Prewriting

Prewriting is the first stage of the writing process, typically followed by drafting, revision, editing and publishing.

Prewriting can consist of a combination of outlining, diagramming, storyboarding, clustering (for a technique similar to clustering, see mindmapping).

Prewriting usually begins with motivation and audience awareness: what is the student or writer trying to communicate, why is it important to communicate it well and who is the audience for this communication. It helps you put your thought out onto the paper on what you want to write about. Writers usually begin with a clear idea of audience, content and the importance of their communication; sometimes, one of these needs to be clarified for the best communication. Student writers find motivation especially difficult because they are writing for a teacher or for a grade, instead of a real audience. Often teachers try to find a real audience for students by asking them to read to younger classes or to parents, by posting writing for others to read, by writing a blog, or by writing on real topics, such as a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.

One important task in prewriting is choosing a topic and then narrowing it to a length that can be covered in the space allowed. Oral storytelling is an effective way to search for a good topic for a personal narrative. Writers can quickly tell a story and judge from the listeners' reactions whether it will be an interesting topic to write about.

Another way to find a topic is to freewrite, a method first popularized by Peter Elbow. When freewriting, you write any and every idea that comes to mind. This could also be a written exploration of your current knowledge of a broad topic, with the idea that you are looking for a narrow topic to write about. Often freewriting is timed. The writer is instructed to keep writing until the time period ends, which encourages him/her to keep writing past the pre-conceived ideas and hopefully find a more interesting topic.

Several other methods of choosing a topic overlap with another broad concern of prewriting, that of researching or gathering information. Reading is effective in both choosing and narrowing a topic and in gathering information to include in the writing. As a writer reads other works, it expands ideas, opens possibilities and points toward options for topics and narrates specific content for the eventual writing. One traditional method of tracking the content read is to create annotated note cards with one chunk of information per card. Writers also need to document music, photos, web sites, interviews, and any other source used to prevent plagiarism.

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