Invention, Arrangment, Style

INVENTION, ARRANGEMENT, STYLE

From Frank D'Angelo's Process and Thought in Composition, 2nd ed. (1980), quite simply one of the most intelligent, eloquent, and "teachable" texts on the subject of writing-as-a-thinking-process ever published. Out-of-print now for some time, it is available, however, "used" from various sources, and highly recommended. jbc

Writing is a form of thinking, but it is thinking for a particular audience, and for a particular occasion. One of your more important tasks as a writer is to master the principles of writing and thinking that will help you to achieve your goals. The most important of these principles are those of invention, arrangement, and style.

Invention is the process of discovering ideas for speaking or writing. Although for many writers the process is intuitive, you can learn to guide the process deliberately by using formal procedures for analyzing and searching.

Arrangement is the process of discovering ordering principles so that you can organize your ideas in such a way as to make them understandable and believable to your readers.

Style is the process of making choices about sentence structure and diction while in the act of writing. You can also make these choices consciously and deliberately when you review what you have written,

To divide the writing process into invention, arrangement, and style is merely a convenience. Invention, arrangement, and style may occur or recur in all three stages. Try thinking, for example, about a movie that you have recently seen. If you begin to write down these thoughts, in the process of thinking about what you want to say, you' cannot help but put your ideas into some kind of larger pattern and at the same time into sentences and words.

You may have heard various writers make exclusive claims for each of these processes: discovering ideas is the most important part of the writing process; the organization of ideas is all-important; style is everything in a piece of writing. Writers can make these claims because there is a sense in which each claim is correct. Invention is everything because it includes arrangement and style. Arrangement is everything because it includes invention and style. Style is everything because it includes invention and arrangement. All are parts of a single, ongoing, mental process.

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