An important step to telling your story is developing a plan that provides a framework for your story. You might be tempted to skip this stage, but writers often get stuck in their writing process when they don’t have a plan to guide their writing. It’s difficult to know if the story will unfold as you want it to without having a plan to guide that process.
Your plan should allow you to answer these questions:
- Do you feel confident in the story you’re trying to tell? If not, what information do you need to feel more confident?
- Has the direction of the work changed due to your research? If so, does the new direction meet the requirements of the work? Do you need to change your initial intentions for the work to incorporate the new information?
- Is the work on track to meet the assignment’s requirements and deadline(s)?
Create a preliminary document plan
Your plan will change as you learn more about your topic, but having a starting direction for your process gives you a scope for your research and writing.
Draft your thesis statement
Once you've made a document plan and have a clearer idea of what direction or focus you want to take in your paper, it's time to draft the thesis statement.
Creating a document plan
Get started with this interactive video that provides an overview to document planning.
Finalize your document plan
The last step before you actually start writing is to finalize your document plan. Follow the process in this guide to plan your work to the paragraph level.
More information
- Check out the "Planning the paper" section of our guide on Developing Your Essay for guidance on plan writing with PowerPoint and other cool planning resources.