Planning and Drafting
Chapter Seven
Andrew Hebert
Heidi Knott
This chapter explains experienced writers how to go through the exploring process, the planning process, and the drafting process. Experienced writers tend to investigate their subject, plan their approach, and organize their information. Three things they want to verify about their information is that it is accessible, comprehensible, and usable. Professionals go through a series of steps during their process: inventing and exploring, planning and organizing, drafting and designing, revising, and finally editing.
Differences Between Writing Processes
The writing process use to be described as a linear process of prewriting, drafting, and revising. Today it is known that it does not work that way. Instead, as people write it is very common that they will change their minds and change parts of their document often. Their is a list of important questions you need to ask before you plan a document. Figure 7.1, page 229, is a chart of questions that is worth looking at. This section also gave a list of some of the habits, concerns and working procedures that are used by experienced writers. It involves four stages made up of; inventing and exploring, planning and organizing, drafting/designing, and revising and editing.
Inventing and Exploring
During the inventing and exploring process there are problems that will arise. Experienced and skilled writers use the problem-solving process to help them get through it. The problem-solving process has eight steps. 1) Identify the context and the problem. 2) Gather and evaluate information to set your priorities. 3) Create different possible solutions. 4) Think of other experiences you have had with this problem so you have an idea of the success of it. 5) Asses all of the other options and select your plan of action. 6) Get started on the most appropriate solution. 7) Monitor the performance against the outcome. 8) Evaluate everything to determine the success of the final product.
Four commonly used strategies for problem solving:
Brainstorming- throwing out many suggestions, without judgment.
5 Ws + H- ask yourself; who, what, when, where, why, and how.
Cause and effect analysis- focuses on the cause of problems.
Synectics- meaning to bring together diversity. Used to stimulate creative thinking.
Planning and Organizing
Types of Expert Planning
- Schema-driven planning- This type of planning is based on the knowledge that you already have. When you use this kind of planning you can usually finish projects relatively quickly. When writers’ use this style of planning they can usually finish their project without much thought or work.
- Knowledge-driven planning- People may not have an idea about the format of the paper, however, they do have a large amount of knowledge about the topic they are writing about. For this planning style to work all of the information written about the topic needs to be very well organized and appropriate.
- Constructive planning- This type is sometimes considered the most difficult type of planning because you don’t have a great deal of knowledge on the subject or have much knowledge on how to format the project. Many types of research needs to be done to determine the purpose, audience, task, and constraints.
Assessing the Logic
-Using Data from Authorities- This is very important because many people take information a lot more seriously from a figure with higher authority, if this person’s data is flawed it could seriously affect your project.
-Presenting Facts without Drawing Inferences- When you present information that can be verified as facts.
-Drawing Inferences- These can be made when enough evidence is gathered, however it is important that there is enough evidence
-Establishing Causal relationships
Drafting
Drafting is defined as writing the text and preparing the visuals. An important part of drafting is trying many different approaches to find out which way works the best. Their are six important things you need to keep in mind when drafting:
- Selecting Persons- One of the first things you need to do in the drafting process is to decide if you want it to be in first, second, or third person. This depends on the purpose and the audience of the document.
- Verb Mood- Another thing that is very important to establish is the verb mood. The verb mood conveys the author’s opinion on a statement.
- Active or Passive Voice- It is also important to decide on active or passive voice. Active voice emphasizes the doer of the action and de-emphasizes the receiver. Passive voice occurs when the receiver is more important than the doer.
- Plain Language- After you decide on the person, verb mood, and active or passive voice, you need to work on plain language. Plain language communicates information in a way that it makes sense to most people.
- Density- This section also talks about the density of your document. By avoiding density you make your information comprehensible and usable. You can do this by using smaller sentences, add examples and illustrations, add transitions within paragraphs, use headings and subheadings.
- Given-New Analysis- If the writer believes that the audience has prior knowledge on a topic they tend to leave out important background information, even though the audience may not have any prior knowledge.
Individual and Collaborative Assignments
Individual and Collaborative Assignments
- Track your Writing Process- If you would like to learn about your writing process you can do several things. Tape-record the planning of the writing and when it is finished listen to the tape to figure out patterns you can place in your log.
- Analyze your writing process- After collecting the information from the tracking part and write a 1-2 page discussion paper on just one aspect and reread your log looking for that aspect.
- Create a rubric- Analyze the document that was created and assess your skills and figure out where you have made improvements.
- Interview a professional- Interview a professional technical writer and ask for tips on how to approach a planning and drafting situation. An important thing to do when talking to a professional is to ask as many questions as possible. When the answers are all gathered, organize that information and post it so the rest of the class can see.
- Look at the process of translation- It is possible that the some people in the audience may not be able to speak English. A great way to translate a technical writing assignment would be to have a native speaker read the document to check for errors.
- Determine the appropriate voice- You should work in a small group to decide to use an active or passive voice.
22 comments:
I think its very important to complete rough drafts before the final paper. I think the biggest part of the chapter is learning how to come up with a rough draft. I usually use the outline type of format to break down the ideas i come up with through brainstorming. The other important issue mentioned is to determine the mood or structure of your information. I'm not the most creative person, but I try to make my papers specific and clear.
This chapter came in very handy for me because I'm an English major. I write a lot of papers and will continue to write many papers as I develop my education so it was important for me to read about drafting and how to organize and make my information accessible to everyone.
Again, with any major, these are essential skills for anyone who plans on writing. The planning and drafting process really does help you out before you begin writing. I used to just sit down and write the whole assignment in one sitting, print it out, and turn it in. I didn’t take the time to plan, draft, and revise as this chapter suggests. I did alright on the assignments, but as they got harder and longer, I realized that I had to change my habits. When I started to do this, I was more efficient and it actually saves a lot of time.
The writing process is a huge deal when we get into more complex papers, and or assignments. Like a few people already said, most of us used to just sit down and finish the paper in one sitting and it would turn out alright. But now when our assignments are more difficult, it takes a lot more planning and drafting along with revising the finished product to make it a "good" product.
I honestly think that rough drafts are a good idea but I also think that they are the hardest part of a paper. I guess it is just getting the ideas down on paper and thinking each idea out. And then it’s what idea would make the best paper. Most people can do this without even noticing it. For me, I think it is a little different, if I don’t write a rough draft I will end up changing my paper 20 times before I think about revising it again.
I thought this chapter gave a summary of my high school english classes. Week after week we went through the process of brainstorming, research, rough drafts, revising,and final drafts. I had never thought of recording the process of the drafts. Apparently it would be benifitial in changing things for the final draft. I find it a very good idea to have several rough drafts not only does the paper benifit, but the reader does too. The verb mood is also something to write correctly in many different forms of papers.
This chapter was particularly interesting for me as an English major. I find that lately, I am not drafting my papers first as I should be. These skills are important to learn from a writer's standpoint, and these pertain to every document. However, this process is time consuming, so I could see using it more in the professional world as opposed to student writing, since I am very busy.
Chapter 7 is very helpful when planning to write a paper. It gives information to help plan to write a paper. I thought the problem solving process was helpful with the eight step process and I do use rough drafts while writing because then I tend to keep on track and have the right information in the paper. I think the information about Assessing the Logic is helpful to realize that information from authorities is helpful and more accurate.
I think this chapter can help anyone in any major. The writing process is a difficult and complex one. The hardest part is getting your ideas on paper and sorting them. I remember back about six years ago, I never outline or draft a paper. Now, I think the most important thing in the writing process is brainstorming. Back then, it was pretty hard for me to get my ideas on paper. I could go on for hours with nothing typed on the screen. I would just sit there thinking about what to write and never wrote any of my ideas down. Now, I'll just brainstorm all my ideas and then outline the paper. My high school English class reflects this chapter very much.
I always try to come up with a rough draft before diving into the finished product. I never really had a method, I simply wrote the paper and revised it a few days later. There are a lot of great strategies listed in this chapter that will help make my final drafts much easier to comprehend for my readers. I also found the information on drafting interesting. Keeping presentations, text and visuals, etc. consistent will be a key factor in how professional a person will appear as they introduce their information. There are many dimensions to this that I had not thought of before. I always thought it to be more of an automatic thing for me, but I now will remember to keep person, verb mood, language, etc. in the back of my mind as I am creating my technical documents.
It is very important to write a rough draft before a final because right now i am in a writing intensive class and we write a rough draft a week before the final is due so we can have other people proofread and help revise and improve our papers. When I first start to write my rough drafts I don't really write anything down first I usually just write off the top of my head and revise and improve later. It might not be the best way but it works for me.
Chapter 7 explains pretty much everything that people should do to make a document correct and make if flow. Many assignments that I've done in the past and having to write an essay for didn't really incorperate more than two drafts. A rough draft and a final draft. That was about it. This chapter made me realize that I should put more time and effert into getting other peoples input on papers and things that I write. College papers need to be more professional then high school level papers and I really haven't had to write any lengthy or important papers since I've been going to college. So this chapter has opened my eyes a little wider.
I used to alway just start writing papers and essays. It was totally the wrong way to do it. I then went to, what I use now, the think first then semi-organize the information into section. Sometimes I will use an outline to help me through the information I gather, but sometimes it causes me more trouble than good. I will be the first to admit that the way I use is not perfect, but as the chapter says you need to have some sort of method to your madness of writing a paper. There method would be a much method than mine.
This chapter brought me back to my composition class were I learned so much about how to make a well written papers. In my opinion and with the experience I have with writing papers, the hardest part of producing a paper is to plot well written ideas to paper, and this can be caused because I didn't have enough research information to back up my ideas. The most important if not one of the most is to revise your paper before you turn it in , proofreading can make a difference in your paper because the person who does it is more likely to find mistakes and comment on your paper and eventually you would corrected and end up with a better paper.
I work for two different newspapers and I can tell you that planning, drafting, revising and editing your story is what the editors what you to do, and if you don't follow the process, it shows when you open to your story in the paper and you notice errors. Follow the planning and drafting process.
Rough drafts and outlines before a final paper have always been taught to me in almost every grade I was in. As I am getting further into my Mass Communications major I am seeing that these are great skills to have and also to keep practicing them and make them better for the future. It is useful to be organized and edit your rough draft well but it is also good to have your draft written for your specific audience. The summary was clear on how to make your papers for the correct audience and how to be specific and to the point.
In my college career I have run into the same issue as this chapter describes about being able to complete rough drafts and then being able to add to them without disrupting the paper. The problem that I tend to run into is the problem of what I am adding to the original document doesn't flow well with the rest of it. This is something that all of us should do to keep our documents easy to read along with being good well written papers.
This chapter did a great job in that it explained how important it is to write a rough draft. This goes along with anything. It is just not writing a paper. I think it is just trying to teach us that we need to plan things in life and just not jump in to it and hope to do well. If we have important meetings at work in the future we need to plan them and ask you different questions and comments that you might have to respond to. We need to be ready to answer these things. Also, there are many proposals and bids I will have to perform in the construction field. I think it is important to do a rough draft, look it over yourself, and then send it to your consultant to have them look it over. This could be the difference from having a job or not.
I think planning and drafting is a very useful tool in the world of writing papers. Learning how to come up with ideas and know which ones to use and how to use it to adhere to the right group of people. I think knowing how to come up with a scheme and knowledge of the papers I will be writing especially in research will help me and the people reading them.
I liked that the chapter broke down the steps to actually writing the paper. A lot of times I forget the proper format to starting a paper and just dive in so it's nice to have a reminder every now and then.I also really liked the explanation of the types of planning. This chapter really opened my eyes to the editing process.
This chapter was really good in explaining and giving details in what we've been doing ever since we've been in school. Whenever a paper was due, there was reaserch that took place, then came the writing process. Making a rough draft before the paper that you decide to turn in and all the little details. You need to plan things out before you go throwing them in because when you do that, its possible that your point will be lost.
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