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92 OTHER IMPORT ANT FACTORS IN WRITING

TECHNIOUE 3: MAKING A LIST

List all the different items you can think of concerning your topie. Don’t worry about repeating yourself, about sorting out major details from minor ones, or about spelling or punctuating correctly. Simply make a list of everything about your subject that occurs to you. Your aim is to generate details and to accumulate as much raw materiał for writing as possible.

Below is a list prepared by one student, Linda, who decided to write a paper on the abuse of public parks. Her first stage in doing the paper was simply to make a list of thoughts about the topie that occurred to her. Here is her list:

Messy picnickers (most common)

Noisy radios

Spray graffiti on buildings and fences

Frisbee games that disturb others

Dumping car ashtrays

Stealing park property

iMi sunbathing

Destroying flowers

Darńaging fountains and statues

Litter

Muggings

Notice that Linda puts in parentheses a notę to herself that messy picnickers are the most common type of park abusers. Very often as you make a list, ideas about how to develop a paper will occur to you. Jot them down.

Making a list is an excellent way to get started. Often you can then go on to make a scratch outline and write the first draft of your paper. A scratch outline for Linda’s list is shown in the next section.

TECHNIOUE 4: PREPARING A SCRATCH OUTLINE

A scratch outline may be the most helpful single techniąue for writing a good paper. It is an excełlent follow-up to the prewriting techniques already mentioned: brainstorming, freewriting, and making a list. In a scratch outline, you think carefully about the exact point you are making, about the exact items you are going to use to support that point, and about the exact order in which you want to arrange those items. The scratch outline is, then, a plan, or blueprint, that will help you achieve a unified, supported, and organized composition.

Here is the scratch outline that the student Linda prepared from her generał list on the preceding page:

Some people abuse public parks.

1.    Cleaning out cars

a.    Ashtrays

b.    Litter bags

2.    Defaćing park property

3.    Stealing park property

a.    Flowers, trees, shrubs

b.    Park sod

4.    Not cleaning up after picnics

a.    Paper trash

b.    Bottles and cans

This scratch outline enabled Linda to think about her paper—to decide exactly which items to include and in what order. Without writing a great many sentences, she has taken a giant step toward a paper that is unified (she has left out items that are not related); supported (she has added items that develop her point); and organized (she has arranged the items in a logical way—here, in emphatic order). The effective paragraph that eventually resulted from Linda’s list and scratch outline is on page 20.

USING ALL FOUR TECHNIOUES

Very often the scratch outline follows brainstorming, freewriting, or making a Ust. At other times, the scratch outline may substitute for the other three techniques. Also, you may use several techniques almost simultaneously when writing a paper. You may, for example, ask questions while making a list; you may organize and outline the list as you write it; you may ask yourself questions and then freewrite ans wers to them. The four techniques are all ways to help you go about writing a paper. In the next section, the process of writing a paper is illustrated, and you will see all four techniąues used as writing aids.

Activity 1

Answer the foliowing ąuestions.

1. Which of the prewriting techniques do you already practice?

_Brainstorming    _Freewriting

_Making a list    _Making a scratch outline