When you write a book, article, or other document, chances are that you are expecting someone to read and understand your meaning. If that reader has to struggle and needs extra time to figure out your meaning, they may simply give up and move elsewhere. A document needs to flow so that one thought leads to another, and the reader can follow the transition.

Whether or not you are new to writing, you may be feeling overwhelmed with the large number of items to keep straight in your head. You need to get ideas, research, create a draft, find markets, create queries, and send them off to markets. And you will have to do at least one or two of those things every day. It can be intimidating and lead to disorganization both in your thoughts and in your writing.

Everything that exists has a related structure. In writing, the goal is to find a structure that is peculiar to your material and your purpose. Such a pattern may offer itself early in your writing process, or you may have to try out several possibilities before finding a suitable design to keep your writing organized.

In our conversations with others, we present our ideas in a logical order. This way, we make sense to our listeners. Typically, we relate events in the order they occurred, so our listeners don’t become confused as they follow our ideas. In writing, the pattern we present our ideas in is called organization. Writers need to know about organizational patterns because readers expect what they read to make sense logically.

Whatever the document you create, there are some common error patterns that appear quite frequently. In those patterns, most errors have to do with sentence structure, content, and organization. You may have a brilliant idea, but if you can’t make it easy to recognize, read or follow, it will have little effect on your audience.

The errors in organization and presentation are overall organization, format, documentation, sentence structure and style, paragraph structure. Readers expect signals and patterns that help them follow your thought process. There are several cues that you can use in these patterns: chronological order, spatial signs, or other indications that you are moving your reader from one idea to another.

From left to right, from top to bottom, from front to back, from past to future, from worst to best, from least important to most important–these could all be considered natural orders. But each pair could also be reversed and still seem natural. Maybe the most natural order of all is a twisted mess. The point is that almost any order can be natural if it connects your subject, your purpose, and your reader. This can be done when planning your document.

Make your format easy and simple to make the reader’s task efficient. Pay close attention to the physical presentation of your materials and the visual effect. Part of your job as a writer is to understand what format is most appropriate for the type of document you are creating and the audience you are targeting. This is referred to as writing tight.

In organizing your format, careful consideration should be given to your documentation. This includes any citations, endnotes, bibliographies, works cited or footnotes used. These items guide your readers to your sources so that they know you are credible. This also lets the reader know where to find additional information on your subject.

Sentence structure and style is an important tool in writing any document. It allows the reader to better understand the content of your document. When the reader has to interrupt his flow of the idea in order to correct a faulty sentence, those thought processes are delayed. Your content is interrupted. Your ideas should flow naturally from one sentence to another. Do not confuse the reader or wander off topic.

As a natural progression of sentence structure, the paragraph structure should flow along naturally as you build on your topic. Each paragraph should start from an idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. The meaning you are trying to convey will hold the reader’s attention if it is smooth and flowing.

Effective organization requires you to see your subject as a whole and as a system of interrelated parts. What is your purpose for writing? As you move back and forth between a broad overview and a close-up look at an individual detail, you need to see, and let your reader see, how the two are related.

Some people by nature are heavy planners. They like to begin with an outline or at least a detailed understanding of where the writing will go and how it will get there. Other writers prefer to improvise, to follow their impulses and inspirations wherever they lead. Most successful writers come to see that both planning and freewheeling are important, that even outlines don’t just spring into being without some inspiration and improvisation. And even the most original and expansive ideas eventually need to be shaped, evaluated, and prioritized.

As you organize your writing, then, think about your composing style. Are you more of a planner or an improviser? If you’re a planner, try staying open to new possibilities that appear while you’re writing. If you’re a freewheeler, you might pause now and then to look at the big picture, to consider how the words you’ve just written might fit into an overall pattern.

Either way, a strong organizational pattern helps both you and your reader. For you, it offers guidance and direction as you explore your ideas. This leads to successfully creating your document.
If you know how your emerging ideas fit into an overall plan, you can move forward more confidently than if you had to keep spinning out words without knowing where they might lead. Also, effective organization helps readers see how various parts of your paper relate to each other and to your unifying purpose.

If readers sense immediately that you’re firmly in control, that you know where you’re going and how you’ll get there, they’ll more likely come along than if they believe you lack direction and purpose.