1 Prewriting

Prewriting Strategies

Many papers on a desk with writing on them all.Did you ever work on a creative project—paint a picture, make a quilt, build a wooden picnic table or deck? If you did, you know that you go through a development stage that’s kind of messy, a stage in which you try different configurations and put the pieces together in different ways before you say “aha” and a pattern emerges.

Writing is a creative project, and writers go through the same messy stage. For writers, the development stage involves playing with words and ideas—playing with writing. Prewriting is the start of the writing process, the messy, “play” stage in which writers jot down, develop, and try out different ideas, the stage in which it’s fine to be free-ranging in thought and language. Prewriting is intended to be free-flowing, to be a time in which you let your ideas and words flow without caring about the organization, grammar, and the formalities of writing.

There are many ways to develop ideas for writing, including:

  • Journaling
  • Freewriting
  • Brainstorming
  • Mapping or diagramming
  • Listing
  • Outlining
  • Asking defining questions
  • Noting Pros & Cons

Journaling

A man writing in a journal.Many people write in personal journals (or online blogs). Writers not only record events in journals, but also reflect and record thoughts, observations, questions, and feelings.

Journals are safe spaces to record your experience of the world.

Use a journal to write about an experience you had, different reactions you have observed to the same situation, a current item in the news, an ethical problem at work, an incident with one of your children, a memorable childhood experience of your own, etc. Try to probe the why or how of the situation.

Journals can help you develop ideas for writing. When you review your journal entries, you may find that you keep coming back to a particular topic, or that you have written a lot about one topic in a specific entry, or that you’re really passionate about an issue. Those are the topics, then, about which you obviously have something to say. Those are the topics you might develop further in a piece of writing.

Here’s one sample journal entry. You’ll find ideas that the writer might develop further in a piece of writing:

Example

The hot issue here has been rising gas prices. People in our town are mostly commuters who work in the state capitol and have to drive about 30 miles each way to and from work. One local gas station has been working with the gas company to establish a gas cooperative, where folks who joined would pay a bit less per gallon. I don’t know whether I like this idea – it’s like joining one of those stores where you have to pay to shop there. You’ve got to buy a lot to recoup your membership fee. I wonder if this is a ploy of the gas company????  Others were talking about starting a petition to the local commuter bus service, to add more routes and times, as the current service isn’t enough to address workers’ schedules and needs. Still others are talking about initiating a light rail system, but this is an alternative that will take a lot of years and won’t address the situation immediately. I remember the gas crunch a number of years ago and remember that we simply started to carpool. In the Washington, DC area, with its huge traffic problems and a large number of commuters, carpooling is so accepted that there are designated parking and pickup places along the highway, and it’s apparently accepted for strangers to pull over, let those waiting know where they’re headed, and offer rides. I’m not certain I’d go that far . . .

Freewriting

A person writing in a notebook.Freewriting is just what it says—writing freely, whatever comes into your mind, without caring about spelling, punctuation, etc. It’s a way to free up your thoughts, help you know where your interests lie and get your fingers moving on the keyboard (and this physical act can be a way to get your thoughts flowing).

Try a series of timed freewritings. Set a timer for five minutes. The object is to keep your fingers moving constantly and write down whatever thoughts come into your head during that time. If you can’t think of anything to say, keep writing I don’t know or this is silly until your thoughts move on. Stop when the timer rings. Shake out your hands, wait a while, and then do more timed freewritings. After you have a set of five or so freewritings, review them to see if you’ve come back to certain topics, or whether you recorded some ideas that might be the basis for a piece of writing.

Here’s a sample freewriting that could yield a number of topics for writing:

I don’t think this is useful or helpful in any way. This is stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m looking out of my window and it’s the end of may and I can see that white cotton stuff flying around in the air, from the trees. One of my aunts was always allergic to that stuff when it started flying around in the spring. Don’t know offhand what type of tree that comes from. That aunt is now 94 years old and is in a nursing home for a while after she had a bad episode. She seems to have one now every spring. It’s like that old tree cotton triggers something in her body. Allergies. Spring. Trying to get the flowers to grow but one of the neighbors who is also in his 90s keeps feeding the squirrels and they come and dig up everyone’s flowerbed to store their peanuts. Plant the flowers and within thirty minutes there’s a peanut there. Wonder if anyone has grown peanut bushes yet?  Don’t know . . . know . . .

Possible topics from this freewrite:

  • Allergy causes
  • Allergies on the rise in the U.S.
  • Consequences of humanizing wild animals
  • Growing your own food

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is like freewriting around a specific topic. It helps you bring your subconscious thoughts into consciousness, identifying as many ideas as possible that are related to a particular topic.

To brainstorm, let your thoughts about a specific topic flow, and list those thoughts.

Example

Squirrels

  • How to get them out of the garden
  • How to get rid of them ethically (without killing)
  • Squirrel traps
  • Repellents for squirrels
  • Types of squirrels
  • Brown vs. black vs. red squirrels
  • Flying squirrels
  • What they eat
  • Different types of play
  • Training squirrels
  • Hunting squirrels
  • Squirrels and cats
  • How they nest
  • Build nests in the same place each year

So, what happens once you’ve brainstormed a topic? Look over the list. Are there items that group together? Are there items that catch your interest as a thinker, researcher, and writer—items you want to know more about? Are there items that seem unrelated or not useful? Use your list as a starting place; it creates ideas for you, as a writer, to work with.

Mapping

Mapping or diagramming helps you immediately group and see relationships among ideas. Mapping and diagramming may help you create information on a topic, and/or organize information from a list or freewriting entries, as a map provides a visual for the types of information you’ve generated about a topic. For example:

mindmap example of squirrels

Free web tools for mapping and diagramming:

Listing

Making a list can help you develop ideas for writing once you have a particular focus. If you want to take a stand on a subject, you might list the top ten reasons why you’re taking that particular stand. Or, once you have a focused topic, you might list the different aspects of that topic.

Example

Ways to live a greener life:

  • Use natural cleaning products without propellants
  • Walk or bicycle to places nearby
  • Use recycled products
  • Take public transportation
  • Recycle cans and bottles
  • Use non-life-threatening traps instead of chemical squirrel repellents

As you review and work with your initial list, you’ll find yourself revising it by adding or deleting items. Doing an initial list is a quick and useful way to develop ideas for writing.

Asking Defining Questions

Many question marks

If you have a broad topic you want to write about, but don’t quite know how to narrow it, ask defining questions to help you develop your main idea for writing.

Example

I want to write about school taxes.

  • Why do only property owners (and not renters) in New York State pay school taxes?
  • What percent of overall school funding comes from school taxes?
  • Do other states fund schools in the same way?
  • Does the state lottery system, initially designed to fund schools, actually support schools?
  • Is there a limit to paying school taxes when one gets older and no longer has children in school?

Once you have your questions, you can work with the list to group related questions, and then decide whether your writing can logically deal with a number of the questions together or only one. Use questioning to help develop a focus for your writing.

Noting Pros & Cons

A balance scale with a question mark on each side of the scale.

 

Once you know your topic for writing, develop ideas by pretending you’re preparing for a debate. List all of the pros and cons you can think of related to your topic. When you have your lists of pros and cons, you can then decide whether to include one or both sides in your writing. For example:

Example

Smoking Outside of BuildingsPros:

  • Conforms with state legislation for no smoking in the interiors of public places
  • Inconveniences smokers, perhaps an inducement to quit?

Cons:

  • Creates a wall of smoke that people need to walk through
  • Businesses must purchase and maintain a place for smokers to discard matches and cigarettes
  • Inconveniences smokers

Outlining

Outlines are a necessary part of writing. Period. Outlines are like a roadmap. They give you direction; they tell you where to go. Working without an outline is like trying to get from Oregon to New York and only knowing you need to go east. In technical writing, outlines can serve multiple purposes. One is to help the writer organize ideas and evidence, and the other to communicate your plan of development clearly to the person who has the authority to move your project forward. Therefore, the various parts of your outline should make sense to you and communicate your ideas clearly to your audience. As you begin to outline your report: Indicate the main idea or thesis at the top.

HowToMakeAnOutline2019

See It in Practice

Now that you have seen how some prewriting techniques can help you get your ideas going as you begin your writing process, it’s time to see how our sample student applies some of these strategies to her essay assignment. In this screencast, you’ll see the student share freewriting and mapping.

Ready to Write

If you have never tried out some of these prewriting strategies, it’s a good idea to give them a try, especially if you have writer’s block or feel your current prewriting strategies don’t work well for you. Using your own assignment, spend some time trying out at least two of the prewriting activities described in this section of The Writing Process.

What are your results? What information can you use as you progress with your essay? Which prewriting strategy worked best for you?

You should put the notes you develop from your prewriting activities in a journal or someplace that will be handy for you. You can type or handwrite your prewriting, but even after you finish reviewing your notes initially, keep them around, as you may need to come back to them later if an idea you have from the beginning doesn’t work out.

Be sure to share your results with someone, such as a classmate or your professor. Talking about your ideas, especially in this early stage, can really help you develop your ideas in your mind and can help you develop new ideas as well.

 

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English 101: Journey Into Open Copyright © 2021 by Christine Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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