How to Use Pre-Writing Strategies to Explore Your Topic For Writing an Article

Pre-writing is the first and the most important stage in the writing process. It is like a warm up exercise. Using pre-writing strategies will help you organize your thoughts and write them down in order.

You need a topic to begin with. Without a topic you are going nowhere. The best place to search for a topic is to ask yourself: What I like the most and what are my interests? What do I know about this topic and what do I want to write in my article? Once you have a topic, the next step is to use the pre-writing strategies.

There are four pre-writing strategies. 

1. Free-writing and/or listing.
2. Discussing
3. Mapping
4. Research and

Free-writing is a strategy used to collect your first thoughts. The important process in free-writing is to write without stopping, checking for grammar mistakes, neither erasing out any words nor tracing back your thoughts. Write for five to ten minutes or until you have a whole paragraph. However in free-writing, the author's thoughts are allowed to wander.

Listing is strategy that is used to collect and list all the ideas that an author can possible think of writing in an article. In listing, the idea to write down in points without stopping for five to ten minutes similar to freewriting.

Discussing a topic with another individual or a group will help you in your writing because the possibilities of pros and cons, the explanation and justification are tremendous. Have a note book and a pen and take notes as you discuss.

Mapping gives a visual understanding of the pre-writing process. Which do you think is easier, taking directions from a person or looking and reading directions from a map? Obviously the answer is reading directions from a map. Those you like visuals will find mapping easier to understand. In mapping, write down your topic in the center, circle it and ask these questions  What I like the most and what are my interests? What do I know about this topic and what do I want to write in my article? Circle and answer each question again.

Research a topic for more information. The research process is to investigate and discover new thoughts, facts and developments. This process is very important as it adds more color and flavor to your article. The best place to find information is the internet, and libraries.

Without using pre-writing strategies, you will not know what to and where to begin. By following the strategies you will see a big difference in the way you write an article.

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