Part 3: Prewriting

Many students see prewriting as a waste of time and jump right into drafting. However, when you skip over the first steps of writing and move straight to drafting, the process of writing may take much more time.

Proficient writers know prewriting is important because it allows you to generate ideas to frame your thinking and provide a broad range of content.

Spending time planning your writing will ensure that the best of your ideas come together in a cohesive way. This will also make the drafting and revising process easier and result in a higher-quality finished piece.

Here are three prewriting strategies you may find helpful:

Strategy 1: Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a technique of listing as many ideas as possible about your writing topic. The greatest rule of brainstorming is to keep the process as broad and open as possible. Watch the video titled “Four Steps To Pre-Writing: How To Brainstorm” to learn more about how to brainstorm:

Strategy 2: Mindmapping

Mindmapping (or concept mapping) is similar to brainstorming, but it is much more visual. It allows you to create connections between ideas. It can be a useful step after brainstorming, or it may match your style better if brainstorming seems too random. Watch the video titled “How to Use Mind Mapping for Studying and Research” to learn more about mindmapping.

Strategy 3: Freewriting

Freewriting is a process of simply writing. When writers freewrite, they write whatever comes to mind without worrying about spelling or grammar. Freewriting helps you get started and can expand your thinking. View the video “Freewriting” to learn more.

Now that you have learned about prewriting strategies, you will be asked to complete prewriting for your own “This I Believe” essay.

You will be asked to write a “This I Believe” personal narrative about a belief or value that motivates you in school, work, or life. Your belief/value should focus on an ideal: family, parenthood, community, friendship, love, hope, forgiveness, courage, perseverance, or any value that is important to you. Your narrative should tell the story of how you developed this belief or value. The belief or value should be real; it should focus on something you really believe, and it should tell the reader a story about why you believe in this ideal and the event (or events) in your life that led you to this belief.

Your audience should be adults who are not enrolled in our class and who are not familiar with you or your background. This means you need to focus on narration (by telling your story) and description (by describing important events).

Complete Prewriting for the “This I Believe” Essay

Complete the following activity to explore ideas you might use for your “This I Believe” essay.

Then, use at least one prewriting strategy to develop ideas for your narrative. Freewrite, list, or create a mind map to develop ideas that you might use for your narrative. You might expand upon the ideas you developed in the previous activity, or you could explore other ideas and values that personally matter to you.

Here are some questions to get you started:

  • Which beliefs or values matter to you? (You might choose values like family, friendship, perseverance, giving, creativity, hope, freedom, sacrifice, forgiveness, love, community, fun, respect, belonging, curiosity, grace, joy, humor, or trustworthiness.)
  • Which of your beliefs or values is the most important?
  • Why is this belief or value important to you?
  • How did you develop this belief or value?
  • When and where did you develop this belief? Who was involved?
  • How does this belief or value motivate you in school, work, or life?

Finally, watch the video on “Writing a This I Believe Essay.” This video may help you think about choosing a value that is most important to you.

Develop a Timeline

Narrative essays usually tell stories in chronological (or time) order.

Now that you have developed ideas through prewriting, use those ideas to create a timeline. A timeline is similar to an outline, but it lists events. As you develop your timeline, list the events that occurred in your narrative (or true story) about a belief or value. How did you develop this belief or value? What happened first, second, third, etc.? Be sure to include why this belief/value is important to you.

Watch the following video to learn how to create a timeline.

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Integrated Reading and Writing Level 2 Copyright © 2018 by Pamela Herrington-Moriarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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