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Pre-writing Activities and Drafting Your Essay

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Pre-writing Activities

1. freewrite.

Without referring to the text or your notes, write for five to ten minutes on all the images (or the device you have chosen to examine) you can recall. This will provide an initial list which will make up your body of evidence.

Look back through the text and your notes to further identify evidence, keeping focused on the particular device you want to discuss.

3. Research

Optional: Ask your instructor about outside sources before you use them. Once you've identified enough textual evidence to support your thesis, you may want to see what other writers have had to say about your topic. This kind of appeal to other authorities helps you back up and interpret your reading of the work.

4. Evaluate

You will probably generate more evidence than you can use. One way to decide which evidence to take and which to leave is to limit your choices to the best, most illustrative examples you can find. Focus on how the devices are used to develop major characters, major scenes, and major turning points in the work.

Drafting your essay

You've read and annotated the work, developed a thesis, and identified your evidence. Now you're ready to work your evidence into your draft. Here are some effective techniques.

What is a quote?

Quoting involves taking a word, phrase, or passage directly from the story, novel, or critical essay and working it grammatically into your discussion. Here's an example:

In his novel, The Secret Agent , Conrad describes Verloc as "undemonstrative and burly in a fat-pig style.... " (69). The pig image suggests that Verloc is not a lean, zealous anarchist, but is actually a corrupt, complacent middle class man who is interested in preserving his comfortable status.

Notice three things about the example above:

• The passage from the novel is enclosed in quotes and the page number is indicated in parentheses. For more help see our handouts on MLA and APA .
• The passage is introduced in a coherent grammatical style; it reads like a complete, correct sentence. For more help, see our handout on using quotation marks .
• The quote is interpreted, not patched on and left for the reader to figure out what it means.

When should I quote?

• To make a particularly important point
• When a passage or point is particularly well written
• To include a particularly authoritative source

How should I quote?

• All quotes must be introduced, discussed, and woven into the text. As you revise, make sure you don't have two quotes end-to-end.
• A good rule of thumb: Don't let your quotes exceed 25% of your text.

2. Paraphrasing

What is paraphrasing?

• This is using your own words to say what the author said. To paraphrase the quote used above, you might say something like:

When should I paraphrase?

• Paraphrasing is useful in general discussion (introduction or conclusion) or when the author's original style is hard to understand.
• Again, you would need to interpret the paraphrase just as you would a quote.
• For more help, see the OWL handout on paraphrasing .

3. Summarizing

What is summarizing?

• This is taking larger passages from the original work and summing them up in a sentence or two. To use the example above:

When should I summarize?

• Like paraphrasing, summary is useful in general discussion which leads up to a specific point and when you want to introduce the work and present the thesis.
• For more help, see the OWL handout on Summarizing .

6 Creative Prewriting Activities for Academic Writing

by Suzanne Davis | May 28, 2020 | Writing Process

How do you develop essay ideas?

How do you find an interesting topic you can use for academic writing? Start with prewriting activities that help you unleash your thoughts and put them onto paper.  What is prewriting? 

It is the first stage of the writing process where you come up with ideas, make notes (and sometimes do research) and plan what you will write. Prewriting is an essential piece of academic writing, but many people overlook it.

They think prewriting is only for creative writing–it’s not.  Whatever writing genre you are in, prewriting helps you find and plan your ideas.  Prewriting for academic writing is like other types of prewriting; the difference is in how you evaluate writing ideas.

When you select a topic, you search for what interests you, as well as whether or not there is research about it.

Prewriting helps you select a topic you’re interested in and figure out what things you should include in your academic essay or paper.  The trick is in finding the ideal prewriting method that suits your personality as a writer and gets you excited to start a new writing project.

Today, we’re looking at 6 types of prewriting so that you can find the right activities for your writing process.

6 Prewriting Activities for Academic Writing

These are 6 prewriting activities I use to help my students decide what to write about and how they should plan their writing.

Three of these prewriting techniques will help find your topic and select some of your content. Three prewriting activities are for when you already know your subject and want to organize it.   Use one or a combination of these prewriting techniques to get you started on your essay.

Prewriting Activity 1: Brainstorming (Listing) Ideas

Brainstorming is where you write or type down every idea you have for a possible essay topic or any other kind of writing project.  Then you can use one of those ideas as a topic, and create a second list of ideas based on your essay topic.

The process for brainstorming is:

Part 1 –select a writing topic:.

• Find a place where you can focus without distraction.
• Ask yourself, “what can I write about?”
• Think for a moment.
• List every idea that comes to your mind.
• Do this for a short time (5-10 minutes).
• Look over your list and pick a topic.

Part 2—Choose content to include in your topic

• Focus on the question, “What ideas relate to this topic?”
• Write down every thought that comes to your mind for 5-10 minutes.
• Circle ideas that intrigue you.
• Decide which ideas would best relate to the essay topic, and which ideas are interesting.

Brainstorming is excellent for anyone who likes to do short creative activities that don’t require writing in complete sentences.  There is an organized process to it, but this activity doesn’t restrain the mind.

You won’t have a well-structured essay outline at the end of this activity, but you could try this activity first and then create an outline.

Prewriting Activity 2: Clustering/Mind Maps

This is an activity where you create a web or mind map based on your essay topic.   Clustering and mind mapping are the same thing, but the word “clustering” was used first.   

I use the words “mind map” because I use mind maps for many different learning activities.   The process is the same, no matter what you call this prewriting technique.

The process for creating a mind map is:

• Select your main topic.
• Write your main idea in a circle in the middle of your map.
• Think of an idea that relates to the main idea.
• Draw a line and write that word/s in a circle. These ideas are major categories you can include in your essay or paper.
• Do this for every idea that relates to your main topic.
• Look at the major categories you wrote in these circles.
• For each category, think of related ideas.
• Draw a branch with a circle for each related idea.
• Analyze the ideas in your mind map, and decide which ones you want to include in your writing project.

This prewriting activity is good for people who know their writing topic and want to develop ideas about what to include in their essay or paper. It is also an excellent activity for visual learners and people who don’t want to write a lot of words during the prewriting process.

Prewriting Activity 3: Freewriting and Looping

Freewriting is an activity where you write non-stop for a set number of minutes to find a topic.  You can use freewriting for other purposes like developing your writing voice and style, but it is a great prewriting activity too.  When you use it for prewriting, start with an open-ended question like, “What can I write about? or  “What things interest me?”

Looping is the second part of freewriting.  You take your writing topic and then write about it non-stop for another set number of minutes.  Looping will help you find other ideas you want to add to your writing.

Rachel Connor explains freewriting and looping in her post, “The Prewriting Toolkit: Freewriting and Looping” at  http://rachelconnorwriter.com/2014/12/the-prewriting-toolkit-freewriting-and-looping/

The goal of this activity is the same as brainstorming—find a topic and then select ideas related to it.

The process for freewriting:

• Find a place to focus and concentrate on writing.
• Set a timer for at least 10 minutes.
• Start writing and don’t stop to go back and edit your words.
• Keep writing even if you can’t think of what to say. When you’re stuck, write the words, “I don’t know what to say,” and then continue.
• Stop writing when you hear the timer’s alarm.
• Read what you wrote and circle, highlight or underline any exciting ideas.
• Ask, “Can I write an essay or paper about any of these ideas?”
• Select your idea and decide if you want to try looping for more ideas related to your topic.

The process for looping:

The process of looping is identical to that of freewriting.  Set a timer and write for a certain length of time without stopping. Then focus your writing on the topic you selected from the freewrite.  When you finish your writing,  you will circle, highlight, or underline interesting ideas related to your writing topic.   Then ask, “What ideas would be good to include in my essay or paper?”

Freewriting and looping are great for people who don’t like a lot of structure and want a lot of flexibility when they are prewriting.  It is not the best choice for people who don’t want to write a lot of sentences in a short time.

Prewriting Activity 4: Journalist’s Questions

This prewriting technique is where you take your main topic and try to answer the 6 questions journalists ask about everything they write:  Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?

The process for the Journalist’s Questions prewriting activity:

• Write down your main topic.
• Ask each question: Who? What? When? Where? How? And Why?  Note: y ou probably won’t be able to answer every question for your topic.
• Answer questions that fit your main topic.
• Write detailed answers to these questions.
• Check and see if any of your answers make you think of other questions.
• Write down any other questions that come to your mind. These are called follow-up questions.
• Try to write answers to your follow-up questions.

The Journalist’s Questions prewriting activity is useful for people who are doing some kind of research writing.  These are also helpful questions for people writing a story or a personal narrative.  It is a structured prewriting exercise that is easy to follow, and it helps you develop a lot of content for your writing project.

This technique involves a lot of writing, but the writing is focused on answering specific questions.

Prewriting Activity 5: Creating an Outline

This prewriting exercise is for organizing your main idea, thesis statement, and all the content you’ll include in your essay or paper. It’s not a prewriting activity for choosing a topic and deciding on ideas.

It’s only helpful when you have a good idea of what you want to include in your paper.   

Here’s the process for creating an outline:

• Write a title at the head of the outline.
• Add the introduction, which includes: the hook—a sentence that engages your audience, so they want to keep reading your essay (fact, interesting story, statistic, quotation, etc.) &  the main idea and thesis statement.
• Outline the body of your essay with the main ideas connected to the thesis statement.  Add supporting details and evidence.
• Outline the conclusion which restates your thesis statement and explains the significance of that thesis.

Here’s what you include in an outline for a 5- Paragraph Essay.

You can add more pieces to the outline if you’re writing a longer paper.  If you’re writing a long research paper, you can divide your paper into headings. You’ll see an example of how to do this at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/01/

Outlines are perfect for you if you like to have a structured plan for what to write.  They make it easy for you to transfer your ideas into paragraphs.   But, if you are a person who likes to be flexible in their writing then you may not find this activity useful.   There are other ways to organize your notes and ideas before writing.

Prewriting Activity 6:  Journaling!

Do you want to have a source of endless writing ideas?   Journaling is an excellent habit for you.

You can keep a journal for your academic studies, or if you like journaling, you can keep a journal for each of your courses.  All you do is write down what you think or feel about what you’ve read, studied, or learned for that day.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What’s the most intriguing thing I read about? Why is it interesting? 
• What ideas from class did I agree with and why?
• What did I disagree with and why?
• What did I learn today?
• What confused me?

You can explore many other questions in a daily academic journal.  I limit my writing to 1 page, and many times I write a lot less. I also have a personal journal, and I find many writing ideas from this journal too.

The advantage of journaling is that when you don’t know what to write about, you can look back at other things that interested you. Then you can decide if you want to write an essay or paper on those topics.

Try one or more of techniques with your writing and see which ones work the best for you.

 Also, if you want more support and help with academic writing, join the Academic Writing Success Community!   I’ll send you my free  How to Organize an Amazing Academic Essay Cheat Sheet! 

Privacy Overview

• Writing Worksheets and Other Writing Resources
• Pre Writing/ Developing a Topic

Before You Start Writing That Paper...

About the SLC

• Our Mission and Core Values

Every Writer's Dilemma 

Are you writing a paper and don't know where to start? Even with a clear prompt, a grasp on the material, and lots of ideas, getting started on any paper can be a challenge. All writers face the dilemma of looking at a blank computer screen without having any idea of how to translate their thoughts into a coherent and carefully articulated essay. You may know all about drafting and editing, but how do you get to that first draft? What comes between a blank computer screen and that polished final paper anyway? 

Prewriting!

The answer to that final question is quite simple. The best and most successful papers always start with prewriting.

So, what is prewriting anyway?

Good question! Prewriting is a term that describes any kind of preliminary work that precedes the actual paper writing. It doesn't necessarily have to be writing. In fact, prewriting can just be concentrated thinking about what you want to write your paper on. Various prewriting techniques are expanded upon below. However, know that you don't have to use all of them, nor is any one better than any of the others. Successful prewriting (and paper writing!) occurs when the writer finds what works best for him/her.

What are good prewriting techniques? 

I'm glad you asked! In the rest of this handout, you'll find a variety of useful techniques to help you get started on pretty much any writing project. If you're not sure where to start, just pick one and try it out. After you've tested a couple, you'll probably develop a sense of your most successful prewriting strategies and can choose the techniques that best suit your writing and thinking style. 

Brainstorming

Brainstorming refers to quickly writing down or taking inventory of all your thoughts as fast as they come to you. In this sense, your ideas are like a gigantic storm swirling around in your brain, and it's your job to get them out of your head. Writing of some kind is very helpful in brainstorming, as it can often be difficult to keep track of all your thoughts and ideas without writing them down. However, your writing does not have to be formal. Many writers simply use bullet points to mark all their ideas; in this sense, brainstorming often looks more like a list, rather than a coherent piece of writing (which is totally fine at this stage!). When brainstorming, don't feel pressured to connect, defend, fully articulate, or censor your ideas. If you allow yourself to simply pour out all the thoughts that are in your head, following them wherever they lead, you might come up with a really interesting topic, theme, motif, etc. to focus your paper on. 

Example:  Brainstorming for Toni Morrison's Beloved.

• Sethe's relationship with her children.
• Significance of milk and the breast. Possible connection to mother/child relationship.
• Familial relationships under slavery. Perhaps Morrison is examining (or complicating) this through Sethe's extreme relationship with her children. Possible connection to milk and breast imagery. Breastfeeding her children may be so important because mother/child relationshps are often destroyed under slavery. 
• Motherly love. Sethe seems to think murder can be taken as an act of motherly love. Maybe she's rewriting the role of the mother under slavery. 
• Return of Beloved and inability to explain/justify murder. Even though Sethe claims that the murder was right, she seems conflicted. 

Freewriting 

Freewriting is very similar to brainstorming in that it gets all your thoughts out onto paper. However, where brainstorming often looks more like a list of ideas, freewriting usually takes the shape of more formal sentences. Even so, grammar, punctuation, and the like should be far from your mind. Like brainstorming, you should follow the flow of your ideas, and you shouldn't pressure yourself to fully tease out everything. There's plenty of time for that later! And once again, I want to stress that you SHOULD NOT censor your ideas. You may be quick to discount an idea, but if you give it a chance, it may take you somewhere totally unexpected and extremely productive in terms of writing a successful paper. 

Example:  Freewriting for Beloved.

I have to write a paper on Beloved for my English class. There's a lot to write on in this book. When I first read it, I noticed a lot of things about Sethe and her relationship with her kids. Her motherly relationship with her children seemed important to her, especially in terms of breastfeeding them. Perhaps this is symbolic of something. Like milk and the breast represent motherhood itself. This might be why it was so important for Sethe to get milk to her baby; she may have wanted to retain that motherly bond. Perhaps that's important because of the fact that slavery interferes with the mother/child relationship. In slavery, Sethe and her children are just her master's property, so she's not the ultimate guardian/owner of them. Maybe breastfeeding is her way of reestablishing the bond that slavery attempts to destroy by making humans into property. 

Clustering or Mindmapping

Once again, clustering and mindmapping, like brainstorming and freewriting, allow you to take inventory of your ideas. However, they both focus you on a central word (usually something that embodies a theme, topic, motif, etc. that is important to your ideas), which you then work out from by associating other words, thoughts, and ideas to that central word. These may be very useful techniques for extremely visual people. A lot of online diagrams of clustering have the central word in a circle, with all the associated words in their own circles and lines connecting them back to the central word. Similarly, there are very elaborate and decorative examples of mindmaps online. Be as creative as you want—just not at the expense of your ideas themselves! Using these techniques allows you to very easily visualize all the ideas that are in your head.

Example:  Clustering for Beloved. 

Question-Asking 

This is one of the best and most useful approaches to get yourself started on writing a paper, especially if you really have no idea where to start. Here, you write down all the questions that seem relevant to your material. These should definitely be legitimate questions, possibly ones you have yourself. By generating a lot of questions, as well as forcing yourself to contemplate answers to those questions, you'll get out a lot of the ideas, issues, thoughts, etc. that could potentially get you started on paper writing. Similarly, a lot of great essay topics come out of a question. By focusing on a question that is not easily answered, you'll have a framework for your argument. 

Example:  Question-Asking for Beloved.

• Why does Morrison focus on Sethe's relationship with her children?
• What is the significance of mother/child relationships in Beloved?
• Is milk and breastfeeding important? Why? How does it connect to other themes in the book? Could it be symbolic? If so, what does it symbolize?
• How does slavery affect Sethe's relationshp with her children? Is Morrison addressing this? If so, how?
• What does Sethe's murder of her baby signify? Is it clear by the end of the book? Or is it unresolved? How does it connect to slavery, mother/child relationships, and other themes? 

This technique is best used as an on-going process. While brainstorming, freewriting, clustering, mindmapping, and question-asking can wait until you have your paper assignment and are thinking about where to start, journaling is best throughout your engagement with whatever material you could potentially be writing on. Journaling can involve aspects of all previously mentioned techniques. However, the idea behind it is to write down whatever strikes you about the material when it strikes you. That way, rather than trying to remember your first impressions and ideas about the material, you'll have them already conveniently written down. Although many ideas that strike us in the moment don't lead to great papers, many of our initial thoughts become the seeds of a successful essay. 

Example : Journaling for Beloved.

On page (x), Sethe mentions milk and breastfeeding. This seems really important to her, especially as a mother. Is this a theme Morrison is developing? Possibly the relationship between mothers and children. 

On page (x), Morrison describes how Sethe murdered her baby. Why is the detail so vivid? If Sethe's trying to argue that she did it out of motherly love, why does Morrison make the murder so graphic? Also, what does slavery have to do with this? Does the fact that Sethe murdered her baby to protect her from slavery justify her actions? 

On page (x), Morrison writes that Sethe is constantly trying to explain and justify the murder. Elsewhere, Sethe defends it as the right thing to do. Why this conflict? Does this tie into other themes? What is Morrison trying to say?

Outlining can be extremely helpful for some writers, but extremely restrictive for others. Also, it's difficult to jump into outlining without having done some prelimiary work with one of the other techniques. Outlining requires that you have a good sense of your ideas, themes, thoughts, approach, argument, etc. This is why many writers cannot use outlining; for some, a good sense of what you're writing about comes through the actual writing process. You may start off with a sense of what you'll argue, but often, it changes and molds into a coherent argument as you write the paper. However, if you're one of those writers who has a clear sense of your argument from the beginning and you want a way to organize your ideas before starting to write the paper, then outlining is for you! 

For outlining, most usually use bullet points to organize how they'll structure their paper. Beginning with the introduction, lay out your main point/argument. From there, go through each paragraph, highlighting the main idea, evidence, and analysis you'll be using. Be sure to check that it ties into the previous paragraph, as well as your overall argument. Finally, sum up your argument in your conclusion, pointing to the larger significance of your essay's claims.

For those of you who don't like outlining, but find moving straight into the actual writing process more productive, reverse outlining can be very useful. This is where you outline your paper after you've written it. This is extremely helpful when checking to make sure that all your paragraphs move logically from one idea to the next, and that they all work to support your larger argument. 

Example : Outline for an essay on  Beloved . 

Introduction

—Focus on how Morrison highlights the importance of history in terms of slavery and the African American community in her book.

—Thesis: Morrison stresses the necessity of an active communal preservation, retrieval, and even writing of a personal history that many have tried to forget, ignore, or make impersonal.

1st paragraph:

—Topic sentence: In Beloved, Morrison shows the necessity of community and active participation to history's preservation and retrieval by highlighting the importance of telling one's personal story to others.

•   “They sang it out and beat it up, garbling the words so they could not be understood; tricking the words so their syllables yielded up other meanings” (128). 

•   Similarly, Sethe is able to retrieve her forgotten history by “telling” Beloved, who has “distance from the events itself,” stories from her past, as Morrison writes, “she was   remembering something she had forgotten she knew” (Morrison 69, 73).

—Close reading analysis.

2nd paragraph:

—Topic sentence:   And Morrison, through the figure of Beloved, who represents not only Sethe's, but also slavery's history itself, accentuates the need for an active communal retrieval and rewriting of history by illustrating the dangerous effects of an unresolved past on the present. 

—Evidence: 

•  “The flesh between [Sethe's] forefinger and thumb was thin as China silk and there wasn't a piece of clothing that didn't sag on her. Beloved...was getting bigger, plumper by the day” (Morrison 281).

— Close reading analysis.

3rd paragraph:

—Topic sentence: But in Beloved's exorcism, Morrison shows that the past can finally be resolved through an active communal rewriting of personal history. 

•  “They grouped, murmuring and whispering, but did not step foot in the yard...Denver saw lowered heads, but could not hear the lead prayer—only the earnest syllables of agreement that backed it: Yes, yes, yes, oh yea. Hear me. Hear me. Do it, Maker, do it. Yes” (304-305).

•  “Then Denver, running too. Away from [Beloved] to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling” (309).

—   Close reading analysis.

Conclusion:

— Beloved shows that the past has bearing on the present. It is personal and cannot be forgotten. In terms of modern day readers, Morrison seems to be advocating a retrieval of the history of slavery that is often forgotten.

Helpful Resources 

• Brainstorming (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)  
• Freewriting: A Way Around Writer's Block (University of Richmond Writing Center)  
• Prewriting: Clustering (University of Richmond Writing Center)  

Allison Lahl

Student Learning Center, University of California, Berkeley

©2008 UC Regents 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.