Did you miss part 1 of The Writing Process: Preparation? Why don’t you read it now and come back later?
The Writing Process: Preparation (Part 2)
Finding information
Before you begin writing, ask yourself: what is the purpose is of this article? This will help you decide what kind of information you need. If your aim is to inform you will need many facts and figures about your topic. On the other hand, if your article should be very descriptive you will require strong imagery and sensory information about your topic.
Information gathering techniques include the following:
Observation
Carefully take note of sights, smells, taste, sound and other sensory stimuli about your subject. Get to grips with it and really feel it. If you are writing about a place – travel there and absorb all the sights, sounds and smells.
Direct observation will give you great material to write about.
If you need to rely on someone else’s account of the place or thing you are writing about, listen carefully to what they say and how they describe the subject. This is indirect observation.
Diary of a writer
A diary or journal will come in very useful as you make your observations and gather information about a topic.
Use it to record your thoughts, experiences, conversations, opinions and quotations from other people. Remember to keep your personal journal private unless you want everyone to read your thoughts. A personal blog may be all you need to record your experiences and you’ll be saving paper at the same time.
Mind Maps and Brainstorming
Tony Buzan is the original father of brainstorming and mind mapping, a technique that has been around for quite some time and is still useful today.
To brainstorm you simply jot down all ideas that come into your head when you have a particular topic in mind. Don’t hold back or judge your thoughts – keep them flowing freely and allow everything to come out. This works well if you scribble on a large piece of paper.
Mind mapping involves a large piece of paper too, but this time you write down your central idea in the centre of the paper and encircle it in a bubble. Next you add more bubbles – ideas that come from the central idea. For each new bubble you can create additional sub-ideas that flow outwards across your piece of paper. This clustering is actually how your brain really works to store any ideas or memories – when you mind map you literally draw what your mind looks like.
Questions
You need to dig deep and answer the W and H questions:
- Who?
- What
- Where
- When?
- Why?
- How?
What’s your point of view?
According to Harcourt et al who wrote an awesome book published decades ago called English Composition and Grammar, you need to ask three basic questions:
- What is it? Define the topic in its totality
- How does it change or vary? Look at the history of the topic to see how it changes over time
- What are its relationships? This describes how a topics parts relate to one another or similar topics
Order! Order!
Your ideas should be arranged in a logical order once you have classified them. Once you have organized your information, you have a skeletal outline of your article.
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