Reflection on the Field Project - Due in 8-10 Hours Please

When I started the research for my final writing project in this course I was a little unsure of how to proceed. Since I want to be a Christian fiction writer I did not know how to explain what writing in my field looked like. I did not have a template to work with such as one might have in say a technical writing field. All I did with the style of writing that I wanted to do was tell a story. However, since I want to tell an accurate story research is very important in my field. When writing any story, it must be, for the most part, believable. Its like that feeling you get when you are sitting in the movie theater and the good guy just fell to what should have been his death but after landing he just coughs a little and manages to stand up and not only take out all the bad guys he never messes up his hair doing it. It’s just too far from reality to be a believable story. That’s why research is so important. Christian fiction writing also has planning, researching, writing and revising phases and this is what I learned from each phase.

In the planning stage I was reminded how important a good outline is. You can’t do research on a topic if you don’t know where you are going with your thoughts. Outlines keep you from getting off topic and going in the wrong direction with your research. Since I was working on a back story for one of my characters I needed stay on what was important to the storyline. The second phase was the actual research. In prior papers I did not take the time to really organize my notes. So, when it came to write my paper I spent unnecessary time finding information a second time around. This time I wrote out my thoughts as I found the information and where I found it at. It was a big help when it was time to assemble my paper. The next phase has always been easy for me, the actual writing. Yet, when it came to write my story it was much clearer and saved time in the final page of revising. Mostly in the revising phase I was looking for grammatical and spelling errors instead of issues with the facts lining up. In a sense the outline that was filled in by the research freed me up to just focus on the story.

As far as what I would do differently I would spend more time in the planning and research page. It seems to be a common desire among the writers I know to want to just write. Get the story on paper, but that can make for a lot of extra work and revising when you find out your facts don’t line up or your characters are not a true representation of what they should be.

Lastly to answer the question, how will I use this research in my future career? I feel more organized and understand better the steps I need to write with accurately. Plus, while working on our final project assignment I found that there is a format that writers are to use when submitting their work for consideration to publishers. This will be a very helpful tool when it comes time to submit my work to industry. I enjoyed taking this course and wish each of you the best of luck in the future.