Exploring Your Topic

Explore a topic to get ideas you can use in your writing. Prewriting techniques are ways to come up with ideas at any point during the writing process—to find a topic, to get ideas for what you want to say about the topic, and to support your ideas.

QUESTIONS FOR EXPLORING A TOPIC

You can explore your narrowed topic using one or more of several prewriting techniques, three of which (questioning, clustering, and listing) you have seen used in “Narrowing a Topic.”

While exploring ideas, just think; do not judge. You can decide later whether your ideas are good or not. At this point, your goal is to get as many ideas as possible. Write down all the possibilities.

The following sections detail techniques for exploring ideas and show how one student used each one of them to get ideas about the topic “Getting a college degree.”

FREEWRITE

Freewriting is like having a conversation with yourself on paper. To freewrite, just start writing everything you can think of about your topic. Write nonstop for at least five minutes. Do not go back and cross anything out or worry about using correct grammar or spelling; just write.

I don’t know, I don’t think about goals more than just handling every day —I don’t have time. The kids, my job, laundry, food, school, it’s a lot. So I just get by day by day but I know that won’t get me or my kids anywhere. I really do wish I could get a better job that was more interesting and I wish I could make more money and get my kids better stuff and live in a better place and not be worried all the time about money and our apartment and all that. I really do need to get that degree cause I know we’d have a better chance then. I know I need to finish college.

LIST AND BRAINSTORM

List all the ideas about your topic that come to your mind. Write as fast as you can for five minutes without stopping.

So hard to find time to study

Good in the long run

Lots of advantages

Better job

Better place to live

More money

More opportunities

A big achievement —no one in my family’s ever gotten a degree

But they don’t give me support either

ASK A REPORTER’S QUESTIONS

Ask yourself questions to start getting ideas. The following reporter’s questions—Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?—give you different angles on a narrowed topic, but you can also use other kinds of questions that come to you as you explore your narrowed topic.

Who? Me, a single mother and student

What? Getting a college degree

Where? Stetson Community College

When? Taking classes off and on now, want a degree in next couple of years

Why? Because I want more out of life for my kids and me

How? Working like a dog to finish school

DISCUSS

When you discuss ideas with someone else, you get more ideas and also feedback on them from the other person.

Team up with another person. If you both have writing assignments, first discuss one person’s topic and then the other’s. Ask questions about anything that seems unclear, and let the writer know what sounds interesting. Give thoughtful answers, and keep an open mind. It is a good idea to take notes when your partner comments on your ideas.

CLUSTER AND MAP

You saw an example of clustering, also called mapping, in “Narrowing a Topic.” Here is another one.

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USE THE INTERNET

Do an online search using key words related to your topic, being as specific as possible. The search will probably yield a lot of results that can give you more ideas about your topic.

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KEEP A JOURNAL

Another good way to explore ideas and topics for writing is to keep a journal. Set aside a few minutes a day to write in your journal. Your journal will be a great source of ideas when you need to find something to write about.

You can use a journal in many ways:

I’ve been taking courses at the college for a couple of years but not really knowing whether I’d ever finish or not. It’s so hard, and I’m so tired all the time that I sometimes think it would be easier (and cheaper!) to stop or to go one semester and not another, but then it’s so easy to get out of the habit. I need to decide whether getting a degree is worth all of the effort it will take, and I’m starting to think it is. I don’t want to live like this forever. I want a better life.