DeVry Writing Center: The Writing Process
Just as following a recipe helps us create tasty dishes, following the writing process supports our efficient and effective writing.
- Before Writing: Explore topic, audience purpose and other details of the rhetorical situation, then outline a plan for writing.
- During Writing: Follow the plan to develop a complete draft.
- After Writing: Revise and edit to prepare your message for delivery.
The process is different for each writing task:
- A text message may require just a few seconds to plan, draft and revise.
- A class discussion post might require preparatory research, a while to write, and a few minutes to review.
- A major assignment might begin with a week of exploring, researching, organizing before beginning a first draft, and it will be very worthwhile to take several days to "sleep on it" and polish in multiple drafts to get to an excellent final submission.
Within the basic before, during, and after process resources provided below, decide which strategies best meet your writing needs.
At the bottom of the page, you'll find resources for formatting essays in APA style.
Before Writing (Pre-Writing)
Avoid writer's block! Prewriting includes finding, exploring, focusing, and organizing ideas. Drafting is easy when you have a detailed plan to follow!
Effective writing relies on careful preparation, including:
- Examining the Rhetorical Situation
- Selecting a Subject
- Addressing an Audience
- Establishing a Purpose
- Deciding on Structure, Strategy, and Style
Learn more about each element in the resources below.
Examining the Rhetorical Situation
The Rhetorical Situation section addresses everything impacting the communication environment. This includes the audience's prior knowledge or personal opinion, the medium over which the communication takes place, and even whether it is before or after lunchtime! The Essential Communication Question (ECQ) helps writers consider all aspects of a writing task before diving in.
Addressing an Audience
Establishing a Purpose
Additional resources coming soon!
During Writing (Drafting)
You have the vision, supporting information, and outline mapping the path to your destination. Just write!
- Follow the plan, but don't worry about writing sequentially. Write the easy parts first, and come back to fill in the harder parts later.
- Detour as necessary to find additional researched support or consider important points that didn't make it into the plan, but don't get sidetracked. Keep moving toward the goal.
- Learn more about research on the Developing and Supporting Arguments page.
- Cite as you write. Deciding to "add citations later" wastes time and risks academic integrity issues.
- Write quickly. Don't fret about details. We'll get to them later. The draft doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be done!
APA Essay Formatting
After Writing (Revising & Editing)
At its root, revision means to see again. Writers must take another look at their entire communication's fundamentals:
- Is its subject and message clearly focused?
- Is it appropriate to meet the needs of the intended audience?
- Does it accomplish its purpose by delivering suitable information in a credible and impactful manner?
- Do organization of ideas and style of writing suppport the intended outcome?
Writers may need to add or delete or rearrange ideas and information, adjust transitions and tone, and focus the argument more narrowly. Only after taking plenty of time to complete the more "global" changes of revision does it make sense to correct the smaller details with editing and proofreading. Editing resolves issues with punctuation, spelling, grammar and mechanics. It also includes correcting format, citations, and other details.
The DeVry Writing Center (DWC) provides writing and communication resources to support students, faculty, colleagues and alumni. It is open to the public, though some resources have restricted access. Resource sharing and adaptation are permitted in line with the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 deed. The DWC is a collaborative effort by the DeVry University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Library, with the support of other departments from Admissions to Alumni Relations.
Share new resources, feedback, or suggestions with the Writing Center Coordinator.
Michael Dufresne, Professor, CoLAS National Faculty - MDufresne@DeVry.edu
Quick Links & Contacts
- Research, citations, integrity and more: The Ask A Librarian page offers live chat, phone, and email support
- Tutoring: You have multiple options for tutoring support!
- Advising & Career Services: Access support via your Learn.DeVry.edu student portal
- IT Help Desk: 877-306-4283
- DWC: Share new resources, feedback, or suggestions with the Writing Center Coordinator.
Michael Dufresne, Professor, CoLAS National Faculty - MDufresne@DeVry.edu