Writing: Teachers & Students

Lesson 2: The Writing Process

There are five main steps in the writing process. They are prewriting, writing, sharing and revising, editing, and publishing. These steps can have different names, but what is done at each step is pretty much the same, no matter what the step happens to be called. Let's look at each one to see what happens.

Prewriting

This is the first step, and it involves doing some thinking to start to gather your ideas.

Where do ideas come from? You may get an idea for a story from a book you've read, a show you've seen, or even from a dream you've had. Ideas are everywhere, and even if you don't use one right away, keeping a list of ideas is a good idea!

You may want to start a notebook to just jot down some ideas that you think of for future writing projects.

Unless you are doing a warm-up or freewrite, it is hard to just start writing without spending a little bit of time gathering ideas and doing some brainstorming.

Start with a very broad topic. Maybe you love cats and want to write about them.

Take a piece of paper and write down the word CAT in the middle. Then, around the word, write as many words as you can think of that describe that word. Here is what a blank web looks like:

(Taken from: http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/actbank... )

In the middle circle would be the word CAT. Branching out might be kinds of cats, things cats like to eat, places cats like to sleep, and any number of other ideas.

Just let your mind go free and jot down any idea that you have relating to your main idea. Other ways to brainstorm are to make lists, to use a brainstorming graphic organizer or to just freewrite as we did in lesson one.

No matter what your method, once you have gathered up many ideas, you are now ready to begin the actual process of writing.

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