The Basics of Good Writting

The Basics of Good Writing

So you're going to sit down at your computer, go through your notes, and in a few hours produce a piece of research writing. Right? Wrong!

It is impossible to start from nothing and produce a good piece of writing, because it is very hard to organize your material and write at the same time. If you are working out which piece of research to talk about next and worrying about verb agreement, you are less likely to produce a good piece of writing.

Here are some suggestions:

Plan your writing. Before you start writing, find a way to organize your material so that you know what you are going to write about, in what order, and what you're going to say. Try writing an outline. Trying writing your ideas down on the back of an envelope, or a piece of old paper. It doesn't have to be beautiful, it just has to help you think about what you are going to say. Use whatever method works for you, no matter how strange!

Ignore the language! When you plan your writing, don't worry about the language. Concentrate on what you are going to say. Write in notes so that you don't have to think about verb agreement. Don't waste time worrying about spelling. You can think about all these aspects of writing after you've decided what you are going to say. If you spend a lot of time fixing all the prepositions and conjunctions in an early draft you are not going to be willing to cut out paragraphs or sentences that you later realize aren't necessary, or to change them substantially. So don't put a lot of effort into proofreading until you are sure that what you want to say is the best you can come up with, then you can spend more time on fixing up the writing so that the punctuation, spelling, etc. is correct.

Write and rewrite! More experienced writers rewrite more times and more substantially than less experienced writers. Are you surprised? Good writing takes time for everyone. The better a writer you become, the more you will see that the...