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THE WRITING PROCESS:

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PRE-WRITING

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Pre-Writing

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■ Pre-writing is the first stage of the writing process. It is where the ideas are written in

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an unorganized manner to discover the paragraph’s topic, and then they are later

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put in to an outline to organize and narrow them.

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Common Pre-Writing Strategies:

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■ Brainstorming (listing): make a list of everything that you might be interested in writing

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about and ideas about them.

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■ Clustering (mapping): write a word in a circle in the middle of a blank sheet. Then, you are

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going expand from that word by writing ideas all around it.

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■ Freewriting: write everything that comes to mind about an idea for 10 to 15 minutes.

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■ Questioning: ask and answer who, what, where, why and how questions about topics you

might be interested in writing about.

Narrowing a Topic

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■ By now, you should have an idea of what the topic of your paragraph is going to be. It

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is important that the topic you have selected not be too general nor too specific, so

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you have create it with the right amount of details.

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Narrowing a Topic Examples

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– Topic example: Clothes

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■ As you can notice from the previous topic example, it is too general and has too

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many things to write about, which probably won’t fit into a small composition, but by

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focusing on an aspect of the topic, it is easier to make it more specific.

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– Topic example: Popular brands of clothes bought by women
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 Be careful not to make your topic too specific, because then you will not have much
to write about.
Outlining

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■ You have gathered all your ideas and you have narrowed them down, now it is time

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to put them together in a outline of your paragraph. This way you can make sure

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your paragraph is developed the way you want it to be.

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Outline Example:

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■ Topic: People, food, and places of Puerto Rico

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■ Idea 1: The variety of food from Puerto Rico that I enjoyed.

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■ Idea 2: Touristic spots that were most memorable for me.

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■ Idea 3: The nice people of Puerto Rico that I met.

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