Theory of Writing Maps
My own theory of writing has expanded and developed over the course of this semester. You can view my original, second, and final writing maps on this page.
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My final theory of writing can be found under the tab at the top of the page, and is also linked with my final writing map.
Use this to navigate the page
My Original Theory of Writing & Writing Map
All writing has a purpose. An author writes words, regardless of how few or many, to convey an idea or message to their readers, or audience. Before anything can be written, the purpose must be clear to the writer. For the purpose to be successfully conveyed to the audience, the writer must be able to articulate and clearly express this purpose in a way that the audience will understand. The writer can look to existing sources and media to find ideas and statements that help prove or reveal this purpose. When doing this, the writer can rearrange, remix, and build these words to help create an assemblage of information from various sources. For the writing to be successful, the purpose should be clear to the audience. The writer should appeal to their specific audience, whether it be their friends, professors, or employers, to clearly convey their message and purpose.
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(This is my original theory of writing from In Class Activity 2 on Tumblr, view my full post by clicking here.)
My Second Writing Map & Reflection
This map is pretty similar to my theory of writing, which focused on audience and purpose. We hadn’t done as much writing for this class when I made my original theory of writing, so I feel like I know a little more about my own process as a writer now that we are submitting our final draft of Project Two. Since this project used research and an interview along with my own writing, I learned about different ways to assemble things for my own research problem. My second map also has audience and purpose, but I’ve now included a few more aspects that are also important to the whole process. My map is different from my theory because it includes genre, medium, and articulation.
By visually representing my theory of writing, I have learned that my own theory has grown and changed even since our last reflection on the theory. This class has given me a more in depth look into what’s truly important to the entirety of writing and how a writer can use different aspects of the process to their own advantage. Many of these words like genre, medium, and audience were covered in previous writing classes, but they were more superficial definitions and we didn’t utilize how focusing on these things matters to the outcome of the final work. From having to create a map connecting these key terms, it made me think more about how the different parts of writing connect together, but also that there isn’t one linear progression of steps taken because there are many things being done at the same time.
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(This reflection is part of In Class Activity 4, view my full post on Tumblr by clicking here.)
My Final Writing Map & Reflection
After looking at all three of my maps and the draft of my theory of writing, there aren’t any changes I want to make to my final map. I will always be able to revise and edit it as long as I keep gaining experience as a writer, but for now, I stand by this map as a representation of my current understanding of writing. It would be very difficult to perfectly map out my whole idea of the writing process with the right relationships and inclusion of key terms, because there are so many key terms and they can’t be completely separated in order to be able to relate them back together. Since my theory of writing in project four uses complete sentences and many more words than the simple writing map, it includes other key terms like modality, design, and assemblage. I didn’t include these words in my map because I think they are included in many of the choices that the writer makes when creating a piece. These words are still important to the whole process of writing, but it would be impossible to include every single word that is important in my map. I tried to keep my map simpler than the more in depth theory of writing. Because of the media and genre of these two works, a written word map and a paper, they obviously look different and serve a different purpose on their own, so there will be differences between them. For my final theory of writing, I will reflect on the creation of the final map and the links between the three maps, as well as how my understanding of the theory of writing has grown between them.
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Read my complete theory of writing here.
(This is part of In Class Activity 8, view my full post on Tumblr by clicking here.)
