Module 1 — Effective
writing: Strategies
and principles
| Course Guide | Module 1 | Module 2a | Module 2b |
Step 2: Organizing
| "Order and simplification are the first steps to the mastery of a subject." (Thomas Mann) |
From thinking to writing
Once you have come up with some ideas or gathered your information in whatever way is comfortable for you, you must bring some order to them and some structure to your document. The process of generating ideas is quite different from the process of structuring them.
Keep in mind that your reader doesn't really care about the process you went through to get to your conclusions or recommendations. The reader wants a clear, concise end product, together with enough proof to show that you had adequate information to base it on, and that your thought processes were logical. Organizing your document often means deciding not to include some of the ideas you brainstormed in the prewriting step.
Developing a hierarchy of ideas
Effective structure or organization is based on providing a hierarchy of ideas for your reader.
You, as the writer, have to do the hard work so that your reader has an easy time of it. If you don't, the reader will give up on your document.
To provide a clear hierarchy, you need to:
- focus on your statement of purpose;
- stress your conclusions and recommendations;
- divide your writing into main ideas;
- subdivide these into supporting ideas.
Next you need to choose an appropriate order for your ideas. This order will depend on your purpose—your statement of purpose.
When your objective is to explain something, you can order by means such as:
- time
- components
- level of importance.
The reader needs some kind of framework in order to follow your explanation.
When your objective is to ask for action you can use:
- a direct approach for a reader you think is likely to agree with you
- an indirect approach for a reader you think will disagree with you.