Brainstorming, also called Listing, is a process where you produce a great deal of information in a small amount of time by building on terms that you have already written down.
The Process
Looping builds off of the idea of Free Writing. In Free Writing, you have a specific topic that you are freely writing about. While with th strategy of Looping, there is not a specific topic already designated. The idea is to free write several ideas while growing narrower in topic each time.
The Process:
If we take the results from the Free Writing Section above, we can see how Looping builds off of Free Writing. In the Free Writing Section, I narrowed my ideas down to Introduction, Main Points, and Revision/Editing. For each of these topics, I would free write again.
Introduction:
Main points:
Revision:
For each of my groupings, I took it a step further by giving supporting details that way I have main points with details to back them.
The Prewriting phase is the starting point for any piece of writing. It is designed to help gather ideas as well as decide on a topic. There are many different form of Prewriting. You can start the Prewriting process by bouncing ideas around with a fellow student or friend. Some even prefer to do this process alone and write down all the ideas that they can come up with on a piece of paper. The important idea is not to to not censor yourself. Write down or say all of your ideas no matter how irrelevant or ridiculous they may seem. Some of the most popular methods of Prewriting include: Brainstorming, Clustering, Free Writing, Looping, and The Jounalist's Questions.
Clustering is also known as concept or idea mapping. It is a form of Prewriting that allows you to see the connection between ideas.
The Process
Free Writing is a way to generate a great deal of information by writing non-stop about a certain topic. It forces you to focus all your energy on a specific topic while giving you freedom to write whatever comes to mind.
The Process:
Example:
Say that the given topic is how to write an essay. For five minutes I will continually write about how to write an essay.
In five minutes, I generated these ideas. Now I need to highlight the major points that I wanted to talk about in my essay.
Free Writing can be a great tool as long as you understand how to write with censoring yourself and understand how to group your ideas.
When writing articles, Journalists normally ask themselves six questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. You can utilize these questions to explore and examine your topic. However, it is important to remain flexible when asking these questions, so that you can generate the information that you are looking for.
The Process:
The Journalist's Questions are an easy way to generate specific details about a topic. However, it takes practice to know when and how to ask the right questions to generate the information you want.