Discuss What You Know About Brainstorming Eng 121
What this handout is about
This handout discusses techniques that volition aid you lot commencement writing a paper and keep writing through the challenges of the revising procedure. Brainstorming tin assistance you choose a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topic's potential.
Introduction
If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes past gathering your brain's energies into a "storm," yous can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that volition lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how y'all might brainstorm.
Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can aid you to put a new writing task in motility or revive a project that hasn't reached completion. Let's take a look at each case:
When you've got zippo: Y'all might need a storm to approach when you lot experience "blank" well-nigh the topic, devoid of inspiration, full of feet about the topic, or just too tired to craft an orderly outline. In this example, brainstorming stirs upward the grit, whips some air into our stilled pools of thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving once more.
When you lot've got too much: There are times when you have too much chaos in your brain and need to bring in some witting order. In this instance, brainstorming forces the mental chaos and random thoughts to rain out onto the page, giving you lot some physical words or schemas that you tin can so arrange according to their logical relations.
Brainstorming techniques
What follows are great ideas on how to brainstorm—ideas from professional writers, novice writers, people who would rather avert writing, and people who spend a lot of time brainstorming about…well, how to brainstorm.
Effort out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on; some techniques might arrange a particular writer, academic discipline, or assignment ameliorate than others. If the technique you endeavour beginning doesn't seem to help y'all, move right along and try some others.
Freewriting
When yous freewrite, yous let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing down whatsoever comes into your mind. Y'all don't judge the quality of what you write and yous don't worry about style or any surface-level issues, similar spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If yous tin't recall of what to say, yous write that down—really. The advantage of this technique is that you complimentary up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things yous might not write if you were existence likewise cocky-witting.
When y'all freewrite yous can fix a time limit ("I'll write for 15 minutes!") and even use a kitchen timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit ("I'll write until I fill iv total notebook pages, no matter what tries to interrupt me!") and merely write until you accomplish that goal. You might practise this on the computer or on newspaper, and you lot can fifty-fifty effort it with your optics shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and liberty of thought.
The crucial indicate is that you proceed on writing fifty-fifty if you believe you are saying nothing. Word must follow give-and-take, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even await like this:
"This newspaper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but fifty-fifty though I went to all the lectures and read the volume I tin't think of what to say and I've felt this way for iv minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if I'll keep thinking nothing during every minute but I'1000 non certain if it matters that I am babbling and I don't know what else to say about this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfather'due south study and he smoked and he farmed and I wonder why he didn't subcontract tobacco…"
When y'all're done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read dorsum over the text. Yes, there will exist a lot of filler and unusable thoughts merely there likewise will be little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you lot find these gems, highlight them or cut and paste them into your draft or onto an "ideas" sail and then you lot can employ them in your paper. Even if you don't find any diamonds in at that place, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or greased the writing gears and so that you tin now confront the assigned paper topic.
Suspension downwards the topic into levels
One time you have a grade assignment in front of y'all, you might brainstorm:
- the general topic, like "The relationship between tropical fruits and colonial powers"
- a specific subtopic or required question, like "How did the availability of multiple tropical fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers trading from the larger Caribbean islands during the 19th century?"
- a single term or phrase that you lot sense you're overusing in the paper. For case: If you see that y'all've written "increased the competition" nigh a dozen times in your "tropical fruits" paper, you could brainstorm variations on the phrase itself or on each of the master terms: "increased" and "contest."
Listing/bulleting
In this technique yous jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. Y'all tin base your listing on:
- the general topic
- one or more words from your detail thesis claim
- a give-and-take or thought that is the consummate opposite of your original word or thought.
For example, if your general assignment is to write near the changes in inventions over time, and your specific thesis claims that "the 20th century presented a big number of inventions to advance US society by improving upon the status of 19th-century order," y'all could begin ii unlike lists to ensure y'all are covering the topic thoroughly and that your thesis will be like shooting fish in a barrel to prove.
The showtime list might be based on your thesis; yous would jot downwards as many 20th-century inventions as you could, as long as you know of their positive effects on guild. The second listing might exist based on the opposite merits, and you would instead jot downward inventions that you associate with a decline in that order's quality. You could do the same two lists for 19th-century inventions and so compare the evidence from all iv lists.
Using multiple lists volition help you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that, certain enough, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, …uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and you'd ameliorate alter your claim to one you can testify.
3 perspectives
Looking at something from different perspectives helps y'all see it more completely—or at least in a completely unlike mode, sort of similar laying on the flooring makes your desk look very dissimilar to you. To use this strategy, respond the questions for each of the three perspectives, then await for interesting relationships or mismatches you tin explore:
- Draw it: Depict your subject in detail. What is your topic? What are its components? What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What are its puzzles? Distinguish your field of study from those that are like to information technology. How is your subject unlike others?
- Trace it: What is the history of your subject area? How has it inverse over fourth dimension? Why? What are the significant events that have influenced your subject?
- Map it: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced by? How? What does information technology influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What fields do you describe on for the written report of your subject? Why? How has your subject field been approached by others? How is their work related to yours?
Cubing
Cubing enables you to consider your topic from six different directions; just equally a cube is six-sided, your cubing brainstorming will result in six "sides" or approaches to the topic.
Take a sheet of paper, consider your topic, and answer to these half-dozen commands:
- Describe it.
- Compare it.
- Associate it.
- Analyze information technology.
- Utilize it.
- Argue for and confronting it.
Look over what you lot've written. Do whatever of the responses suggest annihilation new most your topic? What interactions do you notice among the "sides"? That is, do you run into patterns repeating, or a theme emerging that you could use to approach the topic or draft a thesis? Does one side seem particularly fruitful in getting your encephalon moving? Could that one side help you draft your thesis statement? Use this technique in a mode that serves your topic. It should, at least, requite you a broader awareness of the topic's complexities, if not a sharper focus on what yous will do with it.
Similes
In this technique, consummate the following sentence:
____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.
In the first blank put one of the terms or concepts your newspaper centers on. Then try to brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second bare, writing them down as you come up up with them.
Later y'all have produced a list of options, look over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come forwards? What patterns or associations do you notice?
Clustering/mapping/webbing:
The full general idea:
This technique has three (or more) different names, co-ordinate to how you describe the activity itself or what the end product looks like. In short, you will write a lot of different terms and phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the words together into a sort of "map" or "web" that forms groups from the separate parts. Allow yourself to start with chaos. Later the chaos subsides, you volition be able to create some gild out of it.
To really permit yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper or record two pieces together. You could also use a blackboard if you lot are working with a group of people. This large vertical infinite allows all members room to "tempest" at the same time, simply yous might have to copy downward the results onto paper afterward. If you lot don't have large paper at the moment, don't worry. Yous can practise this on an 8 ½ by xi as well. Watch our short videos on webbing, drawing relationships, and color coding for demonstrations.
How to do it:
- Have your sheet(due south) of paper and write your primary topic in the center, using a discussion or two or three.
- Moving out from the center and filling in the open space any way yous are driven to fill it, start to write down, fast, as many related concepts or terms as yous can associate with the central topic. Jot them quickly, motility into another space, jot some more down, move to some other bare, and only go along moving effectually and jotting. If y'all run out of similar concepts, jot downward opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot downward your grandfather'south proper noun, but endeavor to proceed moving and associating. Don't worry about the (lack of) sense of what y'all write, for you tin chose to keep or toss out these ideas when the activity is over.
- Once the storm has subsided and you are faced with a hail of terms and phrases, yous tin start to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and and so describe a line connecting the circles. Find some more and circumvolve them and draw more lines to connect them with what you think is closely related. When you run out of terms that acquaintance, kickoff with another term. Expect for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circumvolve them and so link them with a connecting line. Keep this process until you lot have found all the associated terms. Some of the terms might terminate upward uncircled, but these "loners" can also be useful to you. (Note: You can use different colored pens/pencils/chalk for this part, if you like. If that's not possible, try to vary the kind of line you use to encircle the topics; use a wavy line, a straight line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in order to come across what goes with what.)
- There! When you stand back and survey your work, yous should see a set up of clusters, or a big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this activity. At this indicate you can start to class conclusions about how to approach your topic. There are nearly as many possible results to this activeness as there are stars in the night sky, and then what you exercise from here will depend on your particular results. Let'due south take an case or ii in order to illustrate how you might grade some logical relationships between the clusters and loners you've decided to continue. At the end of the twenty-four hour period, what you do with the particular "map" or "cluster set" or "web" that you produce depends on what you need. What does this map or spider web tell you to do? Explore an choice or two and go your draft going!
Human relationship betwixt the parts
In this technique, begin by writing the post-obit pairs of terms on reverse margins of one canvas of paper:
| Whole | Parts |
| Part | Parts of Parts |
| Part | Parts of Parts |
| Part | Parts of Parts |
Looking over these iv groups of pairs, showtime to fill in your ideas beneath each heading. Go along going downward through as many levels as you can. Now, look at the various parts that incorporate the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions tin can you draw according to the patterns, or lack of patterns, that you see? For a related strategy, watch our curt video on cartoon relationships.
Journalistic questions
In this technique you would utilize the "big half-dozen" questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly research a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each question word on a sheet of paper, leaving infinite between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases in answer, equally they fit your detail topic. You might also record yourself or use speech-to-text if you'd rather talk out your ideas.
Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have more to say about one or two of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well counterbalanced in depth and content? Was at that place one question that you had absolutely no answer for? How might this awareness aid you to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or, how might information technology reveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews or further notation-taking?
For example, if your answers reveal that you lot know a lot more than near "where" and "why" something happened than you know about "what" and "when," how could you use this lack of balance to direct your research or to shape your paper? How might y'all organize your paper and then that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of bear witness in the field of study? What else might you do with your results?
Thinking outside the box
Even when you are writing within a particular academic subject area, you tin take reward of your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Permit's say you are writing a paper for an English language class. You could ask yourself, "Hmmm, if I were writing near this very same topic in a biology grade or using this term in a history course, how might I encounter or understand information technology differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within, say, philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new, richer point of view?"
For example, when discussing "culture" in your English, communications, or cultural studies course, you could incorporate the definition of "civilization" that is oft used in the biological sciences. Remember those piffling Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high school? Those dishes are used to "civilization" substances for bacterial growth and analysis, correct? How might it help you write your newspaper if you thought of "culture" as a medium upon which certain things will grow, will develop in new ways or volition even flourish across expectations, but upon which the growth of other things might exist retarded, significantly altered, or stopped altogether?
Using charts or shapes
If you are more than visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word lists or phrases as yous endeavour to shape or explore an idea. You could use the aforementioned phrases or words that are fundamental to your topic and try unlike ways to adapt them spatially, say in a graph, on a grid, or in a table or chart. You might even try the trusty quondam flow chart. The of import matter hither is to get out of the realm of words alone and come across how different spatial representations might help y'all come across the relationships among your ideas. If you tin't imagine the shape of a nautical chart at first, only put down the words on the page and then describe lines betwixt or effectually them. Or think of a shape. Do your ideas most easily form a triangle? square? umbrella? Tin can you put some ideas in parallel germination? In a line?
Consider purpose and audience
Think about the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking deed: purpose and audience.
What is your purpose?
What are you trying to do? What verb captures your intent? Are you trying to inform? Convince? Draw? Each purpose will pb you to a different set of information and help you lot shape cloth to include and exclude in a typhoon. Write near why you are writing this draft in this form. For more tips on figuring out the purpose of your assignment, see our handout on understanding assignments.
Who is your audience?
Who are you communicating with across the grader? What does that audience need to know? What do they already know? What information does that audience need first, second, third? Write about who you are writing to and what they demand. For more on audition, see our handout on audience.
Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias
When all else fails…this is a tried and true method, loved for centuries by writers of all stripe. Visit the library reference areas or finish by the Writing Eye to browse various dictionaries, thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf their online counterparts. Sometimes these bones steps are the best ones. It is almost guaranteed that you'll learn several things y'all did not know.
If you're looking at a hard copy reference, turn to your nearly of import terms and run into what sort of variety you find in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might help yous to capeesh the term's breadth or realize how much its meaning has inverse as the language changed. Could that realization be built into your newspaper somehow?
If you go to online sources, use their own search functions to find your key terms and see what suggestions they offer. For example, if you plug "good" into a thesaurus search, you will be given fourteen different entries. Whew! If you were analyzing the moving picture Practiced Will Hunting, imagine how you could enrich your newspaper by addressed the vi or seven ways that "good" could exist interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized various aspects of "good."
An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, become quick groundwork, or get a broader context for an consequence or item. If y'all are stuck because you take a vague sense of a seemingly important result, do a quick bank check with this reference and you may exist able to move forward with your ideas.
Closing
Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas, bulleted subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your newspaper, what practice you do at present?
Have the adjacent step and start to write your first typhoon, or fill in those gaps you've been brainstorming near to consummate your "well-nigh set up" paper. If yous're a fan of outlining, ready one that incorporates every bit much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If you're not a fan, don't make one. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (large groups of sentences or full paragraphs) to aggrandize upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Continue edifice from there into larger sections of your paper. Yous don't have to start at the beginning of the draft. First writing the section that comes together virtually hands. Yous tin always go back to write the introduction subsequently.
We likewise accept helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing procedure, such every bit reorganizing drafts and argument.
Remember, once yous've begun the newspaper, y'all can terminate and effort another brainstorming technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to find what suits you or the particular project you lot are working on.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming/
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