Blog Post 12: Process Essay

A Process essay is simply defined as an essay showing a process of how to do something, more widely known as a "how-to" essay. A process essay tends to be written in a second person perspective allowing the audience to be walked through as if being talked to directly by the rhetor. This essay's goal is to get the audience from the first step to the final step and produce the same result with minor variations.
The essay takes you from step one to the final step in a chronological order step by step to keep the audience from straying and beginning to create something with a major alteration from another whom followed the same steps or even the rhetor, who completed the steps before writing the process of how they created the original thing. For example, in a well written recipe for cookies you wouldn't expect the recipe to tell you how long you put the cookies in to bake before telling you the order the ingredients need to be mixed into the batter. You would normally begin by completing the general steps that will take the most time to complete first. In the case of cookies that tends to be to preheat the oven. In the case of an intricately designed piece of carpentry you would begin to engrave the designs into each piece, assemble the pieces, and then create any designs that would require the pieces to be joined.