The Writing Process and the Traits Good Writers Use

The writing process and the traits of good writers go hand in hand. During your brainstorming session you will come up with a plethora of ideas. Once you have some ideas you will need to hone your idea to make is specific.

Of course you will need to write your ideas down. Getting your ideas, thoughts, and/or opinions written onto paper is the most important step. The rest is easy if you have words to work with.

Once you have written your ideas down, it’s important to revise them. Most authors make hundreds of revisions before they publish. You should not feel frustrated if you revise several times. This is the longest stage. You need to spend a lot of time on this step to make sure you’ve written what you really want to “say.”

During the revision process it’s important that you revise using specific tools. This is how the traits of oganization, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency can help us. Rather than just reading your paper and rewriting it if something jumps out at you, you need to revise it using specific tools and strategies you’ve learned in class.