Prewriting Techniques Coming up with Ideas

What Is Prewriting At any point in the writing process that you feel stuck or need to regroup is a good time to do some prewriting. There are many techniques that prove useful; play around with different activities to see which work best for you.

(1) Brainstorming and (2) Journalistic Questions Brainstorming works well in a group situation as everyone throws out ideas. Writing a list of everything related to a topic can be helpful as an individual activity as well. More specifically, listing as many responses as you can to a particular question can be helpful. Answering who, what, where, when, why, and how about your topic can also help you see where you may need to do more research or develop your research questions further.

(3) The Rhetorical Situation Lloyd Bitzer developed the idea of the rhetorical situation; that is, that arguments arise out of a need to address a particular event, not in a vacuum. The next slide lists the parts of the rhetorical situation. Can you address all of these parts in relation to your issue or claim?

The Rhetorical Situation 1. Exigence. Exigence is usually a situation that is controversial and about which people have differing opinions. Often it is a problem to be solved. 2. Author. In approaching an analysis of an argument, you need to consider the credibility, the reliability of the authors. Who are they? What is their background on the topic? As the author yourself, what is the nature of your relationship to the issue? How can you develop your credibility?

The Rhetorical Situation 3. Text. What kind of texts are you using in your research and what are their features and limitations? Will these limitations affect your use of them? What are the conventions of the text you are producing? 4 and 5. Constraints and Readers/Audience. These two elements are difficult to separate. Your audience will be made up of people who may have very different views from you and from each other. They may value different things that constrain (restrict) them to think and react to an argument in very specific ways. Who is your audience, what are the constraints with which you are working (their values and beliefs), and how will you address them both?

(4) Argument Approaches Problem-solving, Definition, Cause or Consequence, Comparison are all different approaches to your claim or issue. Write a claim based on each one of these approaches. How would your argument progress if you were looking at the issue from these different approaches?

(5) Problem-Solving To take the problem-solving even farther, answer as many questions about your issue as you can: – What exactly is the problem? – Is it made up of several smaller problems? – Who is it a problem for? Who is it not a problem for? – What caused the problem?

Problem-Solving Should this problem even be solved? What will solving it do to the people involved? What will solving or not solving it do to the main purpose or core business of the problem solver? What happens if the problem isn’t solved?

Problem-Solving What have been some of the historical solutions to the problem? Why have they failed? Did they fail because the solution was a poor one or because it was not implemented correctly? Can any of the historical solutions be used because times have changed, with some modifications that were not previously available?

Problem-Solving What processes are at work in our problem? What are the existing theories in this field or area of activity? Which sciences are involved, and what do the experts tell us about how our problem works? What are some predictable behaviors at work surrounding our problem, or possible solutions?

Problem-Solving What is the problem like? What are possible solutions like? Can a metaphor be created? Is an analogy better?

Problem-Solving Finally, – Which is the best solution? – The simplest solution? – The one that best fits the goals? – The most ethical solution? – The cheapest? – How will you decide?