Exploring a topic
Contents:
Brainstorming
Freewriting and looping
The point is so simple that it’s easy to forget: you write best about topics you know well. One of the most important parts of the entire writing process, therefore, is choosing a topic that will engage your strengths and your interests, surveying what you know about it, and determining what you need to find out.
Brainstorming
Used widely in business and industry, brainstorming involves tossing out your ideas—either orally or in writing—to discover new ways to approach a topic. You can brainstorm with others or by yourself.
- Within five or ten minutes, list every word or phrase that comes to mind about the topic. Jot down key words and phrases, not sentences. No one has to understand the list but you. Don’t worry about whether or not something will be useful—just list as much as you can in this brief span of time.
- If little occurs to you, try calling out or writing down thoughts about the opposite side of your topic. If you are trying, for instance, to think of reasons to raise tuition and are coming up blank, try concentrating on reasons to reduce tuition. Once you start generating ideas in one direction, you’ll find that you can usually move back to the other side fairly easily.
- When the time is up, stop and read over the lists you’ve made. If anything else comes to mind, add it to the list. Then reread the list. Look for patterns of interesting ideas or for one central idea.
Freewriting and looping
Freewriting is a method of exploring a topic by writing about it for a period of time without stopping.
- Write for ten minutes or so. Think about your topic, and let your mind wander freely. Write down everything that occurs to you—in complete sentences as much as possible—but don’t worry about spelling or grammar. If you get stuck, write anything—just don’t stop.
- When the time is up, look at what you have written. Much of this material will be unusable, but you may still discover some important insights and ideas.
If you like, you can continue the process by looping: find the central or most intriguing thought from your freewriting, and summarize it in a single sentence. Freewrite for five more minutes on the summary sentence, and then find and summarize the central thought from the second “loop.” Keep this process going until you discover a clear angle or something about the topic that you can pursue.