Which is a prewriting strategy to help you come up with a topic?

What is prewriting?

Let’s start with a quick definition of prewriting:

Prewriting is part of the writing process in which the writer gathers ideas, explores the writing prompt, generates thoughts, and organizes them.

It is an opportunity for writers to expand their ideas about a prompt and think creatively and critically about what they want to say.

Grab these 7 Quick

Writing Activities

to engage your students!

Why is it important to the writing process?

We often short-change prewriting activities, but they are so valuable!

Prewriting allows students to explore, test, and generate ideas. They provide students with ways to organize and expand on their writing.

Have you noticed this?

Students often pick their first idea and run with it.

And it’s often very difficult to get them to even look at other ideas. They are set with that first one! But often our first idea isn’t the best — we want our students to think critically and creatively.

Try this:

Incorporate more prewriting strategies as you plan your writing tasks.

Ask your students to complete at least two (or more!) different prewriting activities before they begin drafting.

I want my students to start drafting when they are ready to go…with the ideas and the organization ready to burst out! I tell them that I want the paper to write itself. That can happen when they’ve done prewriting.

We want writing to be an act of discovery, and prewriting can help students get there. By trying out several activities, they can discover what they want to write about.

10 Popular Prewriting Strategies (With Definition and Tips)

By Indeed Editorial Team

July 8, 2021

TwitterLinkedInFacebookEmailCopy to Clipboard

Organization is vital when writing a paper because it allows you to express your thoughts in a way that's engaging, clear and concise. When it comes to organizing a paper, prewriting is key. Prewriting strategies can help you discover topics, organize them and then develop ideas for your paper. By learning different prewriting techniques, you can choose the best option for you, making the writing process more efficient and effective.

In this article, we explain what prewriting is, explore popular strategies that can bring organization and clarity to your writing and provide tips for making the most of the process.

Related: Writing Skills: Definition and Examples

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a prewriting technique used to help generate lots of potential ideas about a topic.

Learning Objectives

Describe the process of brainstorming

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Brainstorming is listing all of your ideas about a topic —even the bad ones—without censoring or editing, in order to get your ideas flowing.
• Brainstorming is at its most effective when drawing on the power of interaction.
• Casual, free-form note -taking while reading or engaging in conversation can be a form of brainstorming.
• Group brainstorming can be a great way to engage with partners or team members on a project and make sure everyone’s ideas are heard.

Key Terms

• brainstorming: Listing ideas about a topic, even the bad ones, until you find one you like.

At its most basic, brainstorming is listing ideas. If you’re having trouble coming up with a good topic for a paper, sometimes it helps to write down every idea that occurs to you, even the bad ones, until you have a strong list going.

Brainstorming is useful for figuring out what you’re interested in.The technique can take many forms, but perhaps the of them most effective is that it draws on the power of interaction. We’ve all had those great conversations in which someone says something that sparks an idea or memory in someone else, which then sparks a further idea, and before you know it, everyone is feeling energized.

You can create one of those conversations about the topic of your paper.Just start a chat with a friend or a group about the topic and have your pen and notebook handy. Jot down notes as the conversation progresses and you hear ideas that spark your interest. For an essay on the women’s movement of the 1970s, you might generate the following list by talking with friends or calling your mother:

• equal pay
• choice of career
• freedom
• purpose in society
• valuing the “feminine”—still an issue?
• messages girls get now
• effects of the movement on men
• successful or not?

Another way to brainstorm is to read an article or a book chapter on the topic and write down whatever occurs to you as you read, even if it has nothing to do with the text. You’re interacting with the text like you might interact with a person, letting the author ‘s ideas spark new thoughts in you.

You can also brainstorm in a group if you’re working on a writing project with a partner or a team. Find a whiteboard, pick someone to write, and record ideas, topics, and notes as they come up. In addition to being helpful in finding a topic, this process can be fun and help break the ice with your fellow students so that everyone feels as though they can share in the discussion.

Once you’ve generated a lot of ideas through brainstorming, you can choose a few of them to do further prewriting exercises with to eventually create your thesis statement. Perhaps the most important thing to remember about this process is that “there are no bad ideas in brainstorming.” While this saying is not strictly true—for example, it would be a bad idea to tackle an assigned essay about feminism in the 70s by writing about the life cycle of the lunar moth—it is valuable because it helps you remember that brainstorming isn’t about coming up with a perfect solution. It’s about considering your topic on many levels until you find an approach you’re excited about.

No bad ideas: Sometimes, it helps to stop censoring yourself and write down every idea you have—even the bad ones. You can decide on the best one later!

Prewriting strategies

Contributor: Sierra Becze

Prewriting can be a useful way to organize thoughts, ideas, and questions to prepare for a writing task. Often used as the first step of the writing process, the prewriting stage allows the writer to jot down ideas about a topic rather than committing too much time to one topic and finding out three pages in that the topic isn’t a good fit. Because prewriting encourages creativity, there are many different strategies to choose from.

Types of Prewriting Activities

• Brainstorming
• Clustering
• Freewriting
• Journalists' Questions
• Journal Writing
• Listing
• Outline
• Pentad
• Reading

Examples and Observations

• "Prewriting isthe 'getting ready to write' stage. The traditional notion that writers have a topic completely thought out and ready to flow onto the page is ridiculous. Writers begin tentatively—talking, reading, brainstorming—to see what they know and in what direction they want to go." -Gail Tompkins, Rod Campbell, and David Green,Literacy for the 21st Century. Pearson Australia, 2010
• "Prewriting involves anything you do to help yourself decide what your central idea is or what details, examples, reasons, or content you will include. Freewriting, brainstorming, and clustering . . . are types of prewriting. Thinking, talking to other people, reading related material, outlining or organizing ideas—all are forms of prewriting. Obviously, you can prewrite at any time in the writing process. Whenever you want to think up new material, simply stop what you are doing and start using one of [these] techniques..." -Stephen McDonald and William Salomone, The Writer's Response, 5th ed. Wadsworth, 2012

The Aims of Prewriting
"Usually, the prewriting activities help you find a good topic, narrow topics that are too broad, and look at purpose. You should finish the prewriting activities with at least a sentence and a list. Or you may have something as formal as a three-part thesis sentence and a fully developed outline. Either way, you'll have laid the groundwork." -Sharon Sorenson, Webster's New World Student Writing Handbook. Wiley, 2010

Prewriting as a Method of Discovery
"Jeannette Harris stresses prewriting while stating that discovery occurs throughout the composing process, even in revision, when the writer is still 'retrieving additional information, making further connections, recognizing emerging patterns' [Expressive Discourse, 15]. In prewriting as well as free-writing and keeping journals, ideas and forms are discovered by provoking memory. In addition, the personal nature of much prewriting and freewriting serve as an affirmation that the memory of the student writer has a valid place in the writing classroom." -Janine Rider, The Writer's Book of Memory: An Interdisciplinary Study for Writing Teachers. Routledge, 1995

Prewriting and Revising
"[P]rewriting plans are not carved in stone; they are simply tools for generating and organizing ideas. Writers frequently change their minds as they write, eliminating some details, adding and changing others. That's why some writers say that 'prewriting' is a misnomer; they return to their plans over and over during all stages of the writing process, often revising and adjusting the plans as they go." -Lori Jamison Rog,Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching Intermediate Writing. International Reading Association, 2011

Featured Video

Cite this Article

Format

Your Citation

Nordquist, Richard. "Prewriting for Composition." ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/prewriting-composition-1691676. Nordquist, Richard. (2021, February 16). Prewriting for Composition. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/prewriting-composition-1691676 Nordquist, Richard. "Prewriting for Composition." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/prewriting-composition-1691676 (accessed February 23, 2022).

copy citation

8.1 Apply Prewriting Models

Learning Objective

1. Use prewriting strategies to choose a topic and narrow the focus.

If you think that a blank sheet of paper or a blinking cursor on the computer screen is a scary sight, you are not alone. Many writers, students, and employees find that beginning to write can be intimidating. When faced with a blank page, however, experienced writers remind themselves that writing, like other everyday activities, is a process. Every process, from writing to cooking, bike riding, and learning to use a new cell phone, will get significantly easier with practice.

Just as you need a recipe, ingredients, and proper tools to cook a delicious meal, you also need a plan, resources, and adequate time to create a good written composition. In other words, writing is a process that requires following steps and using strategies to accomplish your goals.

These are the five steps in the writing process:

1. Prewriting
2. Outlining the structure of ideas
3. Writing a rough draft
4. Revising
5. Editing

Effective writing can be simply described as good ideas that are expressed well and arranged in the proper order. This chapter will give you the chance to work on all these important aspects of writing. Although many more prewriting strategies exist, this chapter covers six: using experience and observations, freewriting, asking questions, brainstorming, mapping, and searching the Internet. Using the strategies in this chapter can help you overcome the fear of the blank page and confidently begin the writing process.

Choosing a Topic

In addition to understanding that writing is a process, writers also understand that choosing a good general topic for an assignment is an essential step. Sometimes your instructor will give you an idea to begin an assignment, and other times your instructor will ask you to come up with a topic on your own. A good topic not only covers what an assignment will be about but also fits the assignment’s purposeThe reason(s) why a writer creates a document. and its audienceThe individual(s) or group(s) whom the writer intends to address..

In this chapter, you will follow a writer named Mariah as she prepares a piece of writing. You will also be planning one of your own. The first important step is for you to tell yourself why you are writing (to inform, to explain, or some other purpose) and for whom you are writing. Write your purpose and your audience on your own sheet of paper, and keep the paper close by as you read and complete exercises in this chapter.

My purpose: ____________________________________________

My audience: ____________________________________________