Reflective Writing

Reflective writing is writing in which you think about your own thinking. Because you're asked to describe what you're thinking or feeling during certain processes, a basic question in reflective writing is "Why am I doing this?" or "Why did I chose this?" That way, you can go into depth about how you relate to the particular situation, making the writing piece more personable and relatable. This will also help organize the essay toward a goal; if you acknowledge what you really are trying to talk about and the points you specifically want to make, the essay will be more straightforward and will better meet the structure you were anticipating! That way, you can say "my essay focused on this and included examples and experiences in this, this, and this..." instead of "oh, my essay kind of just talks about this." Reflective writing will make an essay much more organized as it helps it reach its goals. A good way to use reflective writing is to talk about your own experiences and then ask "Why did I do that?" or "Would I have done it differently?" and questions of the sort that analyze why you did exactly what you did, creating a better understanding.

Reflective writing essentially works, as described above, by questioning motives and reasoning behind experiences or actions and discovering why you did it or why you are doing it in order to reflect and to make writing goal oriented and organized. It also helps with the revision process because you can decide if something is necessary or how you should change an aspect of the writing to fit what you're really trying to portray.