Guide to Polished Writing - Prepare the Way, Phase 2: Articulate Your Intentions
May 27th 2008 22:29
Note: This post presents Part 2 of my Guide to Polished Writing Series. For more thorough coverage of the topic, please consider reading Part 1 first.
Prepare the Way
Phase 2: Articulate Your Intentions
Articulating your intentions is a way of compiling your newly-clarified purposes into a cohesive preliminary plan that will help you get started with your particular writing project.
Nonfiction:
Write out your thesis statement, or topic sentence, expressing exactly what your book or article will offer the reader. This will, of course, be based on your responses to the Phase 1 questions, which have laid out the purpose or purposes you have for writing this piece. At this point, your process will be similar whether you plan to write a book-length work or an article. In later sections, the process for each will vary.
Fiction:
Choose a genre appropriate to your planned story, and write out a plot synopsis, as well as any underlying message, or theme, you hope to convey through your story. Decide on a basic setting and overall mood and create a list of characters with a short description of each, indicating each one’s significance to the tale, as well as any character development that will prove integral to the story’s unfolding plot and theme.
List any specific settings/symbols/fictional techniques/literary devices you plan to use (e.g., suspense, irony, etc.), which would be instrumental in the effective presentation of your story. Here again the process for novels, short stories, and plays (including screenplays) will be quite similar at this early stage.
Poetry:
Choose your poem’s specific theme, focus, and tone. Decide on your poetic style and format, determining whether you’d like your poem to include end-rhyme, internal rhyme, and/or regular meter—or not. (Often, these aspects will take on a life of their own as the poem unfolds—so be prepared to change your plans here.) If your poem will be metered, either decide on a meter now or wait until you begin writing.
Decide on any specific literary techniques you’d particularly like to utilize to convey your message. (Here, again, you may be delighted to discover that some of these techniques will often strike you unawares during the writing of your poem, as inspiration carries you along; so don’t worry too much about these at this point.) Some examples: alliteration, assonance, consonance, simile, metaphor.
Your approach, as you begin plotting your actual course, will depend not only on your answers to the Phase 1 questions, but also on the time and care you take during Phase 2 to assemble them into a coherent expression of your intentions and to decide on the specific writing techniques and literary elements you plan to call upon to bring your work to life. Taking the time to ask and answer the Phase 1 questions and formulate your intentions in Phase 2 before starting to write will help you determine the best path to follow as you forge ahead in the direction of your goal.
Here's to your well-formed intentions!
Jeanne
Stay tuned for the next installment of this series: "Plot the Course, Phase 1: Design Your Project."
Did you enjoy this post? Have any thoughts on articulating your writing intentions? Or, have any other insights on writing that you'd like to share? Can't wait to hear them!
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