what are the three best ways to generate ideas for a writing project brainly
What this handout is about
This handout discusses techniques that volition help y'all start writing a paper and go along writing through the challenges of the revising procedure. Brainstorming can assist you cull a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your agreement of the topic'south potential.
Introduction
If you consciously take reward of your natural thinking processes by gathering your brain's energies into a "storm," y'all can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that will pb to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might brainstorm.
Whether you lot are starting with besides much information or not enough, brainstorming can assist you to put a new writing job in motion or revive a projection that hasn't reached completion. Let'southward take a look at each instance:
When yous've got nix: You might need a storm to arroyo when yous feel "bare" most the topic, devoid of inspiration, full of feet about the topic, or simply also tired to craft an orderly outline. In this case, brainstorming stirs upwardly the grit, whips some air into our stilled pools of thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving again.
When you lot've got likewise much: In that location are times when you take also much chaos in your brain and need to bring in some conscious order. In this instance, brainstorming forces the mental chaos and random thoughts to rain out onto the folio, giving yous some concrete words or schemas that y'all tin can then arrange according to their logical relations.
Brainstorming techniques
What follows are great ideas on how to brainstorm—ideas from professional writers, novice writers, people who would rather avoid writing, and people who spend a lot of time brainstorming about…well, how to begin.
Endeavour out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on; some techniques might suit a particular author, academic discipline, or consignment better than others. If the technique you try first doesn't seem to help you, move right along and endeavour some others.
Freewriting
When you freewrite, y'all let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to newspaper and writing down whatever comes into your mind. You lot don't judge the quality of what you write and you don't worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If y'all can't recollect of what to say, you write that downward—actually. The advantage of this technique is that y'all free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might non write if you were being too self-witting.
When you freewrite you can set a time limit ("I'll write for 15 minutes!") and fifty-fifty employ a kitchen timer or alarm clock or you tin can set a space limit ("I'll write until I fill four full notebook pages, no affair what tries to interrupt me!") and only write until you reach that goal. You might practice this on the computer or on paper, and yous can even try it with your eyes shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.
The crucial point is that yous keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing. Word must follow discussion, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even await like this:
"This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production simply even though I went to all the lectures and read the book I tin't think of what to say and I've felt this style for four minutes now and I have eleven minutes left and I wonder if I'll keep thinking nothing during every infinitesimal but I'm not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I don't know what else to say about this topic and information technology is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandpa's study and he smoked and he farmed and I wonder why he didn't farm tobacco…"
When you're washed with your ready number of minutes or accept reached your folio goal, read back over the text. Yep, in that location will exist a lot of filler and unusable thoughts just there also volition exist little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you detect these gems, highlight them or cutting and paste them into your typhoon or onto an "ideas" sheet and then y'all tin utilise them in your paper. Fifty-fifty if you don't observe whatever diamonds in there, yous will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or greased the writing gears and then that you tin can at present face the assigned paper topic.
Pause down the topic into levels
In one case you accept a class assignment in front of you, you might brainstorm:
- the general topic, like "The relationship between tropical fruits and colonial powers"
- a specific subtopic or required question, like "How did the availability of multiple tropical fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers trading from the larger Caribbean islands during the 19th century?"
- a unmarried term or phrase that y'all sense you're overusing in the paper. For example: If you see that you've written "increased the competition" almost a dozen times in your "tropical fruits" paper, you could begin variations on the phrase itself or on each of the main terms: "increased" and "contest."
Listing/bulleting
In this technique you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. Yous can base your listing on:
- the general topic
- one or more words from your detail thesis claim
- a word or idea that is the consummate opposite of your original discussion or thought.
For instance, if your general assignment is to write about the changes in inventions over time, and your specific thesis claims that "the 20th century presented a big number of inventions to advance US guild by improving upon the status of 19th-century lodge," you could brainstorm two different lists to ensure y'all are covering the topic thoroughly and that your thesis will exist easy to prove.
The beginning listing might be based on your thesis; you would jot down as many 20th-century inventions equally y'all could, equally long as y'all know of their positive furnishings on society. The 2d listing might be based on the opposite merits, and you would instead jot down inventions that you associate with a decline in that society'south quality. Yous could practice the aforementioned two lists for 19th-century inventions and then compare the prove from all four lists.
Using multiple lists will aid you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that, sure plenty, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, …uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and you'd better change your claim to one you lot can prove.
3 perspectives
Looking at something from different perspectives helps you see it more completely—or at least in a completely different way, sort of similar laying on the flooring makes your desk await very unlike to yous. To apply this strategy, answer the questions for each of the three perspectives, then look for interesting relationships or mismatches you can explore:
- Describe information technology: Draw your subject in item. What is your topic? What are its components? What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What are its puzzles? Distinguish your subject from those that are similar to it. How is your subject unlike others?
- Trace it: What is the history of your subject? How has information technology inverse over time? Why? What are the pregnant events that have influenced your discipline?
- Map information technology: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced past? How? What does it influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What fields practise yous draw on for the study of your field of study? Why? How has your bailiwick been approached by others? How is their piece of work related to yours?
Cubing
Cubing enables y'all to consider your topic from six different directions; just as a cube is six-sided, your cubing brainstorming will event in six "sides" or approaches to the topic.
Take a sheet of paper, consider your topic, and reply to these six commands:
- Describe it.
- Compare it.
- Associate information technology.
- Analyze information technology.
- Apply it.
- Fence for and against it.
Await over what y'all've written. Do whatsoever of the responses suggest anything new nigh your topic? What interactions practice you discover among the "sides"? That is, do yous encounter patterns repeating, or a theme emerging that yous could employ to approach the topic or typhoon a thesis? Does one side seem peculiarly fruitful in getting your brain moving? Could that one side help you lot draft your thesis argument? Utilize this technique in a way that serves your topic. It should, at least, give you a broader awareness of the topic'southward complexities, if not a sharper focus on what you lot volition do with it.
Similes
In this technique, consummate the following sentence:
____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.
In the showtime blank put one of the terms or concepts your paper centers on. Then effort to brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second bare, writing them down as y'all come with them.
After you have produced a list of options, expect over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come forward? What patterns or associations do you discover?
Clustering/mapping/webbing:
The general idea:
This technique has iii (or more) unlike names, according to how y'all describe the activity itself or what the terminate product looks like. In short, y'all volition write a lot of different terms and phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the words together into a sort of "map" or "web" that forms groups from the separate parts. Allow yourself to start with chaos. Later the chaos subsides, you will exist able to create some social club out of information technology.
To really let yourself become in this brainstorming technique, employ a large piece of paper or record two pieces together. You could likewise use a blackboard if you are working with a group of people. This big vertical space allows all members room to "storm" at the aforementioned time, simply you might have to copy down the results onto paper later. If you don't have big newspaper at the moment, don't worry. You tin can do this on an 8 ½ by xi too. Lookout our brusque videos on webbing, drawing relationships, and colour coding for demonstrations.
How to practise it:
- Take your sheet(due south) of paper and write your main topic in the eye, using a give-and-take or ii or three.
- Moving out from the middle and filling in the open infinite any way you are driven to fill information technology, start to write downwards, fast, as many related concepts or terms every bit you can associate with the central topic. Jot them speedily, move into another infinite, jot some more downwardly, move to some other blank, and just go along moving around and jotting. If yous run out of similar concepts, jot down opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot down your grandpa's proper noun, simply endeavor to keep moving and associating. Don't worry nigh the (lack of) sense of what you write, for you can chose to keep or toss out these ideas when the activity is over.
- Once the storm has subsided and you lot are faced with a hail of terms and phrases, you tin can starting time to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and so depict a line connecting the circles. Find some more than and circle them and draw more lines to connect them with what you recollect is closely related. When you run out of terms that acquaintance, start with another term. Look for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circle them and and then link them with a connecting line. Continue this procedure until you lot have found all the associated terms. Some of the terms might stop up uncircled, but these "loners" can also be useful to yous. (Notation: Yous can use different colored pens/pencils/chalk for this role, if you lot similar. If that'south not possible, try to vary the kind of line you apply to encircle the topics; use a wavy line, a direct line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in club to meet what goes with what.)
- At that place! When yous stand back and survey your work, y'all should see a set of clusters, or a big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this activity. At this point you lot can start to grade conclusions about how to approach your topic. At that place are about as many possible results to this activity as at that place are stars in the night heaven, then what you practise from hither will depend on your detail results. Let's take an example or two in order to illustrate how you might form some logical relationships between the clusters and loners you've decided to keep. At the end of the mean solar day, what you do with the detail "map" or "cluster gear up" or "web" that y'all produce depends on what y'all need. What does this map or web tell y'all to do? Explore an option or two and get your draft going!
Relationship betwixt the parts
In this technique, begin by writing the following pairs of terms on opposite margins of i sheet of newspaper:
| Whole | Parts |
| Part | Parts of Parts |
| Part | Parts of Parts |
| Part | Parts of Parts |
Looking over these 4 groups of pairs, showtime to fill up in your ideas below each heading. Keep going down through as many levels as you tin. Now, look at the various parts that comprise the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions tin can you draw co-ordinate to the patterns, or lack of patterns, that you meet? For a related strategy, sentinel our brusque video on drawing relationships.
Journalistic questions
In this technique you would use the "big half dozen" questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly enquiry a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each question discussion on a sheet of newspaper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases in answer, equally they fit your particular topic. You might also record yourself or use speech-to-text if you'd rather talk out your ideas.
Now await over your batch of responses. Practice you come across that you have more than to say about i or two of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well balanced in depth and content? Was there one question that you lot had absolutely no answer for? How might this awareness help yous to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or, how might it reveal what you must work on farther, doing library research or interviews or farther note-taking?
For example, if your answers reveal that you know a lot more most "where" and "why" something happened than you know about "what" and "when," how could you apply this lack of balance to straight your inquiry or to shape your paper? How might you organize your newspaper then that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of evidence in the subject field? What else might you practice with your results?
Thinking outside the box
Even when yous are writing within a detail academic subject area, y'all can take advantage of your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Let's say you are writing a newspaper for an English language course. You lot could ask yourself, "Hmmm, if I were writing about this very same topic in a biology course or using this term in a history class, how might I see or understand it differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within, say, philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new, richer point of view?"
For example, when discussing "culture" in your English, communications, or cultural studies course, you could contain the definition of "civilisation" that is frequently used in the biological sciences. Remember those niggling Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high school? Those dishes are used to "civilization" substances for bacterial growth and analysis, right? How might it assistance you write your paper if you lot thought of "culture" equally a medium upon which certain things volition grow, will develop in new means or will fifty-fifty flourish across expectations, but upon which the growth of other things might be retarded, significantly altered, or stopped birthday?
Using charts or shapes
If you are more visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word lists or phrases equally you endeavor to shape or explore an thought. You could use the same phrases or words that are central to your topic and endeavor different ways to arrange them spatially, say in a graph, on a grid, or in a table or nautical chart. Y'all might even endeavor the trusty former flow chart. The important thing here is to get out of the realm of words alone and meet how different spatial representations might help you see the relationships among your ideas. If y'all can't imagine the shape of a chart at first, just put down the words on the folio and then draw lines between or around them. Or think of a shape. Exercise your ideas nearly easily form a triangle? square? umbrella? Tin y'all put some ideas in parallel germination? In a line?
Consider purpose and audience
Remember nigh the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking act: purpose and audition.
What is your purpose?
What are yous trying to do? What verb captures your intent? Are you trying to inform? Convince? Describe? Each purpose volition atomic number 82 you to a different set of information and help you shape textile to include and exclude in a draft. Write about why you are writing this draft in this form. For more tips on figuring out the purpose of your assignment, see our handout on understanding assignments.
Who is your audition?
Who are you communicating with across the grader? What does that audience need to know? What do they already know? What information does that audience need kickoff, 2d, tertiary? Write about who you lot are writing to and what they need. For more on audience, see our handout on audition.
Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias
When all else fails…this is a tried and true method, loved for centuries past writers of all stripe. Visit the library reference areas or stop past the Writing Center to scan various dictionaries, thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf their online counterparts. Sometimes these bones steps are the best ones. It is almost guaranteed that you'll learn several things you did not know.
If you're looking at a hard copy reference, plough to your well-nigh important terms and see what sort of multifariousness you observe in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might aid you to capeesh the term's latitude or realize how much its pregnant has changed as the language changed. Could that realization be built into your paper somehow?
If y'all go to online sources, use their own search functions to observe your central terms and see what suggestions they offering. For case, if you plug "skillful" into a thesaurus search, you lot will be given 14 dissimilar entries. Whew! If yous were analyzing the film Skillful Will Hunting, imagine how yous could enrich your paper by addressed the six or vii ways that "practiced" could be interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized various aspects of "practiced."
An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, become quick background, or go a broader context for an consequence or item. If you are stuck because y'all take a vague sense of a seemingly important consequence, do a quick check with this reference and y'all may be able to move forward with your ideas.
Closing
Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas, bulleted subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your paper, what practise you do now?
Take the side by side step and start to write your first draft, or fill in those gaps you've been brainstorming about to complete your "almost ready" paper. If you're a fan of outlining, set up one that incorporates as much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If you're not a fan, don't make ane. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (big groups of sentences or total paragraphs) to aggrandize upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Keep building from in that location into larger sections of your paper. You don't have to kickoff at the beginning of the typhoon. Start writing the section that comes together most hands. Y'all can always become dorsum to write the introduction later.
Nosotros as well have helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing process, such as reorganizing drafts and argument.
Remember, once you've begun the paper, you tin stop and try another brainstorming technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to discover what suits you or the item projection you are working on.
This work is licensed under a Artistic Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.kellehernuatuffivoin.blogspot.com
Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming/
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