Essay writing is an important skill that students need to develop. Getting started on an essay can often be one of the most challenging parts of the writing process. There are many activities teachers and students can do to jump start the essay writing process and get ideas flowing. From brainstorming techniques to outlining activities, these types of preparatory exercises are an important part of successful essay writing.
One of the most effective activities for jump starting an essay is brainstorming. Brainstorming involves freely generating as many ideas as possible without censoring or critiquing anything during the initial idea generation phase. Brainstorming helps tap into creativity and can lead to unexpected but valuable ideas and themes. There are a few different brainstorming methods teachers can introduce students to for essay writing:
Mind mapping (or concept mapping) involves visually laying out related ideas, themes, examples or events in a diagram form with the central topic or thesis in the center and associated subtopics branching outward. This allows students to easily see interconnections between potential ideas. One benefit of mind mapping is students can organize their thoughts spatially rather than linearly.
Freewriting is an unstructured brainstorming technique where students write non-stop for a set period of time (usually 5-10 minutes) about the topic without worrying about organization, grammar or coherence. The goal is simply to get as many ideas down on paper as possible. Later the student can review what they wrote to identify potential themes, examples or structures for their essay. Freewriting gets ideas flowing freely from the subconscious mind onto the page.
Listing involves a student generating as many bullet point ideas, concepts, examples, opinions or phrases related to the topic as possible within a time limit, such as 5 minutes. They do not need to be fully formed thoughts but simply ideas they want to remember and potentially expand on later. Students can then review their list to look for connections between the various items.
Group brainstorming allows students to benefit from others’ ideas as they collaborate on generating potential essay topics, structures or content. One student scribes all ideas called out by group members. This social, interactive method of brainstorming can stimulate even more creative ideas through discussion and build-off others’ suggestions.
Once students generate a bank of potential essay ideas and content through brainstorming, the next step is often to organize these ideas which is where outlining comes in. Outlining is a key activity for jump starting the writing of a first draft as it imposes structure. There are different types of outlines students can create:
A topic outline organizes main topics, subtopics and supporting ideas in a hierarchical fashion to map the overall structure or flow of an essay. This allows students to see if they have sufficient content and support planned under each topic heading before starting to write.
A sentence outline takes the topic outline a step further by writing short, one to two sentence descriptions of the main point or example under each subheading. This helps the writer transform their outline into the beginning of a draft.
A reverse outline involves taking a partial or full first draft and restructuring it by reorganizing and reordering paragraphs and content into a new outline format. This allows writers to critically analyze and potentially improve the logical flow and structure of their existing ideas.
Another pre-writing activity that can jump start an essay draft is creating a thesis statement and conclusion paragraph outline before writing the body. Developing a clear, argument-based thesis forces the writer to focus their essay and gives them a statement to structure their evidence and ideas around in the body paragraphs. Additionally, outlining the main points for a conclusion helps identify what remains to be covered and proved in the essay.
Additionally, concept mapping or clustering can be an effective pre-writing exercise. This involves starting with the topic in the center and radiating out associated key words, phrases, examples and questions. Connecting phrases or lines demonstrate relationships between these elements. This visualization of interconnections helps generate essay ideas and structure. It is effective for both the creative exploration stage as well as after an outline is developed.
For some writers, creating source cards of research notes, quotes and paraphrases provides material to jump start an outline and draft. Each notecard covers one source or piece of evidence. It includes a bibliographic citation, a summarization in the writer’s own words and potentially a direct quotation that relates to the essay topic. These cards can then be arranged thematically or chronologically to structure the essay argument.
Another strategy is to start with a memorable anecdote, example, statistic or “hook” statement as the opening paragraph. While this comes later in the essay writing process, identifying such an interesting lead that introduces the topic focuses the student’s ideas and sparks the development of content to expand on and relate to their opening. It helps aim the essay in a clear direction from the very start.
Whether through free discovery-based brainstorming, focused mind mapping, detailed outlining or a combination of approaches, jump starting the essay writing process through active pre-writing is invaluable. While creativity flows best when uncensored at times, it also benefits from direction and organization. Introducing students to various pre-writing techniques provides them with strategic methods for exploring, discovering and developing their ideas in preparation for a thoughtful, well-structured first draft. With practice, these activities will become an integral part of each student’s essay writing process. Developing systematic approaches to the formative stages of brainstorming and structuring their content empowers students as writers and leads to their best work.
Andrew Stroud