Planning Responsive and Initiative Correspondence

Once you have determined whether you are going to write a responsive or an initiative document, the next step is to create a letter or e-mail that will fulfill your purpose and answer your reader’s questions. How? You will begin by planning — imagining the components of your document as questions and answers in an imagined face-to-face dialogue with the reader.

Only after this planning process should you begin to draft and revise your document.

The next section of this module takes you through the planning process in detail. You will use a planning document — the Dialogue with the Reader Worksheet — where you fill in the details of your imagined dialogue. Filling in this planning worksheet helps you to formalize your thinking and ensures that all the pertinent details for your correspondence are captured before you start drafting. This makes the drafting process easier and more effective.

Open the blank Dialogue Worksheets below; you should refer to these as you work through the next few activities. The next section of the module outlines the content you will fill in for Section 1, at the top of the worksheets. Read through this section of the worksheets, and then review the information on the writer’s purpose and the reader on the following pages. You will be returning to the same worksheets later in the module and using them with your assignment.