2: The Writing Process in Technical Writing
- Define the elements of the writing process.
- Discuss the recursive nature of the writing process.
- Explain how the elements of the writing process pertain to technical writing.
- Apply the writing process to technical writing tasks.
Refining Your Unique Writing Process
Accepted "Writing Process"
Generally speaking, the accepted writing process includes:
The planning step of the writing process includes all tasks designed to help you draft a strong document. For instance, planning may include prewriting strategies such as outlining, brainstorming, mapping, and freewriting. It also includes time spent researching as strong research provides the raw materials necessary to "build" an effective written document. While planning usually occurs early in the writing process, writers return to these planning strategies many times throughout the writing process.
The drafting step of the writing process includes time spent actively writing parts of the document. Drafting is often expected to be messy. It's the time when a writer gets the ideas on the page without immediate concern for the flawlessness of the ideas. It involves creating, grouping, and analyzing the raw materials (research, language, and ideas) of a written document. While drafting usually occurs as a middle step of the writing process, writers return to the drafting strategies any time a new idea or concept must be developed and included in the document.
The revising step of the writing process includes adding, rearranging, removing, and replacing words, sentences, paragraphs, and ideas. Revision refers to large changes in a written document. It is the time when a writer looks at the messy draft to critically analyze changes that must be made to better serve the purpose and audience. Revision must be done courageously; it may be difficult to make large changes to a document that is seemingly "complete." However, strong revision is necessary to strengthen a written document to its best form. Decisions made in the revision step may send the writer back to the planning or drafting stage.
The editing step of the writing process is the polishing stage. While the aforementioned steps are recursive, meaning you can move back and forth between them, the editing step should be kept to the end of the process to avoid writers spending too much time polishing a sentence or paragraph that may be removed in revision, for instance. Editing refers to the fine details of a document such as correcting spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Editing may also include changes to word choice and sentence structure.
Your Unique Writing Process
Although I just explained the generally accepted writing process, it is important for student-writers to realize that as they continue developing written documents, they are best served by learning how they write best , or in other words, their unique writing process .
As a young writer, I never understood the benefits of a formal outline with all of its letters - capital, lowercase, roman numeral. And if I had an A, did I have to have a B? And what did the A and B even mean in practical terms? In other words, a formal outline was not part of my process. I also soon learned that my beginnings rarely worked. Until I completed the whole of what I had to say, the beginning didn't entirely fit. Therefore, I knew at the end of my writing process, I would have to take time to go back and revise the beginning heavily until it fit the rest of the document.
That's what I mean about your unique writing process. What works for you? What does not? I'm open to your exploration of this as wildly as you'd like it to be with one caveat - I will not accept that waiting until the last minute and then turning out a work of brilliance is your unique writing process. The process must allow for some planning, some drafting, some revising, and some editing. How you piece together that particular "process" is up to you.
As you continue reading this chapter, be thinking about your unique writing process. Feel comfortable questioning the concepts in the chapter and whether they are relevant to your own process. Feel comfortable asking your instructor about their process and sharing your own thoughts and experiences as well.
- Allow your writing process to grow and change. Like your taste buds change over time, so too may your writing strengths and subsequently your writing process. For example, a new writer may rely heavily on outlining, but after outlining many writing tasks, structure may come more naturally to the writer, and a different strategy may serve that writer better.
- Think about writing tasks you've completed recently. Once you read the assignment description, what did you do next? Explore his question with a freewriting exercise. Set a timer for three minutes, and don't stop writing. Walk yourself through all of the work you completed from the moment you read the assignment description to the moment you submitted the final document. After you do so, think critically about the work you completed in that writing assignment. What would you like to change abut your writing process moving forward? What techniques would you like to experiment with to further understand and improve your unique writing process?
- Talk to a friend, family member, colleague, or instructor about their writing process. What steps do they take? What has not worked for them? Consider speaking to multiple people, maybe 3-5. Ask them the same questions, and compare the differences in their responses. Are there any trends of strategies that work well? Trends of strategies that are not as successful? Are there any strategies you have not tried that you'd like to try in the future?
What is your rhetorical situation?
One of the most crucial steps early in the writing process is to first understand your rhetorical situation - or what it is you are setting out to do. It is important that writers identify the audience and the purpose of a piece of writing before they begin developing it. For instance, this text is for students of technical writing. What if we did not take that audience into consideration before we started writing? What if the text had instructions for completing science labs? What if it generally shared personal anecdotes about our lives that have nothing to do with teaching, learning, or technical writing?
Then, we would fail at identifying our rhetorical situation.
To identify the rhetorical situation, or in other words, the purpose and audience of a piece of writing, writers should ask the following questions:
- Why am I writing this document? (PURPOSE)
- To whom am I communicating? (AUDIENCE)
Students often say they are writing for whomever is grading their work at the end. However, technical writing is different. In technical writing, writers develop documents for their colleagues, clients, supervisors, the government, funding bodies, and so on. Technical writing is a form of professional writing, and students should keep that goal of writing professionally in mind as part of their purpose.
Likewise, the goal of writing professionally should help student-writers consider their audience. Technical documents should be flawless; the audience expects that. I know of hiring managers who reject job applicants based on a single error on their cover letter or resume. That may seem harsh, but keep in mind that the hiring manager is evaluating a candidate for a job that requires many tasks. Attention to detail is likely to be expected, so if a candidate cannot offer a high attention to detail for two pages, then how successful will the candidate be at performing attention to detail every day in many tasks?
GENERAL RHETORICAL SITUATION TIPS
1. To begin identifying your rhetorical situation, ask yourself: What is my purpose? Is your purpose to inform? To persuade? Likewise, whom is your audience? Are you writing a report for your superiors? Are you sending an email to a colleague? Are you developing promotional materials for possible clients? Consider the concepts of purpose and audience together to better understand your rhetorical situation, so that you can move through the writing process in a way that serves the purpose and audience.
2. Think of a writing task you have to complete either for this class, for another course, or for your work or personal life. Set a timer for five minutes, and write down everything you can think of about your purpose and your audience. How might this information help you move forward with that writing task?
3. Reread your writing assignment description until you understand it. If you do not understand it, ask a classmate for clarification? If you still do not understand, ask your instructor for clarification. Until you fully understand what a writing assignment is asking you to achieve, you cannot understand your rhetorical situation. And without an understanding of your rhetorical situation, you will struggle through the writing process and in completing the task to a high quality.
Prewriting as Part of the Process
Prewriting is an essential activity for most writers. Through robust prewriting, writers generate ideas, explore directions, and find their way into their writing. When students attempt to write a document without developing their ideas, strategizing their desired structure, and focusing on precision with words and phrases, they can end up with a “premature draft”—one that is more writer-based than reader-based and, thus, might not be received by the audience in the way the writer intended.
In addition, a lack of prewriting can cause students to experience writer’s block. Writer’s block is the feeling of being stuck when faced with a writing task. It is often caused by fear, anxiety, or a tendency toward perfectionism, but it can be overcome through prewriting activities that allow writers to relax, catch their breath, gather ideas, and gain momentum.
- Contemplating the many possible ideas worth writing about.
- Developing ideas through brainstorming, freewriting, and focused writing.
- Planning the structure of the document overall so as to have a solid introduction, meaningful body components, and a purposeful conclusion.
Prewriting Activities
Quick strategies for developing ideas include brainstorming, freewriting, and bubble mapping. These activities are done quickly, with a sense of freedom, while writers silence their inner critic. In her book Wild Mind , teacher and writer Natalie Goldberg describes this freedom as the “creator hand” freely allowing thoughts to flow onto the page while the “editor hand” remains silent. Sometimes, these techniques are done in a timed situation (usually two to ten minutes), which allows writers to get through the shallow thoughts and dive deeper to access the depths of the mind.
Brainstorming begins with writing down or typing a few words and then filling the page with words and ideas that are related or that seem important without allowing the inner critic to tell the writer if these ideas are acceptable or not. Writers do this quickly and without too much contemplation. Students will know when they are succeeding because the lists are made without stopping.
To freewrite, writers must silence the inner critic and the “editor hand” and allow the “creator hand” a specified amount of time (usually from 10 to 20 minutes) to write nonstop about whatever comes to mind (Elbow). The goal is to keep the hand moving, the mind contemplating, and the individual writing. If writers feel stuck, they just keep writing “I don’t know what to write” until new ideas form and develop in the mind and flow onto the page. Focused freewriting entails writing freely—and without stopping, during a limited time—about a specific topic. Once writers are relaxed and exploring freely, they may be surprised about the ideas that emerge.
Bubble mapping begins with writing down the central idea or concept of your writing task then circling it. Draw a line from that word or concept to other concepts connected to it in some way. Circle those secondary concepts. Then, draw a line from the secondary concepts to additional concepts or ideas. Continue expanding the ideas and concepts until the page is full of mapped circles and ideas. You may then use the concepts and ideas to develop keyword searches in the research step of the process or to develop a general structure for the written document itself.
These are just a few prewriting activities student-writers might try to develop ideas for a writing task. Consider others by searching online or talking with friends and colleagues about their writing processes.
It should also be noted that a prewriting activity that is crucial is research, which will be discussed more in the next section. If you struggle with the prewriting activities, it may be because you have not done enough research to explore the concepts to an appropriate depth. Think of the prewriting exercises above as recursive with researching strategies.
If you struggle with prewriting activities, complete more research. If you struggle with research, complete more prewriting activities.
Structure Techniques
Before writing a first draft, writers find it helpful to begin organizing their ideas into chunks so that they (and readers) can efficiently follow the points as organized in an essay. There are many ways to plan an essay’s overall structure, including mapping and outlining.
Mapping
Mapping (which sometimes includes using a graphic organizer) involves organizing the relationships between the topic and other ideas. The following is example (from ReadWriteThink.org, 2013) of a graphic organizer that could be used to write a basic, persuasive document such as a proposal or report:
Persuasion Map. Copyright 2013 IRA/NCTE. All rights reserved. ReadWriteThink materials may be reproduced for educational purposes.
Outlining
Outlining is also an excellent way to plan how to organize a document. Formal outlines use levels of notes, with Roman numerals for the top level, followed by capital letters, Arabic numerals, and lowercase letters. Here’s an example of an outline for a report that discusses the importance of technical writing for engineers.
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Introduction
- Background information about entry level positions, general engineering tasks, and a summary of the kinds of writing entry level engineers complete.
- Thesis: While securing an entry level engineering position may be relatively simple, to advance within the career field, an engineer must possess strong writing skills particularly in writing reports, proposals, and internal communications.
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Body Paragraphs
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Main Point: Entry level engineers complete different writing tasks than senior engineers.
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Supporting Detail 1: Information from Source 1—Supporting Sentences
- Subpoint
- Subpoint
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Supporting Detail 2: Information from Source 2—Supporting Sentences
- Subpoint
- Subpoint
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Supporting Detail 1: Information from Source 1—Supporting Sentences
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Main Point: Senior engineers must write persuasive, complete reports and proposals.
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Supporting Detail 1: Information from Source 3—Supporting Sentences
- Subpoint
- Subpoint
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Supporting Detail 2: Information from Source 4—Supporting Sentences
- Subpoint
- Subpoint
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Supporting Detail 1: Information from Source 3—Supporting Sentences
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Main Point: Senior engineers must communicate effectively within their organization, especially with subordinates and supervisors.
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Supporting Detail 1: Information from Source 5—Supporting Sentences
- Subpoint
- Subpoint
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Supporting Detail 2: Information from Source 6—Supporting Sentences
- Subpoint
- Subpoint
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Supporting Detail 1: Information from Source 5—Supporting Sentences
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Main Point: Entry level engineers complete different writing tasks than senior engineers.
- Conclusion (Revisit thesis).
Informal outlines can be created using lists with or without bullets. What is important is that main and sub-point ideas are linked and identified. An informal outline might look something like this:
Introduction - Background information about entry-level positions, general engineering tasks, and a summary of the kinds of writing entry-level engineers complete.
Thesis: While securing an entry-level engineering position may be relatively simple, to advance within the career field, an engineer must possess strong writing skills particularly in writing reports, proposals, and internal communications.
Main Point 1: Entry-level engineers complete different writing tasks than senior engineers. (Include a few supporting details).
Main Point 2: Senior engineers must write persuasive, complete reports and proposals. (Include a few supporting details).
Main Point 3: Senior engineers must communicate effectively within their organization, especially with subordinates and supervisors. (Include a few supporting details).
Conclusion (Revisit thesis).
- Use 10 minutes to freewrite with the goal to “empty your cup”—writing about whatever is on your mind or blocking your attention on your classes, job, or family. This can be a great way to help you become centered, calm, or focused, especially when dealing with emotional challenges in your life.
- Before each draft or revision of assignments, spend 10 minutes freewriting an introduction and a thesis statement that lists all the key points that supports the thesis statement. Use the key points to develop body paragraphs to support your thesis.
- Create a metacognitive, self-reflective journal: Freewrite continuously (e.g., 5 times a week, for at least 10 minutes, at least half a page) about what you learned in class or during study time. Document how your used your study hours this week, how it felt to write in class and out of class, what you learned about writing and about yourself as a writer, how you saw yourself learning and evolving as a writer, what you learned about specific topics. What goals do you have for the next week?
- For each of the writing tasks you have assigned to you in the next couple weeks, attempt each of the Prewriting Activities and Structure Techniques here. Which work best for you? Does the success of the strategy vary by the task's purpose and audience? How will the knowledge you've gained shape your unique writing process?
Researching as Part of the Process
Unlike quick prewriting activities, researching is best done slowly and methodically and, depending on the project, can take a considerable amount of time. Researching is exciting, as students activate their curiosity and learn about the topic, developing ideas about the direction of their writing. The goal of researching is to gain background understanding on a topic and to check one’s original ideas against those of experts. However, it is important for the writer to be aware that the process of conducting research can become a trap for procrastinators. Students often feel like researching a topic is the same as doing the assignment, but it’s not.
The two aspects of researching that are often misunderstood are as follows:
- Writers start the research process too late so the information they find never really becomes their own setting themselves up for way more quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing the words of others than is appropriate for the 70% one’s own words and 30% the words of others ratio necessary for college-level research-based writing.
- Writers become so involved in the research process that they don’t start the actual writing process soon enough so as to meet a due date with a well written, edited, and revised finished composition.
Being thoughtful about limiting one’s research time—and using a planner of some sort to organize one’s schedule—is a way to keep oneself on task with research. The value of research should not be underestimated in the writing process! Often, it's the students who take the time to research effectively that develop the most appropriate documents for their rhetorical situations.
I can't overstate this.
Student-writers who prioritize research usually produce the best documents.
I often also hear from student-writers that they visited the library in a former English course, and they know how to use the library. I have an advanced degree that required extensive research, and every time I have a research task, I still speak to a librarian. They are the experts! And they are available to you at no cost. I cannot urge you enough - every writing task you have in your academic and professional life, ask a librarian for advice!
- Schedule an appointment to discuss your writing assignment with a librarian. Appointments can be face-to-face, online, or over the phone. Or you can email a librarian (remember to develop an effective professional email as described in this text). Share the assignment description with the librarian, and be clear about what kinds of help you'd like. You might ask questions such as: What are the best databases for me to search? What electronic books or movies are available about my topic? What keywords will yield the best results? Be sure to thank the librarian for their time!
- Consider unexpected forms of research. Student-writers often look to online searches for research, but what about other options? Some technical writing tasks in particular rely on research that cannot be found in databases or books. Let's say, for instance, your writing task is to develop a set of instructions. You could look to personal blogs from people in the career field you're researching. Perhaps they have written a blog post with a similar set of instructions. Or you could watch Youtube videos for examples of instructions. You can also interview people to ask for their insight. A word of caution though - when looking at how others have written documents, take extra care not to model your document similarly. Their work is copyrighted; you must honor copyright, or you could lose your job or worse. In the academic setting, academic dishonesty consequences might apply as well.
- Cite your information as you research and write. Often, student-writers will wait until late in their writing process to figure out citations. That is a flawed approach though because you could miss a citation or several, also leading to issues and consequences of academic dishonesty. An annotated bibliography is a great way to keep track of the sources you research and why you think they might be valuable to your writing. However, you could develop a less formal note-taking strategy.
Drafting as Part of the Process
Once students have spent time and effort preparing to write by gathering ideas, researching concepts, and organizing content, they are ready to begin drafting.
Many instructors recommend a practice that is referred to as fast drafting, in which the student writes under the pressure of a time limit, much like freewriting. This allows students to create without their inner critic undermining their momentum. It empowers the “creator hand” to work with agency, while silencing the “editor hand.”
To do fast drafting, students first need to set up the conditions that will help in their success and is appropriate to their abilities to focus. The following are easy steps writers follow:
- Create a block of time in which there are no interruptions. This should be a realistic length, given a writer’s ability to focus, from 10 minutes at a time to 75 minutes or longer.
- Decide on the goal: Write a paragraph in 10 minutes, 2 pages in 1 hour, or a complete document in 1 hour and 15 minutes.
For some, 75 minutes is a good length, but some students find that after 30 minutes they can no longer concentrate. If that is the case, they should plan on several shorter sessions of distraction-free time.
During this time, students should turn off their phones and social media, let the dog outside, and ensure that it’s time for children to be asleep. This needs to be quiet, concentrated time.
Students need to let go of their worries about good and bad ideas. There will be time to rethink, rephrase, and rework during the revision process.
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Following drafting, writers tend to revise and edit their work. The revision and editing processes are particularly critical in professional writing as communications are expected to be error-free. Because of the complexity and importance of revision and editing, this text features an entire chapter on those steps in the process. Please review that in detail when writing documents and then also as a resource when you revise and edit them.
Further Resources
Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides free writing resources and instructional material. Visit The Purdue OWL (Purdue U Writing Lab, 2019).
For further information on the steps of the writing process and tips for each of those steps, read “ The Writing Process ” by Ali Hal ( Daily Writing Tips website, 2019).
Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers . 2nd edition, 1973, Oxford UP, 1998.
Goldberg, Natalie. Wild Mind : Living the Writer’s Life. Bantam Books, 1990.