How to write quickly
The full title is "How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly". Stephen Downes explains his system for planning a piece of writing as you write it.
“Part of it is tenacity. For example, I am writing this item as I wait for the internet to start working again in the Joburg airport departures area. But part of it is a simple strategy for writing you essays and articles quickly and expertly, a strategy that allows you to plan your entire essay as you write it, and thus to allow you to make your first draft your final draft. This article describes that strategy.”
The second paragraph above acts as a summary of the whole piece. Downes claims that discursive writing can be classified (it seems to be a week for classifications) into four categories;
- Argument: convinces someone of something
- Explanation: tells why something happened instead of something else
- Definition: states what a word or concept means
- Description: identifies properties or qualities of things
I shall leave you to spend the next half an hour reading his words…
Other pages on writing include
- Writing
- Writing Briefly
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bodmas.org, 1 December 2006