARD
STEP 2: MAKING NOTE CARD
Summary heading
Author Page Number
Note: exact quotations, lists of facts or figures, or brief summaries of long passages.
Only one idea by card.
Me: comment (optional)
Store the cards by ideas for storage.