STAGES OF ESSAY WRITING

Planning:

In this stage you think about the topic of your essay, what to write about. You can start by
taking notes and brainstorming ideas. Even though you can write about anything you want,
keep in mind that the topic should be relevant and interesting.

Shaping:

This is the stage in which your essay will have a distinguishable form, you usually decide
what will be the major ideas, which aspects to include, the arguments, and the overall length.

Drafting:

Here is where you start writing. At first, the draft will look like a bunch of ideas, but you
need to make sure to include everything. Maybe the entire paper will not make much sense,
but the next stage will help you a lot.

Revising:

During this stage, your will critically review your first draft, trying to identify, correct, leave
out, or just re-write whatever you deem necessary. This stage is not as easy as it may look,
since you have to criticize your own work objectively.

Editing:

After the first revision, you will likely write the second draft, which will look better than the
first. In the editing stage the essay starts to take form, as you pay more attention to the
structures, the organization of paragraphs, the citations, and so on.

Proofreading:

Every time you check your work you will find details here and there. The proofreading
section helps you get an overall view of your essay since you read it as a whole, and not just
as a sequence of unrelated paragraphs. A special advice would be to proofread your essay as
many times as you can, so you make sure that everything looks as it should and trust me, you
will always find something to correct. It would be advisable to have a peer, or an expert read
your essay, so you can have an objective opinion.