Structure First, Write Second
Friday, May 30th, 2008 by Kim Lefever
About a million years ago, as a college prep senior, I was required to take “Senior Comp.” This was the class that would prepare us for writing college papers. It was also the class everyone pissed and moaned about. They said things like: it was boring. You had to write too much. It was boring. There were too many assignments. It was…bor-ing. So they said. Ha! They just didn’t get it. Senior Comp was fun!
All the credit for my enjoyment of Senior Comp goes to my former teacher, Miss Heath. She gave me my first important lesson about writing: it’s all about the structure. Structure is the pre-determined organization of your content. It’s the flow or arrangement of ideas that takes your readers from Point A to Point Z. It’s the building blocks you use to tell your story or message. Here’s the one thing Miss Heath made sure we understood: Your writing will either rise or fall on its structure.
I still remember sitting in the front of the class, busily writing essay after essay. Word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, I built stories, crafted persuasive articles, and wrote descriptive compositions – all with relative ease. Because I had the key – I knew about structure. High school may have been a long time ago, but the lessons Miss Heath taught us are still relevant today. (more…)
