This study investigates the possibility that multimedia authorship may help students become more proficient writers. Four classes of 8th-grade students in an urban setting participated in the study, which took place over seven successive class periods. Students were given a 7-paragraph article on teen smoking to use in developing a nonlinear presentation with "HyperStudio[TM]". Organizational skills necessary for successful writing were emphasized throughout the unit. The students wrote an essay on an assigned topic in a counterbalanced manner both before and after they completed the multimedia project. There was a significant increase in students' scores on the organizational quality of the essays from the pretest to the posttest, especially for students who received low scores on the preessay. Data on the multimedia projects created by the students are also presented, and the relationship between multimedia composition and traditional writing is discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 2 footnotes.)