Discovering ideas to write about is a process of gathering all of your separate but related ideas on a topic and fitting them together. For example, you may know a lot about biking, but all your knowledge is not stored in one place in your brain: Verbal information is stored in one place; sensory impressions are stored in another. Be sure to draw on verbal information stored as words (facts, concepts), but do not overlook other sources of ideas as well. Table 5.1 shows the ideas one student developed on bicycling, tapping numerous sources of ideas. Together, all of these sources provide a wealth of ideas to write about on the topic of bicycling.

In the following sections, you will learn a number of specific strategies for discovering and recording ideas to write about. Depending on your learning style, you will probably find that some strategies work better than others. Experiment with each before deciding which will work for you. You may also find that the technique you choose for a given essay may depend on your topic.

When you use freewriting, you write for a specific period of time, usually five to ten minutes. Freewriting allows you to explore ideas and make associations, jumping from one idea to another. If nothing comes to mind, just write the topic, your name, or “I can’t think of anything to write” until something occurs to you. The following tips will help you.

When you are done, reread your freewriting, and highlight or underline ideas that seem useful. Look for patterns and connections: Do several ideas together make a point; reflect a sequence; or suggest a larger, unifying idea? Here is an excerpt from one student’s freewriting on the broad topic of violence in the media.

There seems to be a lot of violence in the media these days, particularly on TV. For example, last night when I watched the news, the camera man showed people getting shot in the street. What kind of people watch this stuff? I’d rather watch a movie. It really bothered me because people get so turned off by such an ugly, gruesome scene that they won’t want to watch the news anymore. Then we’ll have a lot of uninformed citizens. There are too many already. Some people do not even know who the vice president of the U.S. is. A negative thing — the media has a negative impact on any person or group who wants to do something about violence in the inner city. And they create negative impressions of minority and ethnic groups, too. If the media shows one Latino man committing a crime, viewers falsely assume all Latinos are criminals. It’s difficult to think of something positive that can be done when you’re surrounded by so much violence. It’s all so overwhelming. What we need in the inner city is not more coverage of violence but viable solutions to the violence we have. The media coverage of violent acts only serves to make people think that this violence is a normal state of affairs and nothing can be done about it.

A number of subtopics surfaced from this student’s freewriting:

Any one of these topics could be narrowed to a manageable topic for an essay.

If you are a creative learner or feel restricted by organization and structure, freewriting may appeal to you because it allows you to give your imagination free rein.

Mapping, or clustering, is a visual way to discover ideas and relationships. Here is how to create a map.

The sample map in Figure 5.2 was done by a student working on the topic of the costs of higher education. In this map, the student compared attending a local community college and attending an out-of-town four-year college. A number of different subtopics evolved, including the following:

Mapping may appeal to you if you prefer a spatial method of dealing with information and ideas. It also appeals to creative learners who like to devise their own structure or framework within which to work.

When you brainstorm, you list everything that comes to mind when you think about your topic: facts, impressions, emotions, and reactions. Record words or phrases rather than sentences, and give yourself a time limit; this will force ideas to come faster. If you use a computer, you might use bullets or the indent function to brainstorm.

The following example shows a student’s brainstorming on the narrowed topic of the disadvantages of home schooling.

Topic: Disadvantages of Home Schooling

Three clusters of topics are evident: unavailable services and resources (highlighted in purple), limits of parents (not highlighted), and problems of social development (highlighted in green). Once the student selected a cluster of topics, he did further brainstorming to generate ideas about his narrowed topic.

Brainstorming is more structured than freewriting because the writer focuses only on the topic at hand instead of writing whatever comes to mind. If you are a pragmatic learner, brainstorming may help you release your creative potential.

Brainstorming can also work well when it is done in groups of two or three classmates. Use a chalkboard or whiteboard in an empty classroom, share a large sheet of paper, sit together in front of a computer screen, or use networked computers. Say your ideas aloud as you write. You’ll find that your classmates’ ideas will trigger more of your own. Group brainstorming often appeals to students who are social learners and who find it stimulating and enjoyable to exchange ideas with other students.

Questioning is another way to discover ideas about a narrowed topic. Working either alone or with a classmate, write down every question you can think of about your topic. Focus on ideas, not correctness. Don’t judge or evaluate ideas as you write. It may help to imagine that you are asking an expert on your topic anything that comes to mind.

Here is a partial list of questions one student generated on the narrow topic of the financial problems that single parents face.

Why do many female single parents earn less than male single parents?

How can single parents afford to pay for day care?

How do single parents find time to attend college to improve their employability and earning power?

How can women force their former husbands to keep up with child support payments?

Are employers reluctant to hire women who are single parents?

Beginning a question with “What if . . .” is a particularly good way to extend your thinking and look at a topic from a fresh perspective. Here are a few challenging “What if . . .” questions about the financial situation of single parents.

What if the government provided national day care or paid for day care?

What if single parents were not allowed to deduct more than one child on their income tax?

What if single parents were entitled to special tax rebates?

Another way to stimulate your thinking is to ask questions that approach the topic from a number of different perspectives. For the topic of the increased popularity of health foods, you could write questions about human motivation to purchase, marketing strategies, or nutritional value, for instance.

You may find questioning effective if you are an analytical, inquisitive person. Social learners will enjoy using this technique with classmates. Because questions often tend to focus on specifics and details, questioning is also an appealing strategy for concrete learners. (To learn more about using research questions and hypotheses, see Chapter 23.)

After devising a number of questions, you may want to write tentative answers, or hypotheses. If you need to conduct research, you can use these hypotheses as a guide.

In Parts 3 and 4 of this book, you will learn nine ways to develop an essay or a paragraph.

These methods are often called patterns of development.

In addition to providing ways to develop an essay or a paragraph, the patterns of development may be used to generate ideas about a topic. Think of the patterns as doors through which you gain access to your topic. The list of questions in Table 5.2 will help you approach your topic through these different “doors.” For any given topic, some questions work better than others. If your topic is voter registration, for example, the questions listed for definition and process analysis would be more helpful than those listed for description. (You might choose the definition or process analysis pattern if you are a pragmatic learner who enjoys structured tasks or a creative learner who likes to analyze ideas from different viewpoints.)

Visualizing or sketching may be effective ways to discover ideas about your topic. To visualize a person, for example, close your eyes and picture that person in your mind. Imagine what he or she is wearing and what his or her facial expressions and gestures might look like.

Here is what one student “saw” when visualizing a shopping mall. Possible subtopics are annotated.

As I walked through the local mall, I crossed the walkway to get to Target and noticed a large group of excited women all dressed in jogging suits; they were part of a shopping tour, I think. I saw a tour bus parked outside. Across the walkway was a bunch of teenagers, shouting and laughing and commenting on each other’s hairstyles. They all wore T-shirts and jeans; some had body adornments — pierced noses and lips. They seemed to have no interest in shopping. Their focus was on one another. Along the walkway came an obvious mother-daughter pair. They seemed to be on an outing, escaping from their day-to-day routine for some shopping, joking, and laughing. Then I noticed a tired-looking elderly couple sitting on one of the benches. They seemed to enjoy just sitting there and watching the people walk by, every now and then commenting on the fashions they observed people wearing.

Visualization is a technique particularly well suited to spatial and creative learners.

The technique of sketching, or storyboarding, uses a series of sketches to show the sequence of events or relationships among ideas. Visual learners may find it easier to draw sketches than to formulate ideas in words, and once the ideas are on paper in sketch form, they can be converted to text.

Do some preliminary research on your topic. Reading what others have written about your topic may suggest new approaches, reveal issues or controversies, and help you determine what you already know (or do not know) about the topic.

Take notes while reading sources, and be sure to record the publication data you will need to cite each source (author, title, publisher, page numbers, and so on). If you use ideas or information from sources in your essay, you must give credit to those sources of the borrowed material. Make sure to avoid simply cutting and pasting material from your sources directly into your notes to avoid plagiarizing inadvertently. Plagiarism, even by accident, carries serious penalties.

While research may be particularly appealing to concrete or rational learners, all students may need to use it at one time or another depending on their topic. (For more about finding, using, and citing sources, see Chapters 21 and 23. To learn more about avoiding plagiarism, see Chapter 24.)