This is a presentation to describe different writing strategies.
STRATEGIES
These are some strategies suggested by Kennedy & Kennedy (2007) to
develop writing:
I. STRATEGIES FOR GENERATING IDEAS
Here are two useful
techniques for starting ideas flowing and recalling information: brainstorming
and freewriting.
A. BRAINSTORMING
When you brainstorm, you
start with a word or phrase that might launch your thoughts in some
direction. For a set length of time,
putting the conscious, analytical part of your mind on hold, you scribble a
list of ideas as rapidly as possible.
Whenever you try brainstorming, you might follow these bits of advice:
a. Start with a key word or phrase.
b. Set yourself a time limit, fifteen or twenty
minutes.
c. Write rapidly.
d. Don’t stop while you’re brainstorming, don’t
worry about misspelling, repetition, absurdity, or irrelevance.
B. FREEWRITING
Like brainstorming,
freewriting is a way to fight writer’s block by tapping your unconscious. To freewrite, you simply begin writing in the
hope that good ideas will assert themselves. You write without stopping for
fifteen or twenty minutes, trying to keep words poring forth in a steady
flow. Freewriting differs from brainstorming;
in freewriting you write not a list but a series of sentences. If you want to try freewriting for yourself,
here’s what you do:
a.
Write a sentence or two at
the top of your page.
b. For at least ten minutes,
write steadily without stopping.
c. Don’t censor yourself.
d. Feel free to explore.
C. KEEPING A JOURNAL
If you are already in the
habit of keeping a journal, consider yourself lucky. If not, now is a good time to begin. Journal writing offers rich rewards to anyone
who engages in it every day or several times a week. All you need is a
notebook, a writing implement, and a few minutes for each entry; and you can
write anywhere. There are students whose observations, jotted down during a bus
ride, turned into remarkable journal entries.
Not only is journal writing satisfying in itself, a journal can also be
a storehouse of material to write about.
D. ASKING A REPORTER’S
QUESTIONS
News reporters, assembling
facts with which to write the story of a news event, ask themselves six simple
questions, the five W’s- who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
E. SEEKING MOTIVES
In a
surprisingly large part of your college writing, you try to explain human
behavior. If you want to better
understand any human act, you can analyze its components. To do so, you ask five questions. (To produce
useful answers, your subject has to be an act performed for a reason, not a
mere automatic reaction like a sneeze.)
What was
done? Who did
it?
What
means did the person use to make it happen?
Where and
when did it happen and in what circumstances?
What possible
purpose or motive can you attribute to the person?
E. SEEKING MOTIVES (CONTINUANCE)
Answering those questions
starts a writer generating ideas. Burke
names the five components as follows:
1. The act
2.
The actor, the person who
acted.
3.
The agency; the means or
instrument the actor used to make the act happen. (If the act is an insult, the
agency might be words or a slap in the face, if it is murder, the agency might
be a sawed-off shotgun.)
4.
The scene: where the act
took place, when, and in what circumstances
5.
The purpose: the motive for
acting.
II.
STRATEGIES FOR SHAPING A DRAFT
Starting to write often
seems a chaotic activity, but when you shape a draft, you try to reduce the
chaos and create order. In doing so, you
can use these strategies:
A. STARTING TO WRITE
For most writers, the
hardest part of writing comes first:
the moment when they confront a blank sheet of paper. Fortunately, you can do much to get ready for
it. Sometimes a simple trick or a
playful change of your writing circumstances will ease you over that hard part
and get you smoothly rolling along.
A. STARTING TO WRITE (CONTINUANCE)
Unless getting started is
never a problem for you, we invite you to browse through this list. We’ve sorted the suggestions into three kinds:
1. Setting up circumstances in which you feel
comfortable and ready to write:
a. Get comfortable.
b. Exhaust your excuses.
c. Yield to inspiration.
d.
Relocate.
Try writing in an unfamiliar place.
e. Write in the library
f. Write on a Schedule.
g. Defy a Schedule.
h.
Write early in the morning.
i. Write in bed.
j. Change activities. When words won’t come, do something quite different from writing for a while.
k. Switch instruments. Use a pen, a pencil, a computer, note cards,
etc.
2. Preparing your mind
a. Discuss your plans.
b. Shrink your immediate job.
c. Freewrite.
d. State your purpose.
e. Read for fun.
f. Read purposefully.
g.
Try the carrot and stick. When inspiration
is on strike, promise yourself a reward: a TV show, for example.
h. Seek a provocative title.
i. Keep a daily journal.
j.
Doodle.
Draw rabbits, stick figures, etc. and words might start to flow.
3. Making a Start Enjoyable
a. Time
yourself.
b. Slow to a crawl.
c. Begin badly –on purpose.
d. Begin on scrap paper.
e. Tape-record yourself.
f. Imagine you’re giving a speech.
g. Write in a role. Pretend you are someone else. Try the Great Chef method. Analyze a paragraph by another writer and cook up a new paragraph of your own from its
ingredients.
h.
Write with excessive simple-mindedness.
i. Address a sympathetic reader. Write as if you were writing to a close friend.
j.
Begin writing the part you find most
appetizing.
B. RESTARTING
When you have to write a
long or demanding essay that you can’t finish at the sitting, a special
challenge often will arise. Try the following suggestions:
a. Read what you have written
b. Snowplowing. Start writing madly, on the strength of the
new thrust. This often gets you a few
sentences farther.
c. Pause in midstream.
d.
Leave yourself hints for
how to continue.
C. STATING A THESIS
Often a good, clear, ample
statement of thesis will suggest to you an organization for your ideas. Here are four suggestions for writing a
workable thesis statement:
a. State it exactly.
b.
State just one central
idea.
c. State your thesis positively.
d.
Limit your thesis statement
to what it is possible to demonstrate.
D. GROUPING YOUR IDEAS
In any bale of scribblings
you have made while exploring a topic, you will usually find a few ideas that
seem to belong together. Here are six common ways to work:
a. Rainbow connections. Write on a sheet of paper all the main points
they’re going to express.
b. Linking.
Draw lines that link similar ideas.
c.
Solitaire. Spread out the cards and arrange
them in order, as in a game of solitaire.
d. Scissors and tape. Group any notes that refer
to the same point. With scissors, separate items that don’t
belong together.
e. Clustering.
Write a word in the center of the page.
Then circle it with other words until a pattern appears.
f. The electronic game. Arrange rough notes into
groups right on a computer screen, moving items from place to place.
E. OUTLINING
Good writers Organize what
they write in:
a. Informal outlines. It is just a brief list of pints to make, in
the order you plan to make them.
b. Formal outlines. This is an elaborate job built with time and
care and meant for showing off. F. PARAGRAPHING Even your most willing readers need occasionally
to pause, to digest what you tell them.
This is why essays are written not in large, indigestible lumps of prose
but in paragraphs –small units, each indented, each more or less
self-contained, each contributing something new in support of your essay’s main
idea. Paragraphs can be as short as one
sentence or as long as a page.
These are
some ways of developing a paragraph:
a.
Using topic sentences. One tried-and-true way to draft an effective
paragraph is to write down in advance one sentence that spells out what the
paragraph’s central point is to be.
b.
Giving
examples. To find your own examples, do a little brainstorming or thinking. You
can begin with your own experience, with whatever is near you. When you set out
to draft a paragraph on a topic that you think you know nothing about –the
psychology of gift giving, let’s say –revolve it slowly in your mind.
c.
Other
ways of developing a paragraph. The strategies of
analyzing, comparing and contrasting, seeking causes and effects, and defining
can serve you well.
d.
Using
transitions. When using transitions effective writing is
well organized. It proceeds in some
sensible order, each sentence following naturally from the one before it. Yet even well-organized prose can be hard to
read unless it contains transitions: devices that tie together words in a
sentence, sentences in a paragraph, and paragraphs in an essay (e.g. in other
words, therefore, and, on the other hand, etc.).
e.
Writing
an opening. To ask a question is often an
effective way to begin. The reader will
expect the essay to supply an answer.
f.
Writing a
conclusion. The final paragraphs of an essay linger longest in the reader’s
mind.
G. TELLING A STORY
Telling a story is a vivid
and convincing way to give an example or to illustrate what a writer is
saying. A usual way to tell a story, an
easy one for a writer to follow, is to tell it in chronological order –that is,
in the same sequence the events followed in time.
III. STRATEGIES FOR REWRITING
These strategies are aimed
to support in revising your paper, whether you change all its main ideas or
only polish its words and phrases.
Sometimes a first draft needs to be entirely rethought and recast into a
new mold.
A. REVISING DEEPLY
You can ask questions in
revising drafts written for practically any paper assignment related to
reaching your goal (Have you accomplished what you set out to do?), testing
structure (Does everything follow clearly?,
and considering your audience (Who will read this paper?).
B. LOOKING FOR LOGICAL
FALLACIES
Logical fallacies are
common mistakes in thinking –often, the making of statements that lead to wrong
conclusions. Here are a few of the most
familiar, to help you recognize them when you see or hear them and so guard
against them when you write. If when you
look back over your draft you discover any of these, cut them, think again, and
come up with a different argument:
a. Oversimplification
b.
Either/or reasoning.
Assuming that there are only two sides to a question.
c. Argument from dubious authority
d. Argument against the man
e. Argument from ignorance
f. Begging the question
g. Arguing by analogy
C. STRESSING WHAT COUNTS
A boring
writer writes as though every idea is no more important than any other. An effective writer cares what matters,
decides what matters most, and shines a bright light on it. You can’t emphasize merely by underlining
things or by throwing them into CAPITAL LETTERS.
a. Stating first or last. One way to stress what counts is to put
important things first or last. The most
emphatic positions in an essay, or in a single sentence are two: the beginning
and the end. In an essay, you might
state in your opening paragraph what matters most. On the other hand, to place an idea last can
throw weight on it. One way to assemble your ideas in an emphatic order is to
proceed from least important to most important.
b. Repeating. In general, it’s economical to say a thing
once. But at times a repetition can be
valuable. One such time is when a
repetition serves as a transition: it recalls something said earlier.
D. CUTTING AND WHITLING
Like pea pickers who throw
out dirt and pebbles, good writers remove needless words that clog their prose.
They like to. One of the chief joys of
revising is to watch 200 paunchy words shrink to a svelte 150. The more you
revise, the more shortcuts you’ll discover (Kennedy & Kennedy: 2007:
471-531).
THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND GOOD LUCK!
L.E.I. GUILLERMINA OCAMPO CONTRERAS
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