Saturday 7 April 2012

Two Powerful Pre-Writing Strategies for Writingan Essay

By Kate Holland


When you are asked to write an essay, you don't simply sit right down and churn out a few words instantly. There are several steps you have to go thru before it's possible for you to start a powerful essay. Some writers even have their own pre-writing rituals to get their minds in the right condition to write. We don't all share these rituals, but there are a number of pre-writing activities that all writers, amateur and seasoned, will get advantages from.

Free-writing

When you are writing something others will need to read, you have to watch plenty of things your style, tone, language, grammar, etc. But when you're free-writing, you don't have to pay attention to any of that. Simply write down the first thing that comes to mind. It could be a big mess inside your head. That's fine. It might not mean anything to you at the moment. No problem. You will realize later on that out of that jumbled mess are 1 or 2 good concepts you can write about.

A variation of free-writing is looping. It starts with free-writing but you've got to give yourself a time limit, say 10 minutes. Once your time is up, read thru what you have written and pick one or two good concepts that you would like to free-write about in the next 10 minutes. When you're done, go over the second paragraph and pick a more recent, more exact idea.

Idea-Mapping

If you would like a rather more organised system, you can create idea maps on a piece of paper or on a blackboard. This provides you a physical representation of the relationships among the different beliefs about your essay subject.

An idea map starts with one concept, represented by the most important word about your selected topic. Encircle this word and, outside the circle, write down other vital words or phrases that are related to the primary word. It is crucial to leave blank spaces in between circles so you can draw connections between the concepts and insert new words between.




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