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Writing Essays

A guide to writing essays from beginning to end.

What is Brainstorming?

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is when you deliberately try to think up new ideas or solutions to problems.

Photo by Lala Azizli on Unsplash

Ways to Brainstorm

Freewriting is a process of generating a lot of information by writing non-stop for a predetermined amount of time. It allows you to focus on a specific topic but forces you to write so quickly that you are unable to edit any of your ideas.

  • Freewrite on the assignment or general topic for five to ten minutes non-stop.
    • Force yourself to continue writing even if nothing specific comes to mind.
    • You could end up writing “I don’t know what to write about” over and over until an idea pops into your head. This is okay; the important thing is that you do not stop writing.
    • This freewriting will include many ideas; at this point, generating ideas is what is important, not the grammar or the spelling.
  • After you have finished freewriting, look back over what you have written and highlight the most prominent and interesting ideas.
Still need some ideas? Try this guide that has research topic ideas organized by discipline. 

Jot down all the possible terms that emerge from the general topic you are working on.Brainstorming

  • Do not worry about editing or throwing out what might not be a good idea.
  • Write down as many possibilities as you can.

Group the items that you have listed.

  • Do any of them go together?
  • Give each group a label.
  • Now you have a narrower topic with possible points of development.

Write a sentence about the label you have given the group of ideas.

  • Now you have a topic sentence or possibly a thesis statement.

Clustering, also called mind mapping or idea mapping, is a strategy that allows you to explore the relationships between ideas.

  • Put the subject in the center of a page. Circle or underline it.
  • As you think of other ideas, write them on the page surrounding the central idea. Link the new ideas to the central circle with lines.
  • As you think of ideas that relate to the new ideas, add to those in the same way.
  • The result will look like a web on your page. Locate clusters of interest to you, and use the terms you attached to the key ideas as departure points for your paper.

Brainstorming Video

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