Students often believe that writing well equates to a mechanically sound essay that includes proper APA citation. While mechanics and APA citation are important, writing well includes spending a significant amount of time drafting, developing an effective thesis statement, considering your audience, and revising, revising, revising!
Below, you will find videos produced by the Online Writing Laboratory at Purdue University that will guide you through the drafting & revising process, audience considerations, and eliminating wordiness. Good luck, and remember to start your writing project early!
Thesis Creation & Development
A clear, concise thesis statement sets the tone and expectation for your essay. You can think of a thesis statement like the hub of a bicycle wheel to which everything around it is connected.
If you need help creating your thesis, or if you need help revising your thesis, you should watch the video below, created by the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University. The video will identify the key features of a thesis statement and provides concrete examples to help you create or revise your thesis.
Outlining Your Paper
Creating an outline for your paper is an important step in paper development. It helps your paper to stay organized and focused and ensures that no steps in your paper are missed along the way.
You can create your outline to organize your thoughts and help to shape your paper and guide your research, or you can use the outline after your research to organize how you want your research to be presented. Either way, it is a critical step in helping to write a good paper.
This video from Georgia Tech demonstrates what an ideal outline should have.
This outline sample will provide you with a template to organize your paper.
Considering Audience
Effective writers craft their writing with an audience in mind. This is true for all types of writing such as emails, reports, journal articles, and annotated bibliographies. To write to a specific audience, writers consider genre, purpose, and tone & language - all of these elements work in harmony to create an effective and persuasive piece of writing.
View this short video created by the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University that takes you step-by-step through the process of considering your audience.
Drafting & Revising
Effective writers have one thing in common: they understand that writing is not a linear process and that drafting & revising is at the heart of all great writing. While instructors may speak about revising and the writing process, many students do not fully understand how to effectively draft and revise. View this video produced by the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University that takes you through the steps of drafting & revising your essay.
Eliminating Wordiness
While revising, it's important to eliminate wordiness so your writing is clear and concise - just what your audience wants!
Some techniques to eliminate wordiness focus on global cuts to your draft, while other techniques focus on sentence-level cuts. View this video produced by the Online Writing Laboratory at Purdue University that details some techniques to help you eliminate wordiness in your writing.
