How to Brainstorm Effectively
Today is a writing lesson focused on the process of brainstorming. The best place to start when you want to write is in the pre-writing phase called brainstorming. When I brainstorm, I use three techniques:
- Free Writing
- The Big 6 Questions
- Listing
Here is an audio lesson where I talk about how to brainstorm effectively and the three techniques I use to brainstorm.
I have also included a transcript of the audio file in case you don’t understand part of the audio. Also, here is a list of more in-depth courses on Udemy.com that you may find helpful.
- Business Writing
- College Writing Essentials
- Grammar Essentials: Boost Your Writing Skills
- How to Overcome Writer’s Block
- TOEFL iBT Writing Online Preparation Course
Happy learning!
Andrea
TRANSCRIPT:
Writing is a process and one really important part of the writing process is the pre-writing stage. In pre-writing, that’s when we organize our thoughts. Well, first of all we come up with thoughts and then we organize them. And the most important part in my mind of pre-writing is brainstorming.
I really enjoy brainstorming… and what is a brainstorm?
Well, if you can imagine in your mind, in your brain… a storm happening. What would it look like? Lightning bolts and thunder, kind of chaos going all around, that’s what a storm kind of feels like.
Well imagine a storm in your brain, that’s what brainstorming, feels like. But what is it exactly? It is coming up with idea after idea after idea in no particular order. It feels chaotic; it’s like lightning bolts coming from heaven. You all the sudden get inspiration about something and you write it down or you somehow put it down on paper or on your computer.
So, I’d like to give you some ideas on how to brainstorm because brainstorming is what creates ideas for what you end up writing about. So, let me give you three techniques that I like to do when I’m brainstorming.
And the first one is called free writing. Free writing is simply writing without stopping and without filtering yourself. So you write down whatever comes to your mind. You don’t go back and erase anything or hit the backspace. You don’t correct yourself. You don’t even filter yourself or monitor yourself about what’s coming out. You just want to put ideas on the page.
The reason I like free writing is because it leads to so many opportunities to explore what’s really in your mind about a topic. Maybe you have personal experience related to this topic… that always comes out in free writing. Or maybe you have some sort of connection of something that you read in an article a while back that you wouldn’t have remembered if your pen hadn’t been moving already.
Free writing for me works best with pen and paper because you just can write and write and you don’t have to pause and think about typing at all, but it can work with typing.
The second form of brainstorming that I really like to do is what I like to call the big six questions. And these questions are Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?
So, this especially works with a narrative or a story if you are trying to tell a story. You want to answer those questions. So, if I’m telling about, for example, my sweet-16 birthday party. I would start with Who? I would answer the question Who? And in that situation I would tell everyone who was involved with the party and list them out.
And then with What? I would list the party. I would list exactly what was involved with the party. When? and etc., you see the idea here. Here you are amassing information that will be helpful for when you want to add details in your writing later.
The last form for brainstorming that I want to share with you is listing. If you are anything like me, I love making lists. And so you can list out all sorts of things. You can start with a big category and then as you create things on your list you can choose some things on your list and create another list and keep getting more specific.
Those three techniques of brainstorming can really help you out and I hope that they will help you become a better writer.
I’m Andrea with ESL Basics and thanks for watching and learning with me.
