The initial process of writing has nothing to do with actually writing at all. What is prewriting? It is anything done before the writer sits down to write. This could be choosing the subject, writing down your base or topic sentence, collecting information or research, and planning what you will actually be writing about. Writers want to know where they are going and they want to know where the reader will end up, right? Choosing subject matter can be tricky for some beginning writers, it helps to brainstorm. Brainstorming has been drilled into high school students in English class for decades, I remember it vividly and my nephew was talking about it recently. This can be an effective tool when choosing your subject matter. One tip for beginning writers is to carry a notebook with you, to jot down anything which comes to mind. If you see something, overhear someone or an idea pops into your head, you want to remember it and expand on it later. Brainstorming can be the tool to flesh out one-liners, ideas, or even words, written in your notebook. By simply writing down everything that comes to mind about your words or ideas, you can have an immense amount of information to work with.
It is helpful to keep the ball rolling, once ideas start flowing, if a word comes to you, keep going until you have exhausted your mind. The idea of brainstorming, which I must confess never made sense to me as a high school student, is to flood the paper with anything your mind comes up with. Nonsense is fine, irrelevant information is good, and doodles help you too. Just keep going it actually improves your ability to research and gather information.
In the process, you can think of a weak subject, but by brainstorming you, the writer, can find a better, stronger subject. Allow me to demonstrate, the topic I originally chose for one of my articles was dieting. This subject, obviously, is too large to cover in a short article. There are countless books written on specific diets, let alone the whole subject matter. I could not begin to cover every diet or nutritional fact in a 500 page book, much less a 500 word article. After a day of brainstorming, my notebook was full. I came up with a week long diet, top diets, best diet drinks, tasty diet options at fast food restaurants, and the best low calorie snack foods. This brainstorming session narrowed my topic and gave me ideas for five separate articles I can write at a later date.
I never realized how effective brainstorming was until I spent several days just focusing my mind on one word and writing anything and everything I thought of. Try it to choose a subject or even narrowing a subject. Research to Success, the following article, will explore further pre-writing strategies, research and collecting information for your chosen topic.
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