Theory of Writing

            Throughout the semester I have written many essays whether it be a source-based essay, inquiry-based essay or composition of two genres. Throughout all these essays they all have elements in common and are important. At first, I thought I didn’t have a theory of writing. I usually just write until I was done with the paper. Looking back at it I realized that my theory of writing starts with the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation gives me a topic to talk about that I enjoy writing about. A great example of this is the video game debate and if video games cause violence. It’s essential for me to care about the topic I’m writing about or I won’t enjoy the essay. The next important element to me is my audience. Understanding my audience is important because it shapes the language I use. If I’m writing for teenagers, I don’t want to use hard vocabulary that they don’t understand. On the other hand, if I’m writing for scholars to read, I want to keep my vocab a lot more professional. My audience also dictates my medium. If I want to reach adults, I might want to write an article online so that’s easy to find. If I want to reach children a great way to reach them is by making a meme and writing about it. The tone of most of my writing is to be informative and to use facts to shed light on a topic. A great example of that is in the inquiry-based essay. We used other sources and data to support our claims. The purpose of my writing is to have people understand and see the truth about certain topics. In today’s world there is a lot of confusion on certain topic and what is and isn’t a myth. My stance goes hand in hand with my purpose. My stance is what I support throughout the paper. An example of that is when I say video games don’t cause violence. I should have a strong stance in what I believe otherwise there is no point in writing. The genre I usually write in is a form of an essay and that has staid consistent throughout the semester.

The writing process for me has been to have a main idea and try to brainstorm different ideas that would work with it. A great way for me to start is to have the sources I’m going to talk about in the essay if it is an inquiry or sourced based essay. This gives some backbone for what I want to talk about. After finishing the brainstorm portion, I usually just free right with the main idea i chose. After I have finished free writing ill then go and look over my work and see problems that exist in it and try to fix it. This process hasn’t changed that much since this year. I like to keep consistent especially since it works for me. Weakness I usually have is that my intro and conclusion are not as strong as the rest of my essays. These have improved as I keep getting feedback and make them better each time, we get a new assignment.  Strength I have is my ability to back up my writing with quotes and to help my claims. I hope to get better at writing and to make each essay better than the last. Something that frustrates me about writing is how time consuming it is when writing an essay. What I love about writing is how creative you can be without any constraints.