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.
