Anita Kharbanda

Happy Friday folks! Today’s blog post is informational, and I hope it will support you in your writing goals. Writing requires a level of pragmatic action and strategic planning. And though it is truly a creative pursuit with no ubiquitous process, most successful writers will agree that pre-work is key. The topic of today’s blog is prewriting. What is prewriting, and how does it add value?

Prewriting happens before you begin your draft. It includes brainstorming over the what, why, and who of your topic. Oral storytelling is an effective way to brainstorm for a good topic because writers discern whether the topic will be interesting based on listeners’ reactions.

Reading is also effective in sparking ideas for choosing a topic, and researching a topic once you’ve chosen it. While gathering material, often writers pay particular attention to the vocabulary used in discussing the topic.

An additional tool to really hone in on a topic is to free-write. Free-writing is when you write every idea that comes to mind, without regard to grammar. Some writers like to time themselves. Do you engage in free-writing?

Mind Maps are another great prewriting tool once you’ve chosen a topic. What is a mind map you ask? It is a visual strategy to use during the prewriting stage. They resemble the map of a geographical location. Radiating from the center—your main topic—a mind map uses lines, symbols, words, and colors to transform information into a colorful and organized diagram of your writing plan. The ‘roads’ extending from the center reflect your thoughts, and special images or shapes can represent key ideas. Check out this example of a mind map.

Once you’ve brainstormed, free-written and mind mapped, I suggest outlining your story. Typical outlines are organized by chronology, relationships, or by subtopics. Chris Fox shared a helpful video on how he outlines his novels here: Chris Fox Outline

Though there is no clear-cut process for prewriting, below are the key steps and sequence I recommended above:

Brainstorming
Reading
Free-Writing
Mind Mapping
Outlining

Prewriting sequences and necessity can vary depending on your writing project. This said, please don’t accept my above recommendation as written in stone. Fiction requires more imagination, while non-fiction writing requires stronger organization. Persuasive writers convey information, but also focus on how to open a reader’s mind to new ideas. Historical fiction will require research on the time period to understand lifestyle, as well as separating fact from fiction—trust me I know because my current work is historical fiction. Depending on your writing task, a unique combination of prewriting strategies may be utilized in a different order.

And remember friends, prewriting is recursive, occurring at any time and often returning as you write. As you progress with your drafts you may need to discuss the material with someone, or adjust your outline.

So now that you understand what prewriting is, how does it benefit writers you ask? Well, most importantly it helps you transfer your thoughts out onto the paper. Writers develop clear reasoning, organized thought and discover weak parts of a topic. You construct a clear plan to follow while writing, while allowing fluidity for creative influence. Prewriting also supports you in determining your audience.

Do you prewrite and if so do you have a process you follow that you’d like to share? Do tell—I’d love to know. If you don’t prewrite, will you start prewriting after this blog post?

Thanks for checking into my little corner of the webosphere. Blog ya later!