Details

A general word refers to a group or class such as book or car.  Within those two classes are specific words.  In other words, a specific word is a member of a class.  For example, whereas book is general, novel is specific, and romantic novel is more specific.  Car is general; sports car is specific; Corvette is more specific; red Corvette is even more specific.

Words and their classes may be either general or specific, depending on their contexts.  If we compare book to nonfiction, nonfiction is specific, but if we compare nonfiction to biography, nonfiction is general.  Thus, a word may be general in one context but specific in another context.

One of the most important tasks a writer or speaker has is to capture details.  There are two ways to describe anything: with generalizations and with specifics.  It is impossible to write or speak about anything without making some general observations.  However, you will want to include both types of description.  The specifics may be sensory details and/or explicit objective details such as size, shape and color.  Specific details make one's writing more powerful, grounding the work in particular physical and emotional contexts.  Specific details can come from a writer's or speaker's experiences, memories or imagination.  With respect to experience, memory and imagination, writers and speakers use everyday details of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, not simply to record the events, places and times in their discourses, but also to make the events, places and times real for their audiences.

Notice the use of objective and sensory details in the following passage by Maya Angelou:
          The amount and variety of foods would have found approval
          on the menu of a Roman epicure.  Pans of fried chicken,
          covered with dishtowels, sat under benches next to a
          mountain of potato salad crammed with hard-boiled eggs.
          Whole rust-red sticks of bologna were clothed in cheese-
          cloth.  Homemade pickles and chow-chow, and baked country
          hams, aromatic with cloves and pineapples, vied for
          prominence.  Our steady customers had ordered cold
          watermelons, so Bailey and I chugged the striped-green fruit
          into the Coca-Cola box and filled all the tubs with ice as well
          as the big black wash pot that Momma used to boil her
          laundry.  Now they too lay sweating in the happy afternoon
          air.  The summer picnic gave ladies a chance to show off their
          baking hands.  On the barbecue pit, chickens and spareribs
          sputtered in their own fat and a sauce whose recipe was
          guarded in the family like a scandalous affair.  However, in
          the ecumenical light of the summer picnic every true baking
          artist could reveal her prize to the delight and criticism of the
          town.  Orange sponge cakes and dark brown mounds dripping
          Hershey's chocolate stood layer to layer with ice-white
          coconuts and light brown caramels.  Pound cakes sagged with
          their buttery weight and small children could no more resist
          licking the icings than their mothers could avoid slapping the
          sticky fingers.*
Maya Angelou easily could have written that the picnic was full of meat, accompaniments, fruit and sweets.  But to make the picnic more real, she includes such details as "a mountain of potato salad" (size), "Whole rust-red sticks of bologna" (shape), "Orange sponge cakes and dark mounds dripping Hershey's chocolate" (color), "the big black wash pot that Momma used to boil her laundry" (sight), "On the barbecue pit, chickens and spareribs sputtered in their own fat" (sound), "baked country hams, aromatic with cloves and pineapples" (smell), "Pound cakes sagged with their buttery weight" (taste), and "cold watermelons" (touch).

In academic and professional discourse, details are known as backing.  Backing is grounds in detail, grounds being reasons and/or evidence.  A thesis is a claim with grounds.  An example: I need to work this summer so that I can buy a new car.  The claim is "I need to work this summer," and the grounds is "so that I can buy a new car."  Let us suppose my parents disagree with me.  To convince them that I indeed need a new car, I must provide backing.  I tell them my car has over 150,000 miles, has been repaired 6 times in the past year, and has no air conditioner.  Such details not only make my argument more complete, but they help make my car more real.  You now know I own a rattletrap.

To create details, writers and speakers ask questions.  The journalistic questions--who, what, when, where, why and how--help writers and speakers generate information.  Such information, however, tends to be general.  To generate specific information, ask questions about the answers: what kinds of meat, accompaniments, fruit and sweets; what kind of rattletrap? 

Exercises 

Make the following categories more specific so that I will know exactly what to purchase when I go to the grocer: meat, dairy product, produce.

When a person is angry, sad or happy, you know he/she is such because his/her body language, facial expressions, diction, tone, et cetera reveal his/her mood.  He/she does not wear a sign that says "I'm angry," "I'm sad," or "I'm happy."  Successful writers do not use such labels because they are abstract in that everyone has a different conception of those emotions.  Everyone reacts differently to anger, sadness and happiness.  When you describe someone's mood, you must reveal his/her body language, facial expressions, diction, tone, et cetera so that the reader can envision the person as a unique individual.  Describe a boyfriend's or girlfriend's reaction when you told him/her that you no longer wanted to be his/her companion.
_______________________________________________________
          *Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (New York: Bantam, 1993) 115-16.

My Critique

This post affords an objective evaluation of an essay. 

Description 

At the end of the semester, you will submit to me this critique and draft along with your final draft of this essay.  If you do not do such, you will receive an F for the incomplete assignment (refer to "Overview of Course"). 

I edited your essay in accordance with "Criteria for Evaluating Essays," using proofreader's marks (refer to "Proofreader's Marks").  As you revise this essay, do not correct only your punctuative, grammatical and mechanical mistakes.  Remember, revision is a process.  You will need to consider your peer's and my comments.  Then, revise your essay according to its purpose, structure and content--checking for unity, checking for coherence, checking for development, creating a thesis.  Next, edit each sentence, and title your essay. 

Because this is a preliminary draft, I did not calculate a grade.  If you want to do such, add the values of the applicable components (1-11, for example) and divide the sum by the amount of components (11, for example). 

Evaluation 

Name of writer:__________________________________________

Title of work:____________________________________________

I rated the following on a scale of 0 (poor) to 5 (excellent).

1. Quality and clarity of working thesis _____
2. Persuasiveness of argument _____
3. Organization of essay _____
4. Style of paragraphs _____
5. Style of sentences _____
6. Amount of punctuative mistakes (none is excellent) _____
7. Amount of grammatical mistakes (none is excellent) _____
8. Amount of mechanical mistakes (none is excellent) _____
9. Quality of diction _____
10. Tone of paper _____
11. Format of essay _____
12. Integration of quotations (if applicable) _____
13. Style of documentation (if applicable) _____
14. Amount of sources (if applicable) _____

A summary of your essay follows.

I compared the essay (or sections of it) to the following.

1. A color:_____________________________________________
2. A flavor:____________________________________________
3. A sound:____________________________________________
4. A motion:___________________________________________
5. An odor:____________________________________________
6. An emotion:_________________________________________

Additional comments:

Peer Critique

I often have used the following worksheet as an in-class activity, for  students learn much about writing from their peers.

Description 

First, you must provide me with two copies of your essay the day it is due.  I will critique one copy.  I will give the other copy to a classmate and will give you a copy of his/her essay.  Second, read this handout entirely.  Third, read your classmate's essay--editing it in accordance with "Criteria for Evaluating Essays" but using proofreader's marks (refer to "Proofreader's Marks") only in the margins.  Do not attempt to correct any mistakes.  Fourth, write your responses to the essay on this handout, and, finally, articulate your reactions for no more than ten minutes in a brief conversation with the author.  Please give the essay and your critique to the author. 

Evaluation 

Name of evaluator:_______________________________________

Name of writer(s):________________________________________

Title of work:____________________________________________

1. Read the first paragraph.  Then, before you continue to read, write what you expect are the purpose, audience and topic.
2. Continue to read the essay.  Did the author fulfill your expectations?  If not, what do you think the purpose, audience and topic are?
3. Summarize the essay, devoting at least one sentence to each paragraph.
4. What do you think is the central idea, or working thesis, of the essay?
5. Do you agree or disagree with the author's working thesis and why?
6. What kinds of evidence (details, facts, examples, narratives, analogies) does the author use to develop or support his/her central idea?  Is the evidence appropriate?  Is there sufficient evidence?  If not, what kinds of evidence should the writer consider?
7. Does the author consider different points of view about his/her working thesis?  In other words, does the author consider counterarguments?
8. Does the author qualify his/her central idea?
9. Which two features of the essay most need improvement?
10. What do you most like about the essay?

Compare the essay (or sections of it) to the following.

1. A color:_____________________________________________
2. A flavor:____________________________________________
3. A sound:____________________________________________
4. A motion:___________________________________________
5. An odor:____________________________________________
6. An emotion:_________________________________________

Other comments:

Past Comments on Assignment One

The following comments are relative to any academic essay.

Only in a creative writing class will you be able to write consistently about topics of your choice.  You need to move beyond that fact.  In other words, you need to approach each assignment, not as a burden, but as a challenge or, better, as an opportunity to express yourself creatively.  Doing the latter will turn the most mundane assignment into an excitative exercise of creativity, of growth. 

The essay is yours; it is a reflection of you.  Just as you wear anything you want to wear, you can begin an essay any way you want to begin.  It seems many of us have learned to create generic introductions.  There is no one way, no one correct method to begin an essay.  However, there are incorrect ways to begin an essay--one being to make generalizations, which many of us did.  Furthermore, your thesis does not need to be in the first paragraph. 

With respect to your thesis, it is an amalgamation (a combination or blend) of your topical sentences.  Remember, a thesis is not necessarily a--that is, one--statement. 

Toulmin's scheme, which we will discuss soon, forces us to not make generalizations ("all people," for example) because we must provide backing for such statements.  So do not generalize unless you are able to support it with details.  Furthermore, the essay is about you, your relationship with writing, so use I, not you.  Always use the second person point of view carefully.  Who enjoys commands, accusations or categorizations?  Few people do.  Readers instinctively resist works in second person.  To include, rather than to exclude, use the pronoun we. 

With respect to grammar, many of us need to create stronger verbal constructions.  Rather than writing "I would like a job," write "I want a job."  Rather than writing "My goals will be accomplished," write "I will accomplish my goals."  Furthermore, get with the past participle of a transitive verb also creates a passive voice.  Change, for example, "I have gotten better at getting my thoughts on paper" to "I am better at writing my thoughts."  If you are relying too much on the verb get, you need to increase your vocabulary. 

Some of us need to eliminate adverbial noun clauses.  Rather than writing "The reason I dislike writing is because there are too many rules," write "The reason I dislike writing is that there are too many rules." 

Do not use the adverbs really, very, even and so.  They are simply fillers, and they detract from the force of the verbs or adjectives they modify. 

What is the primary difference between that and this or those and these?  That refers to something before it, and this refers to something after it.  I work too much; that is the reason I am grumpy.  This is the reason I am grumpy: I work too much. 

You do not want to be too informal or too formal, so vary your sentential constructions (simple, compound, complex and compound-complex), and use diction appropriate to higher education--eliminating abbreviations, contractions and colloquialisms. 

Conclusions are more than restatements or summaries.  You want to ease the reader out of your essay, your world.  Sometimes a writer will refer to something he/she states in the introduction, making the essay seem whole.  (Think of the introduction and conclusion as the ends of a loaf of bread.) 

The necessity of a five-paragraph essay is a myth.  Certainly there are essays with five paragraphs, but the majority (a guess is 90%) of essays (arguments) are more than five or less than five paragraphs in length.  You want as many paragraphs as necessary to develop completely your argument. 

Finally, for those who naively think they will write little after college, for those who dream that everyone always has communicated and will communicate orally, remember this: if you are able to write well, you are able to speak well and vice versa.  Writing and speaking are two forms of the same thing: verbal communication.

Summary Versus Paraphrase

Summary 

A summary is a short description of a work--a painting, poem, article, story, movie, et cetera--that contains the central idea of the work and enough details to support the central idea.  When you summarize a work, you identify its central idea (thesis), primary points (topical sentences), and secondary information (evidence), omitting minor details.  Writers and speakers have numerous options for the kinds of evidence they can use in an argument: data from personal experience; data from interviews, questionnaires and/or surveys; data from research; statistical data; and hypothetical examples, cases and/or scenarios.  A summary will account for all  parts of a work, but it will not provide an extended argument.  When a work is long, you identify primary points and secondary information in each section, and you assemble them into coherent, cohesive statements about the whole work, summarizing entirely in your own words.

An effective summary begins with sentences that identify the title and author of the work and state the work's central idea.  Those sentences will function as the thesis of the summary.  A description of the organization of the work follows the thesis--revealing the divisions of the work, the primary point of each section, and the order of the sections.  For relatively short works, it is possible to state the central idea and organization in the same sentence.

Regardless of the work's length, a description of each of the sections follows the introduction.  In relatively short works, you emphasize the way multiple sections develop the central idea of the work, but if the work is lengthy, each section may require a separate paragraph.  The organization of the work may help you decide where to break the paragraphs of your summary.  Use only enough secondary information to elaborate the primary points or to relate the way the author develops his/her ideas.

An effective summary ends with a brief statement that relates the central idea of the work to the summary of the work.  In other words, the conclusion brings the reader back to the author's thesis.

Paraphrase

A paraphrase, on the other hand, is a longer description of a work, containing more details than a summary.  When paraphrasing a work, you restate its entire argument, point by point, in your own words.  You will need to paraphrase any sources of information that provide backing (specific evidence) for your argument, backing being necessary information your audience needs to accept or reject your argument.

A paraphrase requires more systematic work than a summary needs.  An effective paraphrase reflects the organization of the work.  It also reflects the primary points of the author, not your opinions of those ideas.  A specific page or line number accompanies each important fact or direct quotation.  Such secondary information is relevant to the central idea.  The paraphrase is entirely in your own words, excepting clearly marked quotations.

Guidelines for Summarizing

1. Introduce the work and the author.
2. Focus only on the central idea (thesis) of the work.
3. Provide only enough secondary information (evidence) to clearly support the primary points.
4. Omit minor details and insignificant information.
5. Write the summary in your own words, unless a quotation is necessary.
6. Omit any opinions you may have.
7. Follow the same organization as the work itself.
8. Ensure your summary is clear, concise and effective.

Scenario

To make what we have been discussing (the process of writing) less abstract, imagine you enrolled in Physics 201, and the professor wants you to submit an extensive research paper on a topic relative to the discipline.  Being the exceptional student you are, you strive to be both critical--wanting to analyze and evaluate existent information--and creative--wanting to generate your own ideas and information.

You have noticed that at the end of each chapter in your textbook the authors credit sources of information--including the periodicals Scientific American (SA), Astronomy (A), and Physics Today (PT).  You decide to go to the library and to speed-read recent issues of those magazines.  In thirty minutes you decide that your topic will be String Theory.  The reasons you choose it are that there are many articles about it and you know little about the theory.

The next day you tell your professor about your idea.  He approves the topic.  You know your textbook and the three periodicals will be sources of information, but you need other sources.  You return to the library, sit in front of a computer, and search the library's holdings.  There are 20 potential resources.  After you have previewed those sources, you choose The Dynamic Universe (DU); The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics (WT); and Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (R) as your primary sources of information.  Your criteria: they are easy to read and understand, are current, and contain lots of information.  Based on your criteria, you determine the primary audience for one of the periodicals, A, is astrophysicists, so you eliminate it as a source of information.

Monitoring your progress as you critically read, you discover that you do not understand completely the information on String Theory, so you choose to focus on Albert Einstein's inability to create a unified theory, which you understand.  You tell your professor, and he encourages your redirection of effort.

You know if you conflate your assumptions with the authors', then you will misread and misinterpret the information.  Furthermore, conflation may lead to reductionism.  For example, String Theory is a scientific explanation of the universe.  You may be a Christian.  You cannot dismiss the theory simply because you believe God created the universe, which is an opinion.  You can state, however, that current technology is unable to verify the theory, which is a fact.

To organize the information you have generated for your research paper, you divide your topic into the strong force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force, and gravitation.  You list the sources and pages with respect to the strong force--P 123, WT 175, R 136--the electromagnetic force--P 148, WT 210, R 183--et cetera.  You begin to infer relationships among your sources and discover all the authors agree (comparison); the textbook, R, provides numerous in-depth examples of both general and special relativity (example); all the sources fully define each of the four forces (definition); and the books explain Einstein's failure, which is the reason the periodicals embrace String Theory as an explanation of the universe (cause and effect).  You know it is important that you personally respond to the information the sources have presented to you, so you decide to critique Einstein's approach with respect to what you know about String Theory.

Because you have organized your material, it is easy to create an outline of your discourse.  You select the primary ideas in your outline to create a working thesis.  You wait until your are comfortable, are alone, and have some time to write a first draft, which you do section by section until you finish.  The next day you revise your discourse--focusing on its unity, coherence and development.  You also revise your working thesis, transforming it into a thesis.  The following day you edit your discourse--focusing on diction, punctuation, grammar and mechanics.  You also ensure it is in the correct format.  Finally, you create a title, basing it on your thesis.  You finish several hours before you need to submit it.  Several days later the professor returns it to you with a large red A on the title page.

The Process of Writing

Introduction 

To complete any task or chore, a person must go through a process, a series of actions that leads to a result.  Think about the process you went through to arrive at school or work this morning: waking, drinking, eating, showering, dressing, driving.  Each of those stages is a process, for there are substages within each stage.  For example, you likely slipped on pants before you stepped into shoes.  Did you struggle to complete the entire process?  There may have been external pressures, but you did not have to contemplate your actions at every stage.  The reason: the more experience you have in successfully completing a task or chore, the more habitual the process is.

Your process was different from mine in some way.  You may have combined some stages--drinking and eating while driving to school, for example--or you may have skipped a stage--bathing before you slept, for example.  Similarly, the process of writing is variable.  A writer does not necessarily begin at the first stage and progress linearly to the last stage.  Advanced writers are able to combine and skip stages without adverse effects, and they return to an earlier stage when they revise their works, which they do many times.  Furthermore, an advanced writer will adapt his process in accordance with the kind of writing he is doing.

With respect to e-mails, my compositional process consists of three stages: writing, revising and editing.  With respect to formal discourse--an essay such as this--my compositional process is more comprehensive.  After I conduct research, I generate information on sheets of paper, pausing only to refer to external information or to discover where my words are leading me.  The initial draft is messy, with proofreader's marks and misspellings everywhere.  After hours, days or weeks away from the draft, I read, evaluate and revise it.  As I type the text into the word processor, I revise it again, focusing on unity, coherence and development.  The next day I edit with respect to tone, punctuation, grammar and mechanics.  If I do not have a title, I create one, which is the final stage of my process.

The following process is even more comprehensive than the aforementioned one.  It is the process I adhered to when I was a freshman in college.  I suggest that intermediate writers adhere to it until they are able to combine or skip stages without adverse effects.

Purpose

Because writing is a social activity, a way to communicate with others, before you begin to write, you need to consider the reason(s) you will be writing.  You will write more effectively if you answer the following question: Are you writing to inform, to persuade, or to entertain?  Sometimes you will have multiple reasons to write.  For example, if you were to review a movie, you would evaluate it and persuade readers to either view it or not, all while entertaining them.  Thinking about your purpose(s) will allow you to identify a topic and will help you to generate and organize ideas.

Audience

Each time you write, you must think carefully about whom your audience is and how they will respond to your information.  Sometimes writers have to appeal to multiple and possibly conflictive audiences: teachers and classmates, men and women, rich and poor, conservatives and liberals.  At other times the identification of a particular audience is difficult, especially when creating a website.  Knowing just a few characteristics of your audience will help you anticipate and satisfy your readers' interests and needs.  Choose content, coverage, examples and tone in accordance with your audience's requirements, asking yourself the questions that follow.  Who likely will read your work?  What are some reasons they will read your work?  What do they know about your subject?  What kinds of information will they need?  What values and beliefs do they hold?  What kinds of examples will elicit positive responses?  How will you convince them to accept your argument?  You will need to continually think about your audience throughout the process of writing.

Topic

Because there are hundreds of ways to generate a topic, I will discuss only the most successful generative methods I have been using: reading, brainstorming, journal writing, listing, mapping, and freewriting.

Reading can be an excellent stimulus when you are not precisely sure of what your topic will be.  Though you may not depend on outside sources, reading about a tentative topic may help you generate ideas.

Brainstorming is a technique by which you can generate a topic.  Place a subject at the top of a sheet of paper, and list any word or phrase that comes to your mind.  Set a time frame, and list items as quickly as you can.  All items are legitimate for your list, since an allegedly bad idea can lead to a good one.

Journal writing provides you an opportunity to converse with yourself in your own language about what you have been studying.  You can pose questions, develop ideas, reflect on readings, speculate and explore, and try to pinpoint confusions.

Another method for generating a topic is to list the attributes that a subject possesses.  Number the items of your list.  Then, ask what the uses or consequences of each item are.

If you enjoy thinking visually, try mapping your ideas.  Begin by writing the subject as briefly as possible (a single word is best).  Circle the subject and draw three, four or five short spokes from the circle.  At the end of each spoke place one of the journalistic questions--who, what, where, why and how--making a longer branch off the spoke for every answer to a question.

Freewriting is a technique you may want to try when you are asked to write but have no topic.  According to Peter Elbow:

          The idea is simply to write for ten minutes (later on, perhaps
          fifteen or twenty).  Don't stop for anything.  Go quickly
          without rushing.  Never stop to look back, to cross something
          out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word
          or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing.  If
          you can't think of a word or a spelling, just use a squiggle or
          else write, "I can't think of it."  Just put down something.  The
          easiest thing is just to put down whatever is in your mind.  If
          you get stuck [sic] it's fine to write [sic] "I can't think what to
          say, [sic] I can't think what to say [sic]" as many times as you
          want; or repeat the last word you wrote over and over again;
          or anything else.  The only requirement is that you never
          stop.*  

Information

All the aforementioned methods are also useful when you need to generate information, when you need to explore your own thoughts and feelings about a topic.  But in an academic or professional setting, you will be required to include material from outside sources, which means that you must be able to read critically.  The following strategy will help you do such.

Before you read look ahead, previewing the source and asking yourself which part of the source relates to your topic.  While you are reading, be active--underlining relative information, writing notes that summarize passages, writing sectional headings, and highlighting important information.  Monitor your progress while you are reading.  Do you understand the material?  How does the material compare with your predictions?  Do you need to redirect your efforts--that is, to preview another selection or to generate another topic?

After you have enough information to satisfy your audience's interests and needs, you will need to consolidate the information.  Review your notes; highlight important information; organize your notes.  Next, evaluate each source, distinguishing facts (verifiable statements) from opinions (interpretations of facts).  Finally, distinguish your assumptions from those of the author(s).

Assumptions also are known as warrants, core beliefs that shape the way each of us views the world.  There are three categories of assumptions: value, descriptive and definitional.  Value assumptions are beliefs about the way the world ought to be, about the way people ought to behave.  Descriptive assumptions are beliefs about the way the world is, about what is true.  Definitional assumptions are definitions of key terms on which a discourse rests.

I will discuss the importance of assumptions later.  What you need to know about them now is that an author may state his/her assumptions directly or indirectly--that is, they may be explicit or implicit.  Because assumptions provide the bases for decisions and opinions, if you do not distinguish your assumptions from those of the author(s), you more than likely will conflate them, which will lead to misunderstanding.

Organization

When you know you will incorporate information from numerous sources into an essay, you will need to read in a way that enables you to infer relationships among those sources.  To do such you will need to divide the topic into parts and to title each division.  Then, cross-reference each part, listing the specific pages of each source that treats each division.  Next, summarize the information or author's ideas about each part, considering the following inferences as you do such: comparison, contrast, example, definition, cause and effect, and personal response.  Comparison: does one author agree with another?  Contrast: does an author disagree with another author?  Example: does material in one source illustrate a statement in another source?  Definition: is there material in a source that may help you define or redefine a term in another source?  Cause and effect: is there material from one source that may allow you to explain directly the reason certain events occur in other sources?  Personal response: do you agree or disagree with points made in one or more sources?  Develop your response(s) by referring to specific passages.

Not all the information you have will be useful.  Therefore, you must select the most promising ideas and categorize them.  Organize information within categories to clarify your ideas and their relation to each other.  After you recognize patterns of relation within each category, you will be able to recognize patterns of relation across categories.  Identify main, or general, points within each category and the subordinate, or specific, points within a category.  Some examples of subordinate points, also known as backing, are moral principles, testimony of experts, statistical data, and empirical results.  Organizing material within a category is an excellent technique for revealing which of your main points will need further development when you begin to write a first draft.

Most intermediate writers skip the organizational stage, thinking that the creation of a formal or informal outline will consume too much time to be beneficial.  But advanced writers experientially know that organizing information within categories actually conserves time because it allows them to develop completely each main point.  For them the revisionary stage is a stylistic event, not a compositional nightmare.

Working Thesis

All your effort in thinking about your purpose, identifying your audience, selecting a topic, generating information, and organizing that information will lead to a thesis--a general, debatable statement about your topic.  Initially you will create a working thesis: a statement that, based on everything you know about your topic, is a reasonably accurate summary of what you will write.  In the act of writing, you will discover, discard and revise ideas.  Before you write you cannot determine how your draft will evolve and how, subsequently, your thesis will change.

What is a good working thesis?  A strong thesis is clear and concise, regardless of where it appears or how long it is.  A strong thesis focuses on a substantive issue, an issue that readers will want to read.  A strong thesis is debatable, which means reasonable people may disagree with it.  A strong thesis requires backing and will need qualification.

First Draft

Every writer needs a place, some space, and time to write.  Choose a setting that is comfortable, ensure that nobody will distract you, and reserve a significant quantity of time.  Your goal is to create and to finish a version of your discourse.  When you accept the fact that what you write in your first draft will not necessarily be in your final draft, you will be able to continue to write when you reach a troublesome part.  Do not allow your concerns about particular words or sentences block your momentum.  Complete one section of your discourse until you finish.

Revision

After some time has passed, read your first draft.  Reconsider your working thesis and the extent your work addresses it.  Create a thesis, a version of your working thesis that accurately reveals the primary point of your discourse.  Check for unity.  Do the sentences of each paragraph focus on a main idea?  Do the paragraphs of each section focus on a specific part of the thesis?  Do the sections of the discourse develop the thesis?  Check for coherence.  Are the sentences of each paragraph orderly?  Are the paragraphs of each section orderly?  Are the sections of the discourse orderly?  Check for development.  Do the sentences of each paragraph provide details that explain and illustrate each paragraph's main idea?  Do the paragraphs of each section provide details that explain and illustrate a specific part of the thesis?  Do the sections of the discourse provide important details that develop the thesis?

Editing

If you think your revision meets the interests and needs of your audience, you are ready to edit.  To edit is to rewrite at the level of the sentence.  You will need to focus on more than punctuation, grammar and mechanics.  Ensure your diction is concrete (perceptible by the senses) and specific (refers to particular people, places and things).  Remember, appropriate language suits your writing situation--your purpose, audience and topic.  Standard English is always appropriate.  Regionalisms, slang, colloquialisms, neologisms, technical jargon, and euphemisms are sometimes appropriate.  But nonstandard dialects; double talk; pretentious writing; stereotypes; and sexist, racist and ethnocentric language are rarely or never appropriate.  Ensure you are succinct--that is, you have avoided wordy verbal phrases (changing, for example, would like to work to want to work), redundancies (changing first began to began, for example), and strings of prepositional phrases (changing for the people in America to for the Americans).  You also need to analyze your transitions (words and phrases that connect sentences, paragraphs and sections), ensuring the discourse is seamless.  What you do not want to do is solely rely on your computer to edit your work, for it cannot assess context, and context determines, for example, whether a colloquialism is appropriate.

Title

You might have created a title before you began to write your first draft, and doing such probably helped you focus.  But your discourse may have evolved differently than you had planned.  Thus, your title is a working title.  You always need to ensure your title accurately reflects the content of your discourse.  On the basis of your thesis, devise a title for your discourse.  Readers like titles that help them anticipate what they will be reading.  Furthermore, titles contain keywords necessary for electronic searches.

Conclusion

The process of writing consists of many stages, and each stage has substages.  The more comprehensive your process is, the more likely you will achieve success.  If you are an intermediate writer, I suggest you engage in every stage, regardless the kind of writing, until you are able to modify the process without adverse effects.  There are four forms of writing that will recur throughout your academic career: summary, evaluation, analysis and synthesis.  Each requires more engagement in the process than the one that precedes it.

A summary is a brief, neutral restatement of a source.  A summary answers: what are the main points of the author's discourse?  To summarize a source, restate, in your own words, the author's thesis (central idea).  If the selection is short (one to ten pages), write several sentences about each section.  If the selection is long, try to identify divisions and write several sentences about each section.  Join your paragraphical or sectional summaries with your summary of the thesis.

An evaluation is a review of a source.  An evaluation answers: how effective is the author's discourse?  Introduce the author and topic in your first paragraph.  A sentence in the introductory paragraph may hint at your general impression of the source.  Summarize the source.  Introduce the author's main points, and discuss each point thoroughly.  Assess the source, explicitly stating your criteria for evaluation.

An analysis  is an investigation of a source that requires the use of a specific set of principles.  An analysis answers many questions, including: how does the discourse work, and what does it mean?  Determine what the main points of the thesis are.  Summarize each of the points.  Convert each summary into a specific question, and use each question as a basis to investigate the source.

A synthesis (a proper academic essay) is a compendium of material from several sources.  A synthesis also answers many questions, including: what are my views on the topic, and what are other views on the topic?  Do not be tentative about expressing your own thoughts and emotions, for they are just as important as the other views on the topic.  To synthesize information fully engage in the process I delineated.  It initially may seem overwhelming.  But if you habituate yourself to the process, you may--gasp--begin to enjoy writing.

Please refer to "Scenario" if the aforementioned process seems abstract.

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          *Peter Elbow, Writing without Teachers, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 1998) 1.