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90 OTHER IMPORTANT FACTORS IN WRITING

are often called prewriting techniques because they come before the actual writing of a paper. They are (I) brainstorming, (2) freewriting, (3) making a list, and (4) making a scratch outline. You will have a chance to apply all these techniąues as you work on specific assignments in Part Three.

TECHNIQUE 1: BRAINSTORMING

In brainstorming you generate ideas and details by asking all the ąuestions you can think of about your subject. Such ąuestions include What? When? Why? How? Where? and Who?

Below is an example of how one person, Sal, used the brainstorming techniąue to generate materiał for a paper. Sal felt he could write about a painful moment he experienced, but he was having trouble getting started. So he asked himself a series of brainstorming ąuestions about the experience. As a result, he accumulated a series of details that provided the basis for the paper he finally wrote. Here are the ąuestions Sal asked, and the answers he wrote in response to them:

Ouestions ■

Where did the'experience happen?

When did it happen?

Who was involved?

What happened?

Why was the experience so painful?

How did Bonnie react?

How did I react?

Answers

In my girlfriend's dorm room at Penn State.

A week before Thanksgiving.

My girlfriend, her roommate (briefly), and I.

I discovered my girlfriend was dat-ing someone else.

Bonnie and I were engaged. She had never mentioned Blake. My surprise visit turned into a terrible surprise for me.

She was nervous and tried to avoid answering my ąuestions.

I felt sick and angry. I wanted to do something violent. I wanted to tear up the poster with Blake's name on it. I wanted to slam the door, but I walked out ąuietly. My knees were shaking.

After brainstorming, Sal's next step was to prepare a scratch outline. He then prepared several drafts of the paper. The effective paragraph that eventually resulted from Sal’s prewriting techniąue appears on page 176.

KEY FACTORS IN WRITING 91

TECHNIOUE 2: FREEWRITING

When you do not know what to write about a particular subject or when you have a mental błock, freewriting sometimes helps. In freewriting you write on your topie for ten minutes. You do not worry about spelling, punctuation, erasing mistakes, or finding exact words. You just write without stopping. If you get stuck for words, you write “lam looking for something to say” or repeat words until something comes. There is no need to feel inhibited, for mistakes do not count and you do. not have to hand in your paper.

Freewriting wili limber up your writing muscles and make you familiar with the act of writing. It is a way to break through mental blocks about writing and the fear of making errors. Since you do not have to worry about making mistakes, you can concentrate on discovering what you want to say about a subject. Your initial ideas and impressions will often become clearer after you have gotten them down on paper. Through continued practice in freewriting, you will develop the habit of thinking as you write. And you will learn a techniąue that is a helpful way to get started on almost any paper that you do.

Here is the freewriting that one student did to accumulate details for a paper on why he stopped smoking:

I was way overdue to stop smoking cigarettes and I finally did. I had a friend who went to the hospital with lung cancer. No one can say that he's going to recover. He’s in Eagleville Hospital. When I heard about him, it was the last straw for me. Smoking is a life and death matter. My friend is the one who brought this message home to me. Smoking is a life and death matter just like the ads say. When I think about it, I hated the fact that I was helping corporations make a lot of money all the while that I smoked. The corporations produced all this slick advertising and I felt I was one of the puppets who listened to it. I marched to their tune. I didn’t want to make wealthy corporations even richer, and I hated it every time I gave over hard earned dollars for a carton of cigarettes. Cigarettes were a very expensive habit. I can hardly say how much a year I had to put out for them. You could see I smoked as you walked through my house. There were ashtrays in the living room, dining room, bathroom. and kitchen. My wife said there was a smell of smoke in the house. I couldn't tell. I had a nose so clogged that I couldn't smell much at all. Cigarettes were a bum trip that I am not going to take any longer.

The writer’s next step was to use the freewriting as the basis for a scratch outline. The effective paper that eventually resulted from the author’s freewriting, a scratch outline, and a good deal of rewriting appears on page 123.