Teaching writing process

A fiction writer will often begin writing a manuscript in a rough and fragmentary manner, and over time transform these early attempts into what is hoped will be a publishable manuscript. Yet there is little in the creative writing literature on the practical aspects of writing process as utilised by writers, and/or on how writing process might be taught. Using writing process theoretical research, and accounts by writers of their processes, I look at how process, and in particular revision, can be taught in the undergraduate fiction writing workshop. I argue that effective student learning about revision occurs in response to assignments which ask students to re-enter the fictional world they have created, and make substantive changes.