LibGuides: United Lutheran Seminary Writing Center: The Writing Process

Much of your writing in seminary will be focused on argumenative, descriptive, and expository essays.

Argumentative essays are focused on convincing your reader to agree with your position on a particular topic.
Descriptive essays describe an experience or situation (the most common type of descriptive essay you'll write is a verbatim).
In an expository essay, you're trying to investigate an idea by evaluting evidence, expounding on the idea, and setting forth an argument concerning that idea.

The Writing Process

Plan your writing
- Make a timeline: Set Goals; Monitor your progress
- Select a topic:
  - Review the assignment!
  - Brainstorm: what interests you?
  - What is interesting about your topic?
Create an outline
- Start with your major sub-sections
- Review the assignment again: do these sub-sections help cover all questions your professor has asked you?
- Begin your research
  - Make sure you find credible & high quality sources
  - Not everything the library has is of equal quality
  - Make sure you take notes as you read & record citation information
Write a draft
- Start with writing something down; anything!
  - You will likely throw out much you initially write. This is part of the process.
  - Avoid plagiarism: As you quote others, include some sort of shorthand citation for you to flesh out later
- Only after most of your first draft is done should you write your introduction & conclusion
Proofread!
- Ask someone else to read it
- Complete your footnotes
- Proofread again!
Hand in your completed project

The Writing Process (animated)

The land on which United Lutheran Seminary sits, and which stretches between its two campuses, is tribal land, inhabited originally by the Lenni Lenape, the Susquehannock, and the Seneca tribes. We honor those original caretakers of this land, and we pay respect to the original inhabitants of what we now call Pennsylvania. Acknowledging this history is consistent with the seminary’s commitment to welcome and equity, which calls us in Christ to repentance, reconciliation, and wholeness. Even though the sad history of colonization cannot be undone, this land acknowledgement is one small way for us to remember what happened here, to understand our part in this story, and to develop a more healthy relationship with the land and its original inhabitants.