Prewriting

Every single writer out there has experienced the fear that sometimes comes with writing that first sentence. What if it doesn’t turn out right? How can you express all of your thoughts in that one perfect sentence? What if it’s chalk-full of grammatical errors?

Who cares?

You see, that fear of writing down the first sentence—the “Writer’s Block” that so many of us often feel—is pointless and can be completely avoided. The trick is coming up with a system that triggers those writing juices that works for you. I have listed here four forms of prewriting to help cure that writer’s block and to get your ideas organized.

 

Keeping a Journal

Practice makes perfect. That saying holds true to every single subject out there: athletics, cooking, crafts, driving…and writing. To be a good writer, you have to practice.

By writing every day, you can practice writing whatever comes to mind without having to second guess yourself. If you say something stupid, who cares? It’s your private journal, and no one will read it except for you. You get to practice observing and describing the world around you, record random ideas that pop into your head, and vent about things that may be troubling you. By doing these things—by writing without that annoying sensor—you build your confidence in writing. Not only that, but the ideas that you record in your journal could be used later in essays and stories. Countless famous writers have kept journals to improve their writing and later used the thoughts that they originally recorded in their journals for their published works.

Of course, when you keep a journal, you should remember a few things. One, writing in your journal should not become a job. Avoid that day-to-day routine feel, and do not fill your journal with boring, choppy accounts of the day. (“Today I had cereal for breakfast. It was good. Yum. I like Coco Puffs. After breakfast, I called Brad to see if he wanted to go for a movie, but he was busy. I had mac and cheese for lunch.”) No. No, no, no, no, NO. Your journal should be used to record thoughts and opinions. You should be able to hear yourself speaking when you reread your journal entries; they should have personality. As you continue writing, you will improve on this. Then you can practice by pretending that you’re writing to different audiences: clergymen, friends and family, teachers, colleagues, a store clerk. The tone of your writing should change to fit your audience. For some, it should be formal; for others, slang may be appropriate.

Topic Suggestions for Journal Entries:

• Describe a childhood memory
• Rewrite your favorite scene in a book in your own words
• Write an imaginary conversation with a famous person or a deceased relative
• Find different metaphors for emotions such as anger, sadness, jealousy, and happiness
• Explain your views on a controversial subject
• Complain. The human mind is constantly full of complaints that it yearns to express—let it out.
• Summarize a movie, news report, magazine article, or story
• Reveal what happened the last time you cried
• Confess something that you feel guilty about
• Illustrate your favorite season without specifically calling it “summer,” “winter,” “fall,” or “spring”

 

Freewriting

By freewriting, you force yourself to begin immediately. Try setting yourself a time limit—say, ten for your first time—and see how much you can write. As you become familiar with the writing technique, you can lengthen your time limit to fifteen or twenty minutes. The trick is to write about anything and everything that pops into your head. If you can’t think of anything, write, “This is stupid. I can’t think of anything to write about.” Rant about having to write for ten whole minutes when you could be doing something else. I don’t care. There is just one rule: do not stop writing until your timer goes off. Your pencil must always be moving. If you can’t complete a thought, abandon it and jump to a different one. It doesn’t matter if you cut yourself off in the middle of a sentence; just do whatever comes to mind.

Freewriting doesn’t just help you overcome that fear of writing the first sentence; it also helps you discover the thoughts that are buried in your mind. Since you don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re using the right words to describe something, you are free to focus on the meaning of what you are writing. As you give your mind free reign, you can think of new topics to write about, and soon other ideas will come surging forth. When you’re done freewriting, you can select the ideas that pertain to your topic and expand on them.

Topic Suggestions for Freewriting:

• Cliques
• Make up
• Animal Testing
• Hunting
• Friends
• Pollution
• Relatives
• New York City
• Religion
• Cars
• Sun Tanning
• Money

 

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is very similar to freewriting in that you write everything that comes to mind about a certain topic in a certain time period (about fifteen minutes). However, unlike freewriting, brainstorming is done in the form of a list. Never pause to worry about grammar or spelling; those are inconsequential. The purpose is to get as many ideas down as quickly as possible.

Free association—which is the theory that specific words and images trigger other words and images—often leads your mind to unexpected destinations. Brainstorming explores this principle. By allowing your mind to wander freely, you will see aspects of the subject that you had not expected, and soon your paper will be filled with ideas. Many of these inspirations, of course, will be completely useless. But even the ideas that seem silly or irrelevant will trigger more ideas—free association. By the time your fifteen minutes has passed, your paper should be a jumbled, haphazard mess of random words and ideas, some of them completely unrelated to the topic. But that’s the beauty of brainstorming; somewhere within the mess, there is bound to be at least one idea that is worth expanding on.

Topic Suggestions for Brainstorming:

• Diets
• Diseases
• School
• Exercising
• Dating
• Vacations
• Motorcycles
• Animals
• Unions
• Time

 

Asking Questions

By asking questions about a certain topic, you can develop concrete ideas that have depth. Obviously, the six famous questions are the most impertinent: who, what, why, where, when, and how. Although not all six questions will apply to every topic and some subjects may suggest additional questions, asking questions lets you approach an idea in a systematic way. You are able to pick out any ideas that may have been stuck in the background and to see your topic in a new light.

Do you have any other ideas? Any special quirks or habits that you find help get the ideas flowing? Please feel free to share!