A proven, simple process to effectively plan, edit, review and improve your writing

The Seven Stages of The Writing Process

Which writing process do you use? What is the best approach to creating documents? What are the key steps to follow?

There is lots of advice on writing and examples of writing processes available, but they are not always easy to remember. POWER UP is a helpful acronym to remember the advice and steps of the writing process.

This is the process I use, which has helped me write regularly for my website and various other publications. It has also helped improve the quality of my other documents and communications, from essays to emails, reviews to reports.

POWER UP stands for:

  • Plan
  • Organise
  • Write
  • Edit
  • Review
  • Upload
  • Publish

Therefore the ‘POWER’ part of the mnemonic is important to any sort of writing and the ‘UP’ is relevant to writing documents you are going to submit to others for wider reading or publication.

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How to POWER UP your writing

Here are the stages in turn with the questions you need to be asking yourself within each step:

Plan

The first step is deciding why you want to write. Before you go any further be sure of your motivation. That could be to share knowledge, make money or just get better at writing but be honest with yourself at the beginning as it will shape the whole of the creative process, the product you create and how you view it afterwards.

Once you have answered this question you can start planning when you will write. Time is the most critical aspect (as time is the only truly finite resource) so the most important question to ask yourself at this stage is:

“How long do I have (or want to spend) on writing this piece?”

Once I have worked out how long I am going to give myself, I then plan when I am going to write. I always book the time into my diary to keep myself accountable for my goals and to stop conflicting activities. The morning is my favourite and most productive time to write so I generally plan my time in then.

Organise

After you have planned your time you can organise your thoughts, notes and research. This will help you to decide exactly what you will write about. Keep in mind the question:

“What is the central idea I want to communicate?”

I tend to keep a long list of article ideas on my phone and then, in this phase, I choose which idea I think is the best post to develop at that given time. Then I decide on a working title for the article and set about adding to my notes and researching the topic in more depth.

To help structure my writing I often use the seven interrogatives in The Right Questions framework or The Rule of 3.

Write

With your thoughts, research and notes organised you can now write your first draft. As you are doing this you need to keep the following question in mind:

“Who am I writing for and what do they need to know?”

You may just be writing for yourself. If the writing process is primarily just a cathartic process, then that is fine. A lot of blogs follow this approach. But if you are writing for another audience or want to share your wisdom with a specific group of people then they need to be front and centre in your mind as you write. This will help you develop a good first draft and minimise the work in the next two steps.

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Edit

The next stage is to create a good copy. You need to ask yourself:

“What do I need to change?”

I am not great at spotting typos and grammatical errors and therefore even within this phase I use a three-step approach. I write in Microsoft Word first but also use the Grammarly app. At each step, the inbuilt spelling and grammar software helps to tighten my wording.

Review

The review phase is effectively the 3rd iteration of your draft. At this stage, you need to ask:

“What do I need to cut?”

You need to hone the writing to ensure clarity and impact as well as legibility. The key here is to remember back to the previous questions: what is the key message you are trying to convey and who are you writing for?

I try to leave a day between the edit and the review. This helps me to engage with the piece afresh. If I try to review an article too close to the drafting and editing stage my brain sees what it wants to see rather than what is actually written. I often read the article out loud too to see how it flows. I will get a second opinion of my draft when possible at this stage too.

Giving some time after writing the initial draft (and another opinion) allows the distance you need to be ruthless.

“In writing you need to kill all your darlings.” – William Faulkner

There may be some beautifully crafted sentences or well-researched paragraphs but if they don’t add to the clarity and impact of the post then you have to put them to the sword. It is painful but necessary.

Upload

The next step of uploading your writing is easy in theory, but rushing this stage can affect the success of your writing. You need to ask:

“What is the best way to communicate what I have written?”

You may have written your magnum opus, but if you don’t choose the best way to share it, there is a chance no one will ever read it.

Publish

Once you have chosen the means to communicate your writing, the next step is to actually publish or send it.  If we have followed the POWER UP process we know why we are writing and who we are writing for, so, the question here is:

“Has my writing achieved its aim?”

You need accurate feedback to answer this question. If you have written a letter or email, what is the reply? If you have written an academic essay, how was it graded? If you shared a post on social media, how well was it liked and shared?

Whatever sort of writing you created and however you shared it, make sure you get meaningful feedback so you can measure impact, clarify supplementary questions, carry on the conversation, and improve your written communication overall.

The key element of the POWER UP process

In my experience, it is the triple iteration of the writing process (the initial draft, edit and review), that is the most powerful part of this approach. This refining process really helps to craft whatever you are writing, whether that is a text message through to a whole book. 

Therefore, if you really want to improve the quality as well as the productivity of your writing, I highly recommend you embrace an iterative approach to developing your written work.

More POWER to you all, and happy writing!

If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for leaders who want coaching towards greater clarity, purpose and success. We are all leaders (whether we know it or not) as we all have influence. So the question is, what are you doing with your influence?

Wherever you are on your leadership journey, I hope that you find resources on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

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I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and coaching them to achieve their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!