What Makes A Good Writing?

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

Everybody has their own methods for writing; however, I believe there is always room for improvement. Chapter 3 in Everyone’s an Author has shown me that writing involves processes that need to be mastered through constant practice. It also revealed helpful tips on how to develop writing processes that can help write effective papers.

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

Dan Melzer, a former student at Florida State University, discusses a few approaches to succeeding as a writer in “Understanding Writing Assignments: Tips and Techniques.” Melzer addresses seven methods to do well as a writer; whether that be in school or the workplace. To shortly summarize the tips, Melzer explores ways that students can help themselves by using their resources. Also, by analyzing the questions and instructions that a teacher asks of the class. He goes on to say that it is also important for the writer to figure out who the audience is. This will ultimately determine the writing style. Basically, if the writer is aware of the audience then he/she will execute the writing assignment differently than if he/she were to just make assumptions of who

Making sure your sentences are correct and error free is the most critical process in writing. Great ways to make sure your paper is solid is to re-read your essay. Having another set of eyes work on your essay is also a great way to find easily overlooked errors. The quickly fixed and missed errors add up, and end up costing you. While proofreading search for certain things in punctuation such as run-on sentences. Scan the essay for weak words such as good, a lot, things, and very. Proofreading my paper benefits me on everything I write. Employers might overlook resumes, when potential employees have constant errors on their application.

As I look back into my high school years, I thought I wrote papers well. But then coming into a college environment, my papers were mediocre. By overlooking at my past papers, I found that they were unorganized, sloppy and had bad use of diction. From now on, I will use the tools I learned in English 1100-40 as a foundation for the future papers I intend on writing in college. Following the criteria of organizing ideas so that they flow, impacting the reader with diction and also by being creative, will help become an ideal writer. Following the criteria of staying motivated in short and long term goals, taking responsibility for actions and finally the ability to study well will help me develop into a supreme student.

Writing is different for everybody. After reading the first part of On Writing Well by William Zinsser my perspective toward writing changed; starting off by the fact that he admitted that “writing is indeed hard” (12). This author, with humorous stories and anecdotes, explained several principles that help one understand how to write efficiently. First of all, be yourself! Zinsser emphasizes the fact that you should be true to yourself and your writing in order to engage a reader in your piece. Other essential principles are: Be precise and avoid clutter. He claims that “the secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components” (7). As I read, I noticed how important engaging a reader becomes to an author but Zinsser reminded me how my writing was made to “please myself first” and then an audience (25). The last but not least rules to follow are: to “avoid clichés” (Zinsser, 35) and “separate usage from confusing jargon” (Zinsser, 45). It is important to maintain your reader active by expressing clear thoughts and avoiding typical sayings that only make a literary piece

The college textbooks always suggest in order to write a good article there are several stages and several points that you should take and consider. For example before you start writing, first you have to brainstorm ideas, take notes, and make outlines. After getting everything in order, you have to decide what kind of article you are writing: a comparison and contrast writing, a cause and effect writing, or etc. Then you have to think of a good thesis statement, subtopic statements, introduction and conclusions, central paragraphs, and many more. Finally you have to worry about having sentence variety, not to use passive voice, not to have run on sentences, not to use too much ‘is’ and ‘and’. I do not know about

The ability to produce a good paper is one that comes with time. It is a meticulous process involving many elements, each requiring a great amount of attention. Although good writing takes a lot of effort, completing a great piece can be very satisfactory. The skill of good writing can be carried over throughout your entire life, making it a very valuable ability to acquire.

Writing well is one skill that many wish that they possessed, but they are limited by lack of grammar knowledge, sophisticated sentence structure, and original creative ideas. Even people who write as a living struggle to create a work that will be thought of as brilliant and memorable. What are the qualifications that make a work of writing good? Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, Why not a Football degree by William F. Shughart, and The 10,000 Hour Rule by Malcolm Gladwell are all examples of excellent prose.

I enrolled in this writing class about perspectives on friendship because I feel like their are many different opinions on friendship and it is a topic that I feel enough motivation to write about. There are also many philosophers and intellectuals who have written about the concept of friendship so I have many resources to strengthen my arguments in my essays. I’m a talkative and social person so I’ve had many different types of friendships I can reference. I’m a broadcast journalism major and I hope this class can allow me to analyze friendships or relationships between countries with another perspective.

This for me was a very hard question to answer due to the fact that its an opinion, and there are very many types of writing. Different structures, ideas, metaphors, and concepts. You have to remember to ask, whether the writing in itself is good in my point of view or not, has to answer to my specific guidelines which in your case might not be the same. The first and foremost of the many guidelines is how the author set's up the introductory sentence or better yet, the hook. If the author for example, is writing a cook-book, his first sentence should be appealing to the sense of taste. For example, If you are writing on how to bake a chocolate cake, you can sound appealing by saying, it will almost feel like you added a hint of heaven

What is good writing? Good writing can be defined in many ways, good writing is defined with suspense, imagery, and In writing, suspense is used to get readers more engaged in the story. Readers will always want to keep on reading if you have suspense because you'll never know what will happen next. Suspense also use cliffhangers, authors use cliffhangers so that you always want to keep on reading. Suspense also brings excitement and thrill to the story. Good writing is also defined with imagery. Authors use Imagery to help express their thoughts more visually and help bring out the emotion inside the readers. Imagery also helps the Readers make them feel like they are with the characters in the story.

The most important thing that a piece “good” writing does is make people question where they stand on certain topics. This is the most important thing because when you question things you learn more, and when learn more you will be able to teach more. When you read something you do not want to just read it and not learn anything from it, then there would have been no purpose in reading it. Writers do not just write papers so they can tell the reader what is right or wrong. They write to explain their theory, to make others understand where they are coming from and the logic behind them.

Writing is not just as simple as putting words down on a document or a piece of paper, it is a process. Within this intricate process are steps that involve more than just writing, such as critical thinking, planning, and editing. Using these steps has not only helped me when planning an essay but also when composing one. Throughout this course, I have managed to improve many skills and gain a lot of strengths, but I still possess some weaknesses. Overall, I believe my strengths have definitely outgrown these weaknesses and have led to a better, more high-quality writing process which leads to improved essays.