Descriptosaurus Personal Writing

The Writing Process in Action

Alison Wilcox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000518177
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Descriptosaurus Personal Writing provides young writers with an opportunity to link their personal lives and school experiences, and gives writing a meaningful and personal context. It is a resource that will guide and scaffold students to produce vivid, powerful, descriptive and meaningful personal texts, and, acting as a springboard for other genres, will dramatically improve the quality of their writing in all areas.

It provides a detailed step-by-step guide through the writing process by using personal narratives to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding of writing a text. It demonstrates different techniques, and provides useful tips and suggestions on how to revise a text and transform it into a powerful, descriptive personal narrative. With prompts, plans, methods and models for poetry and prose, this book helps tackle each stage of the writing process from planning and writing a first draft to revising and editing.

Descriptosaurus Personal Writing is an ideal vehicle for welcoming and celebrating different cultures, experiences and stories into the writing curriculum: an invaluable resource to dramatically improve children's writing for all KS2 primary and KS3 secondary English teachers, literacy coordinators and parents.

1 The writing process

DOI: 10.4324/9781003215653-2

Composing texts involves a sequenced, step-by-step process, from generating ideas to publishing a finished piece of writing. Understanding the stages in the writing process gives apprentice writers a clear mental map of the steps they need to take to produce a piece of writing which fits its purpose and engages the reader. It develops their skills in both their authorial (the drafting and revision) and secretarial (editing) stages. It makes visible each step in the process of crafting a text, the strategies that can be adopted at each stage, and, with effective feedback given at each step, it scaffolds the writing task. It helps to develop an apprentice writer’s self-efficacy – the confidence to tackle a piece of writing by believing in their ability, and that, through their own efforts and the strategies they adopt, they can improve their writing.

The writing process involves the following stages:

1. Audience and purpose

• Why am I writing this?
• What am I writing?
• Who am I writing it for?

2. Brainstorming ideas

• Events
• Places
• Characters
• Key moments
• Key ideas
• Information about a topic

3. Planning and rehearsing

• Sorting ideas
• Developing ideas, plots, descriptions
• Organising ideas, information, themes
• Rehearsing the writing: retelling the story aloud to an audience, who ask questions about any information, events etc. that are unclear

Each writer has a preferred method of planning. Some like a boxed plan, others story webs or illustrated storyboards. Some like to just get their ideas down on paper without much planning; others prefer to plan in a methodical, detailed way using an outline for each element of the story (setting, character, plot, problem and resolution) or topic. It is important to explore each method to find which one suits each individual writer.

4. Drafting

• Recording ideas in a first draft

Very few professional writers get the draft ‘right’ the first time, and many rewrite their text dozens of times. They see the draft as a time of discovery: a small step in the writing process. It is a testing ground to explore ideas and decide:

1. What you want to write
2. How you want to write it

The blank page is the first major obstacle any writer needs to overcome. There is nothing but white space staring back at you. The best way to overcome this is to ignore it and just start writing words: even one word on the page means it is no longer blank. Freewriting is a useful strategy to ‘open the mind’ and helps overcome the ‘blank page syndrome.’ A freewriting exercise is included in Chapter 3.

5. Revising

Improving the effectiveness of the writing:

• Whole text
• Sentences
• Word choice

Professional writers do not regard first drafts as failures or a sign that they cannot write. In fact, they don’t expect them to be particularly good, but instead see them as a step along the writing journey: a stage that leads the writer closer to their final destination – publication!

Step 1: Does the organisation of the text convey its meaning and aid understanding?

Re-seeing the text as a whole – its organisation, structure and development of detail – helps us to assess whether its message, idea or theme is fully developed, clear and complete so that it assists in understanding its purpose, and its content and construction engage the reader.

Step 2: What does each sentence or phrase add to the overall effectiveness of the text?

a. Sentence level

• Does the sentence make sense?
• Does it aid the flow of the writing, or is there a lack of variety in how the sentences are started, or the type and length of the sentences?

For example:

• Does each sentence start the same way?
• Are they all simple sentences?
• Are some of the sentences too long and, therefore, confusing?
• Is the length varied to build highs and lows and vary the pace of the writing?

Zoom in to examine each line to assess what it adds (or detracts) to the effectiveness of the text.

b. Word choice

• Are the verbs powerful and varied?
• Is good use made of specific nouns, adjectives, expanded noun phrases and figurati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements and dedication
• Introduction
• 1 The writing process
• 2 Making learning in the writing process visible
• 3 Personal narrative writing: A springboard for other forms of writing
• 4 What is personal narrative?
• 5 Getting started: A writing journal
• 6 Prompts
• 7 External sources as writing prompts
• 8 Plot outlines
• 9 Writing a first draft
• 10 The revision process
• 11 Revising action scenes
• 12 Setting
• 13 Characters
• 14 Dialogue
• 15 Reflections
• 16 Editing
• Appendix