2.2 Prewriting

This section defines prewriting as idea generation and explains different methods for developing ideas.

What is Prewriting?

The first step in the general writing process is generating ideas for your writing project which may be difficult for you, but this is normal. Staring at a blank page or computer screen can be intimidating, but if you use prewriting techniques, you will have an easier time getting ideas on the page. The point of this step is just to get some ideas written down, and they don’t have to be “perfect.” This is just a starting place. Additionally, it’s a good idea to try all of these techniques to find one that works for you.

To include the technical writing aspect of prewriting, Soderston (1984) argues that prewriting is actually task analysis because you

1. Determine the scope
2. Define the audience (identify the reader)
3. Define the purpose (establish the objective)
4. Determine the task or tasks
5. Determine the constraints (posed by the system or by how the document will be used)

Essentially, this is the rhetorical situation of your document which will allow you to start your writing focused on identifying your users as well as their needs, values, job duties, etc.  Why will they need your document? What will they do with it?  How will they use it? What does your audience need to know about the software and how to use it effectively? When you answer these questions, you will have a better idea of what to include in your tutorial and how to organize it logically.

When you answer these questions, you will have a better idea of what to include in your tutorial and how to organize it logically. For example,

If your intended audience are frontend developers with no idea of databases or SQL, you’ll need to have a section introducing them to the basics of SQL databases and how they work, and maybe a link to go read up on SQL commands.  (Ikechukwu, 2021).

This example shows that you need to take notes on your conversations with your end users, but you also need to open the technology and take notes on how your intended user may interact with the platform.  This is a form of prewriting.

In Industry

As a technical communicator in industry, you may have to use some existing content from your company, so you should read it carefully, consider your audience and purpose, and then generate more content that would complement the existing. This is called content strategy, which requires you “to look beyond producing ever-cheaper technical documentation that optimizes reuse to a more complete integration of their work with that of others across the” company (Clark, 2013). Content strategy is providing consistent, thoughtful, purposeful content to enhance and maintain company branding and credibility (Redish, 2012).

Companies often use content from previous deliverables written by subject matter experts as well as technical writers since writing documents from scratch costs the company money unnecessarily. If content already exists, is current and reliable, and can be reframed for a new document, then it should be. However, you will need to generate some new content as well to make connections among various pieces of existing content and provide updates for new procedures or tools.

Additionally, once you meet with users, gather data analytics, and speak with cross-functional team members, take notes on the information. All of this content is important prewriting as it gives you an idea of what you need to write and how you need to design your documents.

Lastly, you will probably work in a cross-functional team, which means that you can bounce ideas off of others within your team. Talking to teammates allows you to see other perspectives and helps to overcome writer’s block or audience-based content issues (Baker, 1996).

In School

For your original tutorial and since you will be writing about software, even before you begin prewriting, make sure you choose your software platform and your audience.  Those two elements are vital since they affect every choice thereafter.

As you write, even at the prewriting step, open the software and look at it carefully as you generate ideas. What should you focus on to help your audience use the platform? Think about the software from your audience’s perspective. What do they need to know to use it properly?

Prewriting Techniques

The list below includes different prewriting techniques that will help you generate ideas, not just for your tutorial, but for any genre of document.

Freewriting

Freewriting is when you begin writing without stopping for at least five minutes.  Put your fingers on the keyboard or pick up the pen and just write whatever comes to mind without worrying about capitalization, punctuation, or staying focused.  The point is to just get ideas on the page.  Again, look at your software and consider your audience as you write.

After the five minutes is up, read what you wrote. Pick out an idea or two that is relevant to your topic and copy and paste them below your original paragraph.  Then begin writing for another five minutes about the specific ideas from the pasting sentences.

Repeat that process until you have generated enough ideas for you to be comfortable with and start organizing them logically.

If you feel like you have enough content to work with, skip to the Outline section of this tutorial.

Mapping

Mapping is a visual way to write your ideas. This technique works well for writers who are visual learners and those who are artistic. As with the previous technique, you can choose to “draw” with technology or with pen and paper.

Start with the main idea or topic for your project in the middle of your page and draw a circle around it. Think about the topics that would fall under this main topic and write them outside of the main circle. You can consider these topics as your level one headings.  Draw circles around those ideas and draw lines connecting them to the main idea.  Around those topics, add sub-topics and draw circles around them and lines connecting them to the topics.  The sub-topics could end up being your level two headings.  Continue with this method until you feel you have enough ideas to work with.

Figure 2.2.1 shows what a map would look like for some content in this tutorial:

The mapping technique is much easier to organize into an outline than the freewriting method since the ideas are already logically connected, and you just need to make decisions about which idea to put first, then second, etc.

Listing

The listing prewriting technique is similar to creating a grocery list where you just quickly write out things you may need at the store.  For the writing process, focus on the main ideas that you could develop later. There is no need for sentences, punctuation, or proper capitalization, and on each line on the paper, write a new concept, so instead of the mapping as shown above, you can quickly list out the concepts or use bullet points. For example, the following list is based on the topics in this tutorial:

Clearly, these ideas are extremely broad, but once you have a concept written down, you, then, should add details for each to build your content.  For example, if you wanted to expand on Writing Style, from above, what could you list to develop your ideas? The concepts below are all related to Writing Style and are explained in the Writing Style chapter of this tutorial.

You could go further with each concept and list more information or answer questions, such as the following:

• • What is a simple sentence?
  • When should a simple sentence be used?
  • Why should you avoid simple sentences?
  • What examples of simple sentences can be included?

Asking questions

As stated in the previous subsection, you can list out questions and answers to help you develop content.  To help you do that, consider asking reporter’s questions which will help you define the rhetorical situation: Who, what, where, when, why, and how. Asking questions allows you to identify concepts (what), explore audience (who), define the purpose (why), determine genre (how), and other information such as where a document will be read or when it will be read or used.

You may not need all of this information at the idea generation step, but it is always a good idea to think about this information since the genre of document as well as where and when it will be read affects writer choices.  For example, is the document going to be a hard copy?  If so, clearly, you can’t include hyperlinks, for example.

Once you determine your overall topic, you can further ask the who, what, where, when, and how questions to deepen your exploration of that topic.  For example, if you choose to write a tutorial on how to use Google Docs, what does your user need to be successful?  A computer?  Access to the internet? An understanding of cloud technology?

Asking questions allows you to think more critically about your topic, but putting this information into an outline is even more complex than freewriting, so be aware.

Using voice to text

Some students find that they still struggle to generate ideas after attempting all of the previous prewriting techniques. If so, you may want to try using voice to text technology to avoid staring at a blank page at all.

For example, if you download Google Docs on your phone, you can enable your microphone and speak your ideas, which is often easier than writing them.  Don’t worry about exact translation, sentence constructions, or punctuation since your goal is to literally get ideas out of your head and on paper.

It is often easier to speak ideas rather than write them although this may feel strange to you, which is fine.  Trying new ways to generate ideas is just part of the writing process until you find one that works for you. The point is, be creative in how you approach idea generation.