Pre-Writing (Step One)

When I am assigned a writing assignment in any of my college classes, I honestly sometimes become so stressed. All I end up doing is thinking about that assignment and thoughts for that assignment run through my head.

Pre-writing is the first stage of the writing process typically followed by drafting, revision, editing, and publishing. In high school, I never use to pre-write. All I did was write out a paper and call it my “final draft.” I can admit that my “final drafts” were decent and I still received good grades. Once I got to college, I took writing more seriously and I started doing the whole writing process for my papers. The more time and effort we put into pre-writing, the less time we have to spend on the rest of the writing process. If we develop a plan before you start writing, our writing will start with a purpose and structure. When we pre-write, we can create a projection of our final draft before we even start.

Although the format of an outline is rigid, it shouldn’t make us inflexible about how to write our paper. Often when we start writing, especially about a subject that we don’t know well, the paper takes new directions. If our paper changes direction, or we add new sections, then we feel free to change the outline, just as we would make corrections on a crude map as we become more familiar with the terrain we are exploring. Major reorganizations are not uncommon; our outline will help us stay organized and focused.

When I begin writing, I always first make an outline. In the outline I include the topic of the paper, the main categories (what points I will cover), the first category (the first point that I will cover in my paper), and I have subcategories (points under the main categories that provide support for the main points). My outlines are usually bullet points because it is simple and makes things easier to follow for when I start writing a rough draft. I look over my outline a couple of times and check if I want to add something else or taking something out.

I believe it is very important that we pre-write because it makes life easier. We have something to guide us before we start writing and it gets us through writing easier. Our papers usually turn out better if we pre-write.