Using Pre-Writing

Strategies
 Benjamin Franklin once said,
“Those who fail to plan, plan to
fail”. What do you think of this
quote in relation to writing?
 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. During pre-writing, you use
a variety of strategies to find out things that
interest you about a topic or new ways of
thinking about it. It also helps identify what else
you need to know about a topic. These are
valuable and time-saving because determining a
focus early in the writing process will help you
effectively plan and execute your research and
writing.
In the pre-writing stage, it is important to refrain from
critiquing your ideas while they have not yet been fully
formed. You should approach it with a relaxed and
open state of mind. The pre-writing stage allows you to
communicate with yourself so you can discover what
you want to communicate to your readers.
 DETERMINING THE WRITING SITUATION
The pre-writing stage begins with knowing
the kind of paper that you will be required to
write. What are you being asked to do? You
might be tasked to do a variety of things when
writing including, analyzing a text, comparing
your ideas with the author’s ideas,
summarizing the selection, or proposing a
solution to an issue. Also, consider how long
the paper should be. Looking carefully at the
assignment will help you know what to expect
when writing.
 The next thing to do is to determine the writing
situation, or the context of your assignment. The
context can be clarified by initially thinking about the
purpose and audience of your paper. At some points in
the writing process, decisions about these factors may
be changed, but it is important to always consider how
these will affect your work.
The first consideration is determining your purpose.
This is the reason why you are writing. When you think
about your purpose, you begin with making 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?
 Broadly speaking, your purpose may be to inform,
explain, persuade, or to entertain. Your purpose may be
reflected in the mode of paragraph development that you
choose for your writing. When you are writing, you may
find that these purposes may be combined or overlap.
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.
Identifying your audience helps you determine how you
want them to respond to your writing, and thus helps you
write with that in mind. You readers will more involved and
you will have a clearer appreciation of your purpose.
Here are some questions to help you analyze your
audience:
 Who is most likely to read my work? Will I have
multiple audiences?
 What is their age, sex, and educational attainment?
 Why would they be reading at work?
 Does the assignment give me an idea of who the
audience should be?
 What would they find interesting about it?
 Why should they be concerned about my opinion?
 What do I want to learn from my work?
 How much do they already know about my topic? What do they
need to know?
 How do I wat to influence them?
 What are their political, cultural, and religious beliefs?
 Will they act on what I want them to do?
 What questions would they have for me?
After you have determined your audience and purpose,
you are ready to think about your paper’s topic. This
results from a broader subject that may be found in the
assignment, or could be something you are free to think
about. The topic is the subject or the specific issue that
your paper will discuss. It is always best to limit your
topic, because if you write about a broad subject, your
essay will lack focus. The topic should both be related to
the assignment and interesting to you.
 It must be something that you know you are willing
to learn more about, since you must establish your
credibility by showing you have enough knowledge
on your topic.
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 point-of-view (first, second, third)
sentence structure (long and short sentences), and
chosen words (connotation and denotation).
 Using Pre-Writing Strategies
No idea how to start finding your
writing topic? Writers use a variety of ways to
find their writing topic-brainstorming, clustering
or mapping, and free writing. Just keep in mind
that your writing topic should be:
 One that interests you, so that you can be
passionate, personal, and comfortable when
writing about it; and
 One that you know so well that you can
credible and convincing to your audience with
your message.
 Brainstorming is one of the better and more popular method of
discovering your own topic. All you need to do is to begin at the
top of the sheet of paper and list down everything that comes into
your mind as fast as you can for a certain amount of time (say,
five minutes, for example). The aim of brainstorming exercise is
not to produce a logical flow of ideas but to provide yourself with
as many choices for your topic as possible. You can be free,
whimsical, and personal with the list as you please.
Read on below for a sample brainstorming list for a formal theme
with a free choice of topic:
 Southeast Asia
 Superheroes: Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk
 Eating halo-halo on April morning
 White beaches in Boracay
 Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus
 Patintero
  The Parable of the Prodigal Son
 Buying my first cell phone
 Fear of cockroaches
 Hatred in Science and Math
 Jose Rizal dying at Luneta Park
 Basketball is better than volleyball
 K to 12 education in Philippine high schools
 Defense of the Ancients II (DOTA II)
 Life in outer space
 Grandparents who lives in Ilocos
 Tikbalang
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. You will be
surprised at how broad your selection of topics
can be, about how much you actually already
knew. You can also try to connect your ideas,
and see what meaning you can create. These
connections between ideas can also be writing
topics in themselves. (For example, “Eating
halo-halo on April morning” and “White beaches
in Boracay” talk about summer in the
Philippines, which can be your chosen writing
topic.)
 Clustering or mapping is another technique that
you can use to find your writing topic. Start by
writing a word or phrase at the center of the page
and encircle it; this becomes your main topic.
Then, think of other words and phrases related to
that main topic, write them down, encircle them,
draw lines connecting them to the main topic.
These become your subtopics. From there, you
can branch off the topics with other supporting
ideas, or you can think of new subtopics related
again to the main topic. Just make sure that each
word or phrase you write down is connected to the
word or phrase that suggested it.
 When you are done drawing your cluster,
browse through all the ideas and pick one that
you would like to talk about. If you want to
expand on your chosen idea, you can also use
the words and phrases you wrote around it.
The beauty of this pre-writing method is that it
teaches you how to dissect an idea, or how to
develop it further. Study the sample cluster
below, and use it as a model for your own
cluster.
Notice how brainstorming and clustering, or mapping, use
lists, words, and phrases. The next method, called free
writing, uses the force of narration to draw a narration to
draw a stream of connected ideas out of the writer’s mind.
Free writing is down your thoughts nonstop, in the exact
order, language, and form in that you think them.
The good thing about this pre-writing method is that
maintains some coherence between a writer’s thoughts.
Furthermore, the key to using this method successfully is
speed; you write as quickly as you can to create constant
momentum for your thoughts to keep on flowing. Writing fast
can also get you writing thoughts you did not see coming.
The rules of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and style
do not matter here; run with your words to catch the subject
you have always itched to talk about. You will be amazed how
much distance you writing mind will cover with this exercise.
To get a better grip of freewriting, read on the sample
composition below. Notice it abandons proper writing form and
style to quickly get as many ideas across as possible.
I’ve been to Trinoma Mall in North Avenue Quezon City yes it was constructed by the Ayalas just
like the Glorietta and Greenbelt malls in Makati I like trinoma better than SM North Edsa
because it’s nearer to my home in Mindanao Avenue plus it’s connected to the MRT so yeah it
makes communting much easier I also like Trinoma’s design better its’s more modern upscale
and luxurious than SM Nortn EDSA which is actually more targeted at the masses the lower
social classes and Trinoma has the places that I like such as Zara Taco Bell Gift Factory and
Timezone these are not found in SM North EDSA which is such a pity also did I mention that
Trinoma’s cinemas are tons better than SM’s cinemas the movie seats are comfier the comfort
rooms are cleaner and the service staff are much friendlier okay I’ll admit the tickets are a bit
pricier but I don’t mind paying a bit more for a mall that care for its customers better ah there’s
also the parking is SM North EDSA I am never able to find any parking space for some weird
reason but in Trinoma I’m always assured a parking space for my Honda Jazz
Now that you have learned different pre-writing strategies,
you may want to use a writing journal to record your ideas.
A good way to sustain writing practice is the habit of journal
writing. The Meriam- Webster defines a journal as “a book
in which you are write down your personal experiences and
thoughts”. A lot of writers keep journals for indefinite
periods of time because they always find something
interesting in their lives to talk about.
The drive to write is the most important because a journal
is no good to a person who does not write at all. To start the
habit, you will need to schedule journal writing during a
particular time of the day that you are free. After setting
up, determine how much writing you would like to achieve
within that time period. Try stretching your writing goals a
bit to challenge yourself, yet keep it realistic at the same
time.
 Finally, work that pen! Sit down any thought that
comes to your mind. Do not second-guess your
opinions and do not hold your words back with rules on
grammar, punctuation, and style. Get yourself used to
the habit of finding something to talk about, so that it
comes naturally to you one day. Surely, you know more
about the world around you that you probably give
yourself credit for.
 ACTIVITY 1
Directions: Select one of the following general subjects
below. Use the pre-writing strategy specified in the parentheses to
narrow it down to several topics. Choose something that you find
the most interesting. Afterward, assume a purpose, audience, tone,
and point-of-view. Then, use another pre-writing strategy of your
choice to generate more ideas regarding the identified writing
situation. Use a sheet of paper for this activity.
Prom (journal writing)
Summer vacation (mapping)
Pop music (brainstorming)
Social media (group brainstorming)
Chosen general subject: __________________________________________
Audience:
Purpose:
Tone:
Point of view:
Second pre-writing strategy:
(think of pre-writing strategy that will fit to your chosen
subject)
 ACTIVITY 2
Directions: Imagine that you are writing essays on the
given topic below. For each one, discuss how will you
modify your purpose and tone to match the audience
specified in the parentheses.

 The benefits of having a pet (first grade children,

parents, people who prefer cleanliness)
 The reasons why it is more fun in the Philippines
(foreign tourists, local tourists, tourism officials)
 The advantages of commuting (people who drive cars,
government officials, regular commuters)