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Writing Skills: Brainstorming
Hi kids!
We’ve been receiving numerous letters from you all, requesting us to tell you how to improve your writing skills. Well, keeping your requests in mind, we’re starting an exciting new section, ‘Young writers’. Follow the tips each week and see how you improve upon your write-ups!
Brainstorming
Remember: the foremost thing to do whenever you want to write over any topic is to plan it out. You cannot create a good write-up without this step, called ‘Brainstorming’, where in you simply let ideas flow through your head. You can brainstorm using several different techniques.
Mind mapping
Simply write down a topic at the centre of a paper and draw a circle around it. Think up as many different things as you can, jot them down and connect them with crude lines with the topic. As more and more thoughts barge into your head, jot those down and interconnect them with the previous ones. See how a thought web automatically starts to form! I’ve created a Mind Map for a simple topic, ‘My School’. It still needs to be expanded further though.
Listing
Simply jot down as many thoughts as you can come up with about the topic and roughly list them down. The list will keep on increasing as more and more ideas keep flowing.
5 Ws + H
This technique is ideal if you have a writer’s block in your head. (A writer’s block is when you just can’t think about what to write upon a given topic.)
The 5 Ws stand for: Who? What? When? Where? and Why? ; the H stands for How?
Jot down the topic at the centre of a piece of paper. Write down the five Ws + H around the topic, box them and connect each box with the topic. Now start thinking along the 5 Ws + H lines, and jot down your thoughts around these boxes. Connect whatever thoughts come into your head with these boxes: WHO(m) are you talking about? WHAT is being talked about? WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW did it happen? And HOW did things turn out at the end? See how an intricate web of thoughts starts to form up on your page! Ive created a 5 Ws + H map on a simple story, ‘A rainy summer day’.
Now brainstorm about any topic with each of these techniques, and see which one suits your style best. Happy writing!
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