Prewriting Techniques

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Prewriting Techniques

• Coming up with Ideas

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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.

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(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.

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(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?

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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?

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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?

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(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?

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(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?

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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 isnt solved?

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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?

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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?

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Problem-Solving

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

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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?