CHAPTER III

THE WRITING PROCESS

Stages in the Writing Process
 The Writing Process

1. Prewriting or planning
2. Writing the Draft
3. Revising or Completing
 Prewriting or Planning

• Good writing means using the right words in the right way.
But knowing what’s right takes practice. In business writing
especially, planning is very important.
• Before you start writing, think about your purpose, your
audience, and how to organize your message. The steps in
prewriting process are:
• Determining the purpose
• Analyzing the audience
• Gathering information
• Organizing information
• Selecting an appropriate channel or medium
 Determining the Purpose

• Everything we write at work has a reason. We write

to help the reader know something, believe
something, or do something. In business writing, the
three main purposes are:
• To inform
• To persuade
• To call for action
• Sometimes, we also write to create goodwill or
maintain good relationships
 Analyzing the Audience

• The next step in planning your message is understanding your audience:

• Who are they?
• What do they know?
• What do they care about?
• Even if you don’t know your audience personally, you can still guess a general idea
based on things like age, education, or job role.
• Things to Think About:

• Age, gender, culture — These affect how people understand messages.

• Knowledge and interests — Some audiences know a lot about a topic, others don’t.
• Type of audience — Are they inside your company or outside? Local or
international?
• Job level — Are they experts or not? Managers or general public?

• For example:
• If you're writing to coworkers, you can use technical terms and acronyms. But
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Checklist for Audience Analysis
Ask yourself
• Who is my main audience?
• Who else might read this?
• What do they need or want?
• How much do they know about this topic?
• How do they feel about the subject? (Are they
friendly, angry, or neutral?)
• How might they respond?
 Gathering Information

• After you know your purpose and audience, the next

step is to gather the right information.
• If you're writing something short, you may already
know what to say. But for longer or more detailed
messages (like reports, proposals, or brochures), you’ll
need to collect facts, ideas, and data.
• Here are some ways to gather useful content:
• 1. Brainstorming
• Think of all the ideas that come to mind.
• Don’t worry if an idea is good or bad at first.
• Just write everything down.
•
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2. Journalistic Questioning (5Ws + H)
• Use questions like:
– Who?
– What?
– When?
– Where?
– Why?
– How?
• Journalists use these to find all angles of a story. You can
use them to organize your ideas and fill in missing details.
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3. Other Information Sources
• Use what you already know or have written before.
• You can also look at:
– Answers.com
– Infomine
– Business360,Nepal
– Findarticles.com
– Technorati
– Youtube
– Google scholar search
 Organizing Information

• After collecting enough ideas, facts, data, and

information, the next important step is to organize
everything. Organizing your information before
writing is very helpful for two main reasons:
• It helps you see if your information is useful and
reliable.
• It makes your writing easier for readers to follow and
understand.
• Two common ways to organize your information are
grouping (or clustering)
 Grouping or Clustering

• When you're writing on a topic, there can be many different points to cover. For
example, if you're writing a blog about "Banking in Nepal", you might include
topics like:
• What is banking?
• History of banking
• Different types of banks
• Roles and functions of banks
• To make your writing clear, you should group related ideas together under specific
headings and points.
• How you organize your points depends on your purpose:
• If you're writing about history, you can arrange events in the order they happened
(chronologically).
• If you want to compare different things, put them side by side and highlight
similarities and differences.
• You can also arrange ideas from most important to least important (or the other way
around).
• The way you group your ideas should match the purpose of your writing and make
 Outlining
• When you’re working on a long piece of writing—like a
report or business proposal—it’s important to make an
outline before you begin writing the full draft.
• An outline is a simple plan of what you want to write. It
helps you:
• Arrange your ideas in a logical order.
• Connect your ideas smoothly.
• Stay focused and on-topic while writing.
• Even for short pieces of writing, an outline can help you
get started and stay organized. It makes the writing
process easier and helps you develop your points more
clearly.
 Selecting a channel or Media

• Four categories of media are:

• Oral media
• Written media
• Visual media
• Electronic media
 Writing the draft
• Compose freely
• Adapting to the audience’s needs
• Selecting the right words
• Forming effective sentences
• Constructing effective paragraphs
 Compose freely

• The idea is to let your thoughts flow freely.

• After some writing, the words and ideas come
freely.
• Not to worry much about grammar and sentences.
 Adapting to the needs of audience
• Think of your subject from the audience’s
perspective.
• Ask yourself “ what does the audience know about
the object?”
• “What does my audience expect?”
• These questions help u improve the effectiveness of
the draft. The following techniques help us adapt a
message to audiences’ needs.
 Using the “ You” attitude

• E.g. plez tell me more about the program you

have designed.
• Thank you for submitting the application in
time.
• You can choose from the variety of customer
data packages.
• Emphasizing the positive

• Using bias-free language

• Maintaining etiquette and professionalism

 Selecting the Right words
• Select strong words and phrases[ use action verbs
instead of stative verbs]
• Select familiar words and expressions
• Avoid clichés- clichés often used and repeated
words, bore the audience: clichés such as uphill
battle, be advised, green light, think outside the
box. They should be avoided and replaced with
concrete and meaningful words.
• Use jargons and technical words selectively.
 Forming effective sentences
• Consider following guidelines to create effective
sentences:

• Write short sentences

• Use words economically
• Order words for proper emphasis
• Prefer active over passive sentences
 Constructing effective paragraphs
• The topic sentence
• Paragraph unity
• Coherence
• Adequate development
 Revising the Draft
• Revision is to resee, rethink, reorganize and rewrite.
• Effective writing is ensured by revising the draft
painstakingly, focusing on every aspect of writing-content,
organization, word choice, sentence clarity and coherence.
The following process is followed while revising the draft.
• Revise for content and organization
• Revise for coherence
• Revise for appropriate use of words and expressions
• Check for sentence clarity
• Look for common sentence errors
• Proofreading and completing
 Revise for content and
organization
• The following questions:
• Purpose clear?
• Included all needed information?
• Appropriate medium chosen?
• Organized the ideas?
• Are all the examples, facts, and details
relevant to the purpose of the documents?
 Revise for coherence
• Coherence refers to the relationship between ideas,
sentences, and paragraphs. While reviewing the document
for revision, attention is on the following areas:
• Check paragraph unity-

• Check the transitions- such as also, in addition, finally,

first, on the other hand, on the contrary, likewise, because,
therefore, eventually, simultaneously, in conclusion , to
summarize, finally, as a result…
 Revise for appropriate use of
words and expressions
• Eliminate redundancy

• Eliminate biased language

• Avoid affectation in language

 Check for sentence clarity
• Check the use of passive sentences

• Check faulty parallels

• Check the use of stative verbs

 Look for common sentence errors
• Check for sentence fragments- refer to your
textbook

• Check for run-on sentences- refer to your textbook

check for misplaced modifiers- refer to your

textbook
 Proofreading and Completing
• Proofread the document to avoid misspelling,
subject-verb agreement, fragments, misplaced
modifiers, tense shift , faulty punctuation, and
inconsistency in style and formatting.

• Review the document before sending it to the

reader.