Writing requires a methodology, at least if you intend to publish something slightly larger than a blog post. A common mistake that authors make is that they just start writing. This is like driving down a country road without being sure where you are going. After a while, you’ll get lost trying to decide if the content should be here, there, or somewhere else. The end result is likely to be complicated, and the time and effort required will be much greater.

Proper planning requires a top-down approach, not unlike the planning approach used in software engineering. It will save you time and produce a better result. Here are the essential steps.

1. Aim

2. Investigation

3. Audience

4. Describe

5. Delighted

6. Presentation

7. Review

Aim

Write down the purpose of your writing assignment, it will help you focus your mind. What are you trying to achieve and why?

Investigation

It goes without saying that you should know something about your subject. Find all the information you can collect on the Internet, in magazines or books. Write what is relevant to the purpose of your writing project.

Audience

Define your audience. It is essential that you know who you are writing for, as it determines the structure, language and content. Are you writing for kids or adults, a technical or non-technical audience, a senior audience, a peer group, or a subservient group of people? Maybe your audience is unknown?

• If you are writing for a higher audience, you may need to start your document with an executive summary. Use it to identify your purpose in writing and what conclusions or recommendations you intend to make, then use the rest of your document to argue your case.

• If you are writing for a subordinate audience, you must decide whether the content is instructional or informational in nature. Instructional writing requires a different style than informational writing.

• If you are writing for a peer group, you must accept that members of your audience may know more about the material you are presenting than you do, or they may know less. You need to adopt a less authoritative tone in the way you express yourself and possibly invite feedback.

Describe

An outline is a plan for the structure of your document and an essential step in organizing your content. If you are the creative type, you can start by brainstorming. Use a text editor and write whatever comes to mind. When you’re done, arrange the content in a logical document structure. Go back through your schematic and add problems as they occur to you. If you’re the methodical type, structure your document into headings and subheadings, then make appropriate comments under each heading about the content you want to include.

Don’t write your final content now, and don’t worry about language at this stage. Just focus on the topics you want to include. Make sure there is a logical flow to your outline and a proper sequence to the information you present. Does each problem or question you raise lead to an explanation or argument about its relevance or its solution?

What you should now have is an outline of the document.

Delighted

With your outline complete, you are now in a much better position to fill in the details and write the actual content. Follow the outline of the document you have produced and now focus on presenting your content in clear and uncomplicated language. Avoid long, detailed paragraphs, accept that readers are more likely to skim through your document rather than read it in detail. Long paragraphs are not appreciated. If you present a series of points or problems, write them as a bulleted list or a numbered list. If applicable, end your writing with a brief summary of the main points you have tried to get across.

Presentation

You don’t need to worry about the presentation until you have completed the actual content. Now you can decide how your document will look like. Now you can finalize the following details:

• Document size.

• Background and border colors

• Selection of fonts for the body of the text and the lists.

• Selection of font, color and size for different headers.

• Inclusion of images and their location in your document.

• Headers and footers.

Review

A final and essential step in your writing process is to spell check and proofread your document. The spell checker can be done immediately, but I advise you to take a break before correcting it. We have a tendency to blindly stare at our own writing, not noticing obvious little mistakes. Rest and correct with a fresh mind, not once but preferably a couple of times.

one last caution

Save your work regularly. Retyping a document you’ve lost is much more difficult because you’ll be concentrating on remembering what you wrote last time, and this blocks the creative process.