When you plan a piece of writing, there’s a lot to consider. What is your topic and what are you trying to say about it? Who are your readers and what is your purpose for writing to them? Where will you find the information that you need and how will you organize it effectively? How will you present yourself credibly and make your argument persuasive?

Answering these questions is part of planning any piece of writing, and you will find detailed guidance for doing so in the chapters of this textbook dedicated to audience and rhetoric, thesis statements, research, and organization, among others. In this section, we describe some general planning strategies that you can use to collect your thoughts about any of these writing considerations. They will certainly be useful as you begin your writing project, but as we explain above, the recursive nature of the writing process means you will likely find yourself reading, freewriting, and outlining even as you draft and revise.

Reading

Reading is perhaps the most important planning strategy that we can share with you. To get ideas for your writing, you need to be familiar with the ideas of others. This is especially true in college classes, where your writing assignments will regularly ask you to engage with academic sources in some way.  Reading not only shows you the wealth of topics that you might write about, it also reveals what has already been said about those topics and what you could still contribute.

As you study the assigned readings in this course and in your other courses, keep careful track of your questions and responses to the text. Do you have a perspective on the topic that is different from the author’s? What questions do you have that the author doesn’t address? Do you detect gaps in how the topic is covered? Can you draw connections between the assigned reading and other readings or ideas that you have encountered? Any of these reading responses could be the beginning of a writing project.

Freewriting

Freewriting is a great strategy to use when you’re feeling stuck, unable to generate ideas to write about or unable to compose material about an idea that you already have. As its name suggests, freewriting encourages you to write freely and without worrying about the content or shape of the writing. When you freewrite, your goal is to generate as much material on the page as possible, no matter what you say or how you say it. Try to write for five, ten, or even fifteen minutes without checking, censoring, or editing yourself in any way. You should not put your pen or pencil down, or stop typing on the computer, no matter what. If you run out of things to say, repeat “I have nothing to say” or something similar until the next idea pops into your head. Let your mind go, go with the flow, and don’t worry about the final product. Your objective is to create as much text as possible. Don’t even worry about finishing your sentences or separating your paragraphs. You are not writing a draft of your paper. Instead, you are producing raw material for that draft. Later on, you just might find a gem of an idea in that raw material which you can develop into a complete draft. Also, don’t worry if anyone will be able to read what you have written—most likely you will be the only reader of your freewriting.

Listing

Listing is another useful strategy for generating topics or content for a writing project. When using this strategy, try to list all of the thoughts and ideas which are connected, however loosely, to the topic of your writing. As with free writing, you should not worry about the shape or structure of your writing. Your only concern should be to write as long a list of possibilities as you can. As you do so, try not to focus your writing radar too narrowly, on a single aspect of your topic or a single question. The broader you cast your net, the better because a large list of possibilities will give you a wealth of choices when the time comes to compose your first draft.

Mind Mapping

Mind mapping, which is also known as webbing or clustering, invites you to create a visual representation of your writing topic or of the argument you are trying to make about it. It can help you to generate ideas in the same way that listing does. It can also help you to organize those ideas, inviting you to cluster similar ideas together and note the connections between them.

Here is how mind mapping works. Write the topic (or question, or thesis) of your writing project in the middle of a blank page or type it in the middle of a computer screen. Then, write any related ideas or subtopics around it, connecting them with lines to the main topic in the middle. You can also surround any subtopics with a cluster of their own sub-subtopics, and so on. The result should look something like a spider’s web. When it’s time to draft, it could be that each of the clusters around your central topic will become a paragraph or section of your essay.

Outlining

Outlining can be a powerful planning tool because it allows writers to generate ideas and to organize them in a systematic manner. In a way, outlining is similar to mind mapping as it allows you to break down main ideas and points into smaller ones. The difference between mind maps and outlines is, of course, the fact that the former provides a visual representation of your topic while the latter gives you a more linear, textual one. If you like to organize your thoughts systematically as you compose, a good outline can be a useful resource when you begin drafting. However, it is extremely important that you treat your outline as a flexible plan for writing that may change at a later stage of the writing process. If, in the process of developing or expressing your ideas, you realize that your current outline no longer makes the best sense for your paper, change it or develop a new outline.

There are many ways to create an outline. Your instructor may ask you to use a specific method or invite you to search for examples online. We illustrate one method below which is particularly useful if you already know what your thesis, main ideas, and supporting evidence will be. You can fill in the template to organize your main ideas and examples into paragraphs that will support your thesis.

Some of these planning strategies invite spontaneity and creativity. Others help you to get organized once you have some ideas. Feel free to adjust and modify the strategies to suit you. They will work best if you apply them to a specific writing project rather than if you try them out for practice’s sake. Also, keep in mind that this is not a complete list of all possible planning strategies. Your instructor and classmates may be able to share others with you.

Continue Reading: 6.3 Drafting