Download PDFThe Benefit of Writing “Out of Order”
With this in mind, it is sometimes shocking and a bit uncomfortable to students when I share that they should write the introduction last, but I follow this up with the idea that we can sit for hours, days, weeks at the introduction and never progress beyond that. It makes entirely too much sense that that would be the case. The introduction is meant to “introduce” the reader to the main points of the paper, but if you start with the introduction, you may not know what those are because you don’t yet know what it is that you want to say.
Instead, I tell students to start writing somewhere in the middle. Start writing to uncover your audience and purpose: what do you want to say; what is the point, the “so what?”; who are you directing the message to? Answers to these questions will probably be hazily known at the outset, but can be refined and clarified through the act of writing. For those who use an outline as part of their writing process, this can also work. When crafting your outline, see it as a general guide and don’t feel compelled to adhere to it. As you write, be open to seeing where your thoughts and ideas take you.
A common comment I give students on drafts of their projects is taking what is in the conclusion and moving it towards the introduction because the conclusion can, most times, present the argument much more clearly. This is because it was through the act of writing the paper that students came to realize what they actually wanted to say.
his approach to writing is something I follow. Even in writing this, it wasn’t until I’d written a rough “shitty first draft” to a colleague that I realized the purpose I wanted to convey in this piece. While I started with just wanting to convey the paradox of writing, as I wrote I realized that I also wanted to reiterate and reinforce that writing is a recursive process.