Analyzing the stages of writing and editing an article: prewriting stage

I elaborate on how to prepare an article outline that can write the first draft in an hour or less.

The Writing in the Sciences course I’m currently taking goes into detail about writing an article, a post, or whatever. I discovered that at the start of editing, I empirically came to such a process.

If you have been working with text for a long time, then you know all this. But I decided to write down the main ideas about writing and editing the text. Repetition is the mother of learning.

So, we usually write an article in 3 stages:
- Preparation (70% of the time).
- Writing (10%).
- Editing (20%).

The author of the course claims that the second stage takes the least time — 10% of work. But only on the condition that there was a proper prewriting stage.

In a perfect world, we should just sit down and write what has already taken shape in our head. Do not climb anywhere for additional information, do not check the facts, do not edit — all this should be done at other stages.

10% includes the free flow of the thoughts in accordance with a previously drawn-up plan and already collected information.

What needs to be done during the prewriting?
1️⃣ Find relevant information, read it and upload it to one place — for example, to Google Docs. Let it be like garbage, it’s acceptable now.

Our task is to deter ourselves from running through the tabs. It’s so easy to get distracted by something else and lose focus. When I write, I do not even allow myself to read about something else — so as not to emerge from the topic. I dive there for a while, like a scuba diver underwater.

2️⃣ Select the main ideas/theses.
Think about it away from the computer. For example, take a walk, drink tea, sleep, or just get distracted. It is necessary to let the brain wander and at the same time digest everything and sort it out.

☝️Don’t push ideas in front of your laptop, trust your brain more. If you give it even a little rest, it will quickly make up an article plan for you.

3️⃣ After the rest, you should come up with an approximate image of the text. Now you need to return to the garbage doc and organize the information in the order in which you want to submit it.

Group the similar thoughts. Parts that seem superfluous are better not to delete but move somewhere to the very bottom of the document. At the final stage, it will be possible to dig there and add some quotes to the article.

4️⃣ Make a plan from the theses. Insert there the facts on which the theses will be based: research, quotes, figures — and links to the resources where they were taken from. Here you can also put images (and again links to resources from where they were taken). In the process of writing, you do not have to switch between and get distracted, everything will be at hand. You will know exactly what and where you want to write.

The result is a structure like this:
- The main theses and how you are ready to confirm them — become the main sections of the article.
- The theses for subsections that confirm the main thesis.

How to make sure that the logic is not broken and the subtheses confirm the main thesis?
Write down a plan from the theses and see how logically one thought derives from another. You will see duplicates (the same thoughts repeated in different paragraphs) if any. You can also assign a tag according to the meaning of each section and look at the structure in terms of tags: is there any logic in this?

What if the plan is too long and complicated?
If this happens by itself, then you should think about how to split this article into two. A complicated plan makes things more difficult for perception.

Thus:
☝️Do not scatter arguments and counterarguments throughout the text. Come up with an order. For example, find one argument and one counterargument to the thesis. Or for each thesis — one example. And so it should go throughout the text.

If you want to add two examples in one section, do the same in other sections. It seems like a stupid formality: what about the creative impulse and all that; why reduce everything to a rigid skeleton. But we should not think about our creativity when we write for others, only about the copy to be easily understood.

I remember that on the blog of “Texterra”, a digital marketing agency, there was an author who wrote (and maybe still writes) vividly. Obviously, he is an educated, developed, broad-minded person. But his texts did not reach the goal at all. After reading it, I was always left with an unpleasant aftertaste — what did I just read? I wasn’t the only one with such an impression.

Let the structure of the text be boring and strict, but the text itself will already be able to afford liveliness and at the same time not confuse the reader. After all, even the most violent river must have banks.