Theme: Pre-writing: Choosing, narrowing, gathering and editing ideas Plan

Analyze your audience

The audience is the primary reader of your document who reads it and takes action upon it. The purpose of the writing should adjust the style or formality, the organization and level of evidence to address the primary reader’s needs. (Note: In college writing, your audience will often be your professor, or a teaching assistant.)

Generate topic ideas

As a writer, you need to determine the topic and narrow it depending on the purpose and target audience.

Freewriting, brainstorming and clustering are the most common ways to generate ideas in writing.

Freewriting helps you arrive at more focused ideas about your topic. The process of freewriting is to begin writing about your topic, noting everything that comes to mind. Continue writing for 10 to 15 minutes without stopping. While freewriting, do not worry about spelling, grammar or punctuation, it is just to collect ideas to be used later in your writing.

Brainstorming is used by writers, scientists and business people to generate ideas. Techniques to brainstorming can be found on Mindtools website at mindtools.com/brainstm.html.

Clustering or mapping is used to narrow a topic or break a topic into categories. Begin with a general concept and make radiate out different patterns of words or phrases. For example, clustering ideas from the general concept of "Aspects of College Life," the following cluster may evolve:

Writing is a process that involves several distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. It is important for a writer to work through each of the steps in order to ensure that he has produced a polished, complete piece.  The writing process is not always linear.  A writer may move back and forth between steps as needed.  For example, while you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas.

Last month we learned about prewriting.  Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information.  Although prewriting is the first activity you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process.  During prewriting a writer will choose a manageable topic, identify a purpose and audience, draft a sentence that expresses the main idea of piece, gather information about the topic, and begin to organize the information.  Examples of prewriting include brainstorming, freewriting, and questioning.  Many people find it helpful to use a shape planner or graphic organizer to organize their thoughts during the prewriting process.