Pre-Writing Strategies

Sources:

KU Writing Center (Personal Brainstorming for papers)

Wrike (Group brainstorming for projects)

NC State (Personal brainstorming, Outlining, and Organization for papers)

Brainstorming

Reverse Brainstorming

A creative problem-solving technique in which the problem is turned around and

considered from a different point of view to spur new and different solutions.

Stop-and-Go Brainstorming

A problem-solving technique in which a group alternately engages in brainstorming

solutions without evaluation for ten minutes then engages in a short period of
evaluation. The group continues alternating between brainstorming and evaluation.

Brainwriting

A problem-solving technique in which participants individually brainstorm ideas and

document them, then share them with a group to further push their thinking.

Listing
Listing is a process of producing a lot of information within a short time by generating
some broad ideas and then building on those associations for more detail with a bullet
point list. Listing is particularly useful if your starting topic is very broad, and you need to
narrow it down.

● Jot down all the possible terms that emerge from the general topic you are
working on. This procedure works especially well if you work in a team. All team
members can generate ideas, with one member acting as scribe. Do not worry
 about editing or throwing out what might not be a good idea. Simply write down
as many possibilities as you can.
● Group the items that you have listed according to arrangements that make sense
to you. Are things thematically related?
● Give each group a label. Now you have a narrower topic with possible points of
development.
● Write a sentence about the label you have given the group of ideas. Now you
have a topic sentence or possibly a thesis statement.

Web Mapping/Clustering
Clustering, also called mind mapping or idea mapping, is a strategy that allows you to
explore the relationships between ideas.

● Put the subject in the center of a page. Circle or underline it.

● As you think of other ideas, write them on the page surrounding the central idea.
Link the new ideas to the central circle with lines.
● As you think of ideas that relate to the new ideas, add to those in the same way.

The result will look like a web on your page. Locate clusters of interest to you, and use
the terms you attached to the key ideas as departure points for your paper.

Clustering is especially useful in determining the relationship between ideas. You will be
able to distinguish how the ideas fit together, especially where there is an abundance of
ideas. Clustering your ideas lets you see them visually in a different way, so that you
can more readily understand possible directions your paper may take.

Freewriting
Freewriting is a process of generating a lot of information by writing non-stop in full
sentences for a predetermined amount of time. It allows you to focus on a specific topic
but forces you to write so quickly that you are unable to edit any of your ideas.

● Freewrite on the assignment or general topic for five to ten minutes non-stop.
Force yourself to continue writing even if nothing specific comes to mind (so you
could end up writing “I don’t know what to write about” over and over until an idea
pops into your head. This is okay; the important thing is that you do not stop
writing). This freewriting will include many ideas; at this point, generating ideas is
what is important, not the grammar or the spelling.
● After you have finished freewriting, look back over what you have written and
highlight the most prominent and interesting ideas; then you can begin all over
again, with a tighter focus (see looping). You will narrow your topic and, in the
process, you will generate several relevant points about the topic.
Looping
Looping is a freewriting technique that allows you to focus your ideas continually while
trying to discover a writing topic. After you freewrite for the first time, identify a key
thought or idea in your writing, and begin to freewrite again, with that idea as your
starting point. You will loop one 5-10 minute freewriting after another, so you have a
sequence of freewritings, each more specific than the last. The same rules that apply to
freewriting apply to looping: write quickly, do not edit, and do not stop.

Loop your freewriting as many times as necessary, circling another interesting topic,
idea, phrase, or sentence each time. When you have finished four or five rounds of
looping, you will begin to have specific information that indicates what you are thinking
about a particular topic. You may even have the basis for a tentative thesis or an
improved idea for an approach to your assignment when you have finished.

The Journalists' Questions

Journalists traditionally ask six questions when they are writing assignments that are
broken down into five W's and one H: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How?
You can use these questions to explore the topic you are writing about for an
assignment. A key to using the journalists' questions is to make them flexible enough to
account for the specific details of your topic. For instance, if your topic is the rise and fall
of the Puget Sound tides and its effect on salmon spawning, you may have very little to
say about Who if your focus does not account for human involvement. On the other
hand, some topics may be heavy on the Who, especially if human involvement is a
crucial part of the topic.

The journalists' questions are a powerful way to develop a great deal of information
about a topic very quickly. Learning to ask the appropriate questions about a topic takes
practice, however. At times during writing an assignment, you may wish to go back and
ask the journalists' questions again to clarify important points that may be getting lost in
your planning and drafting.

Possible generic questions you can ask using the six journalists' questions follow:

● Who? Who are the participants? Who is affected? Who are the primary actors?
Who are the secondary actors?
● What? What is the topic? What is the significance of the topic? What is the basic
problem? What are the issues related to that problem?
● Where? Where does the activity take place? Where does the problem or issue
have its source? At what place is the cause or effect of the problem most visible?
● When? When is the issue most apparent? (in the past? present? future?) When
did the issue or problem develop? What historical forces helped shape the
 problem or issue and at what point in time will the problem or issue culminate in a
crisis? When is action needed to address the issue or problem?
● Why? Why did the issue or problem arise? Why is it (your topic) an issue or
problem at all? Why did the issue or problem develop in the way that it did?
● How? How is the issue or problem significant? How can it be addressed? How
does it affect the participants? How can the issue or problem be resolved?