“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are

useless, but planning is indispensable.”

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Stages of Pre-Writing

1. Knowing the kind of paper that you will be required to write.

What are you being asked to do?

How long the paper should be?

2. Determining the writing situation, or the context of your assignment.

What is the purpose and audience of your paper?

Defining Pre-Writing

The first stage of the writing process is pre-writing, which pertains to different techniques that help you discover ideas before writing the first draft of a paper.

0 You use a variety of strategies to find out things

that interest you about a topic or new ways of

thinking about it

0 It also helps you identify what else you need to know

about a topic.

The Purpose of Your Paper

The first consideration is determining your purpose. This is the reason why you are writing. When you think about your purpose, you begin to make decisions about form, content, length, organization, support and tone.

Purpose in writing is answered by these questions:

What do you want to accomplish?

Why are you sending this message?

The Purpose of Your Paper

Your purpose may be to:

1. inform

2. explain

3. persuade

4. entertain

The Audience of Your Paper

To write effectively, it is always best to assume that you are writing to be read. Your audience is your target reader. You must recognize who your readers are and anticipate their expectations, background, and knowledge of the topic if you are to tailor-fit your writing to their tastes.

Some questions to help you analyze your audience

0Who is most likely to read my work? Will I have multiple audiences?

0What would they find interesting about it?

0Why should they be concerned about my opinion?

0What do I want them to learn from my work?

0How do I want to influence them?

0Will they act on what I want them to do?

0What questions would they have for me?

After you have determined your audience and purpose, you are ready to think about your paper’s topic. The topic is the subject or the specific issue that your paper will discuss.

0 Topic should be specific.

0 The topic should be related to the assignment and interesting to you.

0 It must be something that you know or are willing to learn more about.

After you have thought about your purpose, audience, and topic, it would be good to consider the tone you plan to use. This refers to the attitudes and feelings you want your writing to reflect toward your purpose, topic, audience, and yourself. These are manifested in your chosen point-of-view (first, second, or third), sentence structure (long and short sentences), and chosen words (connotation and denotation).

Using Pre-Writing Strategies

Ways to find your writing topic:

1. Brainstorming

0 Begin at the top of a sheet of paper and list down everything that comes into your mind as fast as you can for a certain amount of time.

0 After listing down all your ideas, browse through them and pick the one that best appeals to you, or the one that you know best.

1. Brainstorming

K to 12 Basic Education

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Using Pre-Writing Strategies

Ways to find your writing topic:

2. Clustering or Mapping

0 Start by writing a word or phrase at the center of the page and encircle it; this becomes your main topic.

0 Think of other words and phrases related to that main topic, write them down, encircle them, and draw lines connecting them to the main topic. These becomes your subtopics. From there, you can branch off the subtopics with other supporting ideas.

2. Clustering or Mapping

Using Pre-Writing Strategies

Ways to find your writing topic:

3. Freewriting

0 Writing down your thoughts nonstop, in the exact order, language, and form in that you think them.

0 Write as quickly as you can to create constant momentum for your thoughts to keep on flowing.

3. Freewriting

Journal Writing

A good way to sustain writing practice is the habit of your journal writing.

Journal is “a book in which you write down your personal experiences and thoughts” (Merriam-Webster)

Things you will ever need in journal writing:

0 favorite pen

0 a nice clean notebook

0 the drive to keep on writing

Application

A. Use a pre-writing strategy specified in the parentheses to narrow it down to several topics.

1. Social media (brainstorming)

2. Summer vacation (mapping)

Rodriguez, Maxine Rafaella C. and Marella Therese A. Tiongson. 2016. Reading and Writing Skills. Manila: Rex Book Store, Inc.