To begin writing, I familiarized my self with the article. I read the article over and over and began to highlight portions by theme. I took the massive text and broke it down into shorter sections. For example, I highlighted the section about Jimmy Kimmel in red; I highlighted the paragraph of text about William Feather in blue, and I continued this process until each section was highlighted according to topic. This made it easier for me to digest the entirety of the text. After breaking the article down, I began to search for rhetorical devices and strategies because I wanted to prove that his rhetoric supported his claim that ignorance often masquerades as confidence. And from that point I created an outline for my essay. .
My outline laid out the structure. I knew that I wanted each paragraph to focus on Dunning's devices and strategies. So, in my outline I bulleted what the paragraph would discuss and then bulleted my evidence beneath that. After I knew how I wanted to structure the essay, I began writing. My first draft was very rough. So I went back and started to edit. I added things that I had forgotten or things that I had just then thought of, and I removed things that I disliked or things that did not support my thesis. I was consistently trying to reword sentences, and I believe that by the end I had written five drafts. Once I had put the words in their proper places, I went back and took a look at the way I had previously organized my paragraphs. I looked at my topic sentences and tried to group paragraphs in a way that flowed. Also, I looked to make sure that my topic sentences supported my thesis statement, which I focused into two sentences. Overall, I think that my thesis was clear: "[Dunning] effectively proved his argument that confidence is often a facade to ignorance." .
Like any writer, I faced a few of my own challenges when writing this essay. I think that one of the biggest challenges I had was choosing words that properly explained what I was thinking in my head.