Pre-Writing

Pre-Writing Techniques
• Brainstorming
• Discussing
• Free Writing
• Looping
• Outlining
• Mapping
• Journalistic Questions
 What is Pre-Writing?
• Prewriting is a term that describes any kind of
preliminary work that precedes the actual
paper writing.
• Helps us discover our initial ideas about a
subject, and put them on paper, though not
usually in an organized form.
• Helps to calm down our nerves.
 Brainstorming
• “Brainstorming” means thinking of as
many ideas as possible in a short amount
of time. It is also called Listing.
• In brainstorming you write down your
ideas so that you don’t forget them.
• You should write down everything that
comes to your mind; don’t worry about
sorting out “good” and “bad” ideas.
 Example: Brainstorming for Toni
Morrison's Beloved.
• Sethe's relationship with her children.
• Significance of milk and the mother feeding it. Possible connection
to mother/child relationship.
• Familial relationships under slavery. Perhaps Morrison is examining
(or complicating) this through Sethe's extreme relationship with her
children. Possible connection to milk and breast imagery.
Breastfeeding her children may be so important because
mother/child relationships are often destroyed under slavery.
• Motherly love. Seethe seems to think murder can be taken as an act
of motherly love. Maybe she's rewriting the role of the mother
under slavery.
• Return of Beloved and inability to explain/justify murder. Even
though Sethe claims that the murder was right, she seems
conflicted.
 Discussing
• “Discussing” is similar to brainstorming,
but you do it with a partner or group.
• Assign one person to write down the
ideas.
• Write down everything that group
members say related to the topic; don’t
worry about sorting out “good” and
“bad” ideas.
 Free Writing
• “Free Writing” is like pouring all of your
thoughts onto paper.
• Don’t take your pen off the page; keep
writing for the entire time.
• If you don’t know what to write, write
“I don’t know what to write” and try to
explain the reasons why cannot write
until you do.
• Don’t try to sort “good” and “bad” ideas.
 Example of Freewriting
I have to write a paper on Beloved for my English class. There's a lot
to write on in this book. When I first read it, I noticed a lot of things
about Sethe and her relationship with her kids. Her motherly
relationship with her children seemed important to her, especially in
terms of her feeding them the milk. Perhaps this is symbolic of
something. Like milk and the mother feeding it represent
motherhood itself. This might be why it was so important for Sethe
to get milk to her baby; she may have wanted to retain that motherly
bond. Perhaps that's important because of the fact that slavery
interferes with the mother/child relationship. In slavery, Sethe and
her children are just her master's property, so she's not the ultimate
guardian/owner of them. Maybe breastfeeding is her way of
reestablishing the bond that slavery attempts to destroy by making
humans into property.
 Looping
• Looping is a continuation of free-writing.
It involves taking a sentence or idea out of
a free-writing product and using that as a
basis for additional free-writing.
• Choose the best idea, word, or phrase
from what you wrote; underline or circle it.
• Take that idea and begin free writing
again.
 Outlining
• “Outlining” is a more organized form of
pre-writing than the others we discussed.
• It can be used after you have generated
ideas through brainstorming, free writing,
or other pre-writing techniques.
• It works well for structured types of
writing such as essays.
• You can use complete sentences, but you
don’t have to.
 Example: Outline for an essay on Beloved.
Introduction
—Focus on how Morrison highlights the importance of history in terms of slavery and
the African American community in her book.

—Thesis: Morrison stresses the necessity of an active communal preservation,

retrieval, and even writing of a personal history that many have tried to forget, ignore,
or make impersonal.
1st paragraph:
—Topic sentence: In Beloved, Morrison shows the necessity of community and active
participation to history's preservation and retrieval by highlighting the importance of
telling one's personal story to others.
—Evidence:
• “They sang it out and beat it up, garbling the words so they could not be
understood; tricking the words so their syllables yielded up other meanings” (128).
• Similarly, Sethe is able to retrieve her forgotten history by “telling” Beloved, who
has “distance from the events itself,” stories from her past, as Morrison writes, “she
was remembering something she had forgotten she knew” (Morrison 69, 73).
—Close reading analysis.
 Example: Outline for an essay on Beloved.
2nd paragraph:
—Topic sentence: And Morrison, through the figure of Beloved, who represents not only Sethe's, but
also slavery's history itself, accentuates the need for an active communal retrieval and rewriting of
history by illustrating the dangerous effects of an unresolved past on the present.
—Evidence:
• “The flesh between [Sethe's] forefinger and thumb was thin as China silk and there wasn't a piece
of clothing that didn't sag on her. Beloved...was getting bigger, plumper by the day” (Morrison 281).
— Close reading analysis.
3rd paragraph:
—Topic sentence: But in Beloved's exorcism, Morrison shows that the past can finally be resolved
through an active communal rewriting of personal history.
—Evidence:
• “They grouped, murmuring and whispering, but did not step foot in the yard...Denver saw lowered
heads, but could not hear the lead prayer—only the earnest syllables of agreement that backed it:
Yes, yes, yes, oh yea. Hear me. Hear me. Do it, Maker, do it. Yes” (304-305).
• “Then Denver, running too. Away from [Beloved] to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A
hill of black people, falling” (309).
— Close reading analysis.
Conclusion:
— Beloved shows that the past has bearing on the present. It is personal and cannot be forgotten. In
terms of modern day readers, Morrison seems to be advocating a retrieval of the history of slavery
that is often forgotten.
 Clustering or Mapping
• “Mapping,” sometimes called “semantic/
idea mapping” or “webbing,” is another
way to organize your ideas.
• Start with your topic in the center, and
branch out from there with related
ideas.
• Use words and phrases, not complete
sentences.
Mapping for Beloved
 The Journalistic Questions
Journalists traditionally ask six questions when they are writing assignments, 5 W's and 1
H: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, How?
• Who?:
Who are the participants? Who is affected? Who are the primary actors? Who are the secondary
actors?
• What?:
What is the topic? What is the significance of the topic? What is the basic problem? What are
the issues?
• Where?:
Where does the activity take place? Where does the problem or issue have its source? At what
place is the cause or effect of the problem most visible?
• When?:
When is the issue most apparent? (past? present? future?) When did the issue or problem
develop? What historical forces helped shape the problem or issue and at what point in time will
the problem or issue culminate in a crisis? When is action needed to address the issue or problem?
• Why?:
Why did the issue or problem arise? Why is it (your topic) an issue or problem at all? Why did
the issue or problem develop in the way that it did?
• How?:
How is the issue or problem significant? How can it be addressed? How does it affect the
participants? How can the issue or problem be resolved?