Re: Necessity of Doc Plans for a Single Chapter or Section
Doc plans are only valuable if you're going to manage the documentationEither that, or where there's a large team of writers on the same project.
process down to the teensiest task and that level of management is only
appropriate for shops where there are enough layers of bureaucracy to
ensure that very little real work gets done but that are knee-deep in CYA
memos.
Another advantage of some sort of plan is that you can jump around to give yourself a change of pace, or to leave a section that, for some reason or another, isn't ready to document.
Far too many writers take an either-or approach to the subject. After seven years of teaching students to write essays (ten, if you count time as a teaching assistant while getting my degree), I've observed that there's a great advantage to having a plan before jumping into any writing project. However, I've also observed that there's a great advantage in learning as you go and not being locked into a plan.
Most of all, I've observed that the ultimate answer to the question is: whatever works. My preferred work methods are probably close to Andrew Plato's or Mike Starr's. But I've noticed that my methods don't work for everyone, so I would never try to shoehorn anyone into them. If a meticulous doc planner can produce good results, who cares how they get them?
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RE: Necessity of Doc Plans for a Single Chapter or Section: From: Mike Starr
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