This book Writing Under Pressure: The Quick Writing Process by Sanford Kaye is very useful. The author knows his stuff and has been teaching writing at a high level for many years. Here is some quick overview notes on the process which I plan to expand as I learn more. The approach is like documentary editing where you produce more in the raw draft and then cut back.
Audience/reader
quoted from p. 12
How much does the reader know?
How much has the writer learned?
How much does the writer want to learn?
How much does the writer want to tell?
Project commitment (time, energy, importance, ideas)
Devise a concise timetable to meet the deadline putting a duration on each step of the process with the aim to have a balanced final result (i.e strong introduction, body and conclusion)
Sketch out overall structure
Provisional thesis (developed from because clause i.e Something is an issue because…)
Free write quickly to the because clause (provisional thesis) – a number of responses as key points. This should be done freely without pressure in terms of what is produced with the idea to produce a lot more than what will be used. This stage is about seeing if there is an argument, an essay and how that essay will take shape.
Look over the points and select the most important, the strongest points that support the argument
Arrange these points into a beginning, middle and end (the opposing argument to the thesis is handled early in the introduction section
Develop the opposing point-of-view ‘although-clause’ p.35
Develop an Argument-Outline. Flesh out and test all of these strong points as much as possible (question each point/argument to expand each one i.e. Why? How? etc) The idea is to clarify the overall argument by exploring these points rather than focusing (cutting back) at this stage. This stage is used to see what will go in and what needs to be added.
BEGINNING – introduction with overview of proceeding points to be discussed
MIDDLE - key points of the thesis being explored progressing to the strongest point, the opposing point is placed at the beginning of this section.
END – the conclusion of the thesis being examined (i.e summary, critique, other options, broader context and implications)
Develop the introduction into a tighter concise draft
Raw draft – the idea again is to have more material than is needed as editing is the key here. The process of picking out the best marterial that conveys the argument and loosing material that gets in the way. Notes could be made using something like comments in Word covering all the changes to be made.
Feedback if possible at this stage – the overall approach
First final draft – i.e transitions, revised introduction/conclusion, fill in gaps from making cuts in rough draft, respond to edit notes, examples and metaphors etc…
Proofreading
