Planning and Prewriting
Planning and Prewriting
When you receive a writing assignment, the possibilities for development are limitless. Before you can begin writing a draft, you need to generate material about which to write. This is accomplished in a planning and prewriting process. Often times, students underestimate the importance of prewriting. Thus, they short change it or skip it altogether and wonder why they are experiencing writer's block. There are a number of prewriting strategies. Most writers engage in a combination of the two or more of the following:
Brainstorming
Mapping/Clustering
List making
Asking questions
Freewriting
The purpose of all of the above is to focus
your thinking on the writing project at hand and to explore the different possibilities.
Most people are to varying degrees, visual learners. Prewriting allows you to capture the
ideas and thoughts and snippets of inspiration that seem to swim inside your head and
place them on paper. Once you have ideas written down, you can focus and develop and
organize them. The key to prewriting is generating ideas. You shouldn't be concerned with
spelling or grammar or punctuation. Just focus on getting as many ideas down on paper as
you can.