Pros And Cons By John Williams

Stephen King, in his chapter titled “Toolbox” in On Writing, aims to convince the struggling writer that taking simple steps to organize a metaphorical box of writing tools will improve their writing. He does so through the use of organization, substance, and style and by appealing to his audience with logical examples to support his claims. “Toolbox” is, in summary, a crash course given by King on writing improvement. He depicts the fundamentals of good writing as levels of a toolbox then demonstrates how and when each writing tool should be used (King 106-107). The chapter is a veritable response to the question, “How can I improve my writing?” which one can imagine King is routinely asked as a world-renowned author. He already enjoyed an immensely successful writing career when Hodder published On Writing in 2012, so King wrote the chapter “Toolbox” as literary advice to fellow writers by drawing from his own success (“Stephen King”).

The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.

Writing varies from a text message to a novel. Writers often have a difficult task in creating a piece of work that truly identifies the meaning of good writing. Every good writer usually starts with the basics such as genre, audience, rhetorical situation, and reflection of the piece. Throughout this semester, we have gone through all of these key terms in great detail with each new assignment that has come our way. In doing this, not only as students but also as writers, we have come to create our own theory of writing. Every writer has a different theory of writing though most are very similar. Now, at this point in the semester after doing countless journals, in-class exercises, and final assignments, I think I have figured out my own

On a more serious level, coherence is undermined while being one of the writer's and reader's most basic need. "The problem is not that the Five-Paragraph formula produces incoherence but rather that it limits students to a superficial, predictable level or coherence," (232) states Foley. This allows for students to throw any three liberally related ideas together for the body of the essays. Once students fabricate a thesis statement that elucidates for their three ideas, the students feel they have mastered structure. Foley states, "To be asked merely to enumerate three aspects of any topic relieves the student of the need to probe relationships... it robs them of any motivation to do so," (232). Juxtaposition is not

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

I’ve always struggled to break the boundaries entangled within the composition of traditional essays. Between AP Language/Literature courses and AP U.S. History, my writing had become noticeably formulaic; I relied heavily on templates and felt awkward abandoning the traditional five paragraph essay. Although the formulaic way of writing assisted in my capability to critically recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, the patterns were not helpful in developing my organizational skills. My ability to form argumentative ideas from given prompts strengthened, while unity and coherence within paragraphs proved to be my downfall. It was not until my second semester of English at the University of Georgia that I noticed my organization was not comprehensible to the reader. Some paragraphs were like mazes; they left the reader wondering how the first sentence connected to the following sentence. Along with organization, English 1102 helped identify my lack of transitional phrases within paragraphs and the tendency for my argument to shift. Nonetheless, this course has highlighted my strengths as a writer, including my ability to incorporate evidence so that it supports an intelligent, challenging thesis.

According to journalist William Zinsser, a writer must be clear in order to write well. A writer who fills his/her pages with pretentious words, flattery prose, or intricate syntax clouds up his/her sentences and prevents the reader from fully understanding the message at hand. Therefore, Zinsser contends that good writing is achieved when bombastic language and confusing words are avoided. Indeed, stripping “every sentence to its cleanest components”, removing excess verbiage, and molding words into coherent, simple structures prevents the reader from getting lost in a whirlwind of words and thus allows him/her to fully grasp the author’s message (Zinsser 6). In short, clarity leads to writing that is done well.

Christine Love Thompson discusses strategies that she believes are the foundation to “good” writing in the article, “A Dose of Writing Reality: Helping Students Become Better Writers.” Thompson discovers that it is not correct spelling and grammar that makes a “good” writer; it is the voice of the student. She uses sources to support her claim that methods such as using graphic organizers and her constantly making corrections are not as effective as they seem. Thompson organizes the article to ensure better understanding of the process she went through to help her students become better writers.

Throughout this course, I have had to write a number of essays using a variety of techniques. The concept and cause and effect essays are the two main papers I will use to make an evaluative analysis of the outcomes I have learned, utilizing the writing process in Basic Writing I, with expectations of receiving the grade of at least a “B” on my portfolio. This course helped me realize the many steps that are involved in the writing process from gathering ideas to making a final copy. In order to create a good paper you need to organize your ideas. However, I find it tedious to have to connect those ideas; yet, I want my paper to be cohesive and organized.

Cohesion allows multiple references to people, things, and events without reintroducing them throughout the text. A coherent passage focuses the reader’s attention on the main ideas and the particular people, things, and events.

In lesson five of Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 12th Edition, Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup explains the importance of cohesion and coherence in writing prose. Williams and Bizup describes cohesion as the logical and grammatical flow of one sentence to another, which readers move through a passage in a way that communicates a complete thought. A reader should freely interpret a group of sentences without analyzing fancy words from a thesaurus to understand author’s intent. Furthermore, Williams and Bizup explains the importance to discuss familiar concepts at the beginning of a sentence, and introduce unfamiliar ideas at the end of a sentence. This approach allows readers to recognize the consistent “flow” of ideas toward the

Life has thrown me a numerous amounts of obstacles when it comes to my writing flourishing and growing. One moment I will be typing out straight ‘A’ papers and other days my text resembles a children’s book, and not on purpose. My journey of writing is a giant roller coaster of ideas that take twist and turns at every second, I never know when the drop is going to happen.

This correlation of diction and clarity as well as the intent of the literary piece are exemplified rather bluntly in Kurt Vonnegut’s How to Write With Style. Here, Vonnegut tries his hand to contort his absurdist humor and conversational writing style into a double-sided article. Along with other visual cues such as mode, the essay is painted as a straightforward, concise telling of the ground rules for writing with style. Juxtaposing this very easy read is Robert Frost’s The Figure A Poem Makes with

Good writing is about responding to the need of your reader. It must meet their expectations, it must be clear and precise and it must be efficient and effective. Good writing could be logical, ethical, credible or emotional depends on the audience and what you are trying to communicate. (McLean, 2011) For this assignment I will discuss 5out of the nine cognate strategies, I will describe how I implemented them into my own writing in the past and also provide examples of the same. The five cognate strategies I will discuss are: clarity, tone, conciseness, credibility and expectation.

Chapter 2 – The writing process   2.1 How to write an introduction paragraph 2.2 Coherence and cohesion