I recently had the good fortune of obtaining a copy of Bryan Garner's new book Garner on Language and Writing, which is a collection of many of his essays and speeches.  While I've previously read many of his essays, I certainly have not read all of them.  I am enjoying reading those new to me, and love having so many of the essays accessible in one place.

 

As I read, I will share some of his tips with you.  One of his tips is to perform legal writing in stages.  Writing in stages is one of the foundational skills that I share with my legal writing students.  One of the reasons that I use Linda Edwards' text, Legal Writing, is because she discusses the process of legal writing and the stages involved.    

 

I like the vivid imagery Garner uses to describe the stages of writing in his essay Using the Flowers Paradigm to Write More Efficiently (adapted from Trial (May 1997)).  Garner adopts Dr. Betty S. Flowers's names to describe a four stage process to writing.  The first stage is the "madman" stage during which you brainstorm and put all your ideas down in a free flowing format.  The second stage is the "architect" stage in which you bring order to the ideas, outlining and structuring the paper in a way that will be easy for the reader to follow.  The third stage is the "carpenter" stage.  In the carpenter stage, you craft the sentences and paragraphs of the paper.  The final stage is the "judge" stage in which you critique and proofread the paper.