Exploring Ideas - Involves: • Starting ahead so ideas can "evolve"
• Reviewing required sources
• Taking notes/ jotting down ideas, free-writing
• Asking yourself "why?" and "how?" and "so what?" about
your observations
• Writing multiple drafts—developing ideas
• Meeting with a friend, a peer tutor, a professional writing
tutor, and/or your professor to go over drafts and
discuss ideas
Developing Form - Involves:
• Examining assignment for expectations
• Grafting a "working" title and thesis statement (revising
as necessary)
• Identifying main ideas
• Making an outline (optional, but often helpful)
• Grafting topic sentences/transitions
• Re-examining the relationship between your ideas, the
assignment, and the emerging form of your paper
• Incorporating examples and quotations gracefully
• Citing sources appropriately
• Proofreading for problems with sentence structure, word
choice, grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.