Pre-Writing Tecniques

Prewriting Strategies
HOME
What Is Prewriting?
Prewriting is the first stage of the writing process and the point at which we discover and explore our initial ideas about a subject. Prewriting helps us to get our ideas on paper, though not usually in an organized form, and brainstorm thoughts that might eventually make their way into our writing. Listed below are some of the most common typesof prewriting techniques. You should become familiar with all of these and figure out the one that works best for you. The different types of prewriting that we will explore here are freewriting, brainstorming, clustering, tagmemics, and journalistic technique.
Some Useful Prewriting Strategies
Freewriting
Freewriting involves jotting down on paper all of the ideas you have on a particulartopic before you even begin to read about it or do research. You are not worried about complete sentences, proper spelling, or correct punctuation and grammar. Instead, you are interested in “dumping” all of the information you have on paper. You should write everything that comes into your head—even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense yet. Give your self a set amount of time (maybe five to tenminutes), and write down everything that comes to mind about your topic.
Example: I have to write a paper about the environment. I have no idea where to start! I know there are many problems with the environment, but I don’t know much about this topic. Maybe I could take a look at my biology book to come up with some ideas. I know my biology professor is also really into the environment, so maybe Icould ask for his help. I remember he was talking about hybrid cars in class the other day and how much better those are for the environment. What is a hybrid car? I know it uses some sort of alternative fuel and they are becoming very popular. Maybe that is something I could write about…
Brainstorming
Much like freewriting, brainstorming involves capturing all of the thoughts, ideas, andfragments in your head and writing them down on paper. Often, brainstorming looks more like a list while freewriting may look more like a paragraph. With either strategy, your goal is to get as many ideas down on paper as you can.

Example: Environment
Problems
Future
Cars
Alternative fuels
Hybrid cars
Costs
Benefits?
Clustering
With this technique, you start with a circle in the middle thatcontains your main idea and then you draw lines to other, smaller circles that contain sub-ideas or issues related to the main idea. Try to group like ideas together so as to organize yourself.
Example: About the value of a college education

TAGMEMICS Particle, Wave, Field (Tagmemics)
The basic idea underlying tagmemics can be easily stated: an object, experience, or idea can be viewed as aparticle (a static unit), a wave (a dynamic unit changing over time), or a field (a unit seen in the context of a larger network of relationships). Each of these perspectives encourages you to ask different kinds of questions about your subject (represented here as X).
* Particle perspective: What is X?
* Wave perspective: How has X changed over time?
* Field perspective: How does Xrelate to Y or Z?

Example:
If you view something as a particle, you focus on it as a static (still) entity. For example, if you were exploring ideas for a sociology paper on the transformation of the American nuclear family, you could use a particle perspective to ask questions like the following:
* What does the term nuclear family mean?
* Who formulated the term nuclear family?* What features characterize the nuclear family?

If you look at a subject from the wave perspective, you view it as dynamic or changing over time. The wave perspective would encourage you to ask the following questions:
* How long has the nuclear family characterized family structure in America?
* When did the nuclear family begin to change?
* What factors have caused the...