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Journalists Questions

"Journalist questions" are the "5Ws and the 1H"—who, what, when, where, and especially why and how. The who, what, when, and where are relevant to summaries while the how and why prompt you to examine the "so what?!" Use ideas from the text, your freewrite and your brainstorm and form them into questions. Through answering these questions, you can discover interesting information that you can use for writing.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is like freewriting in that you write down whatever comes to mind without stopping, but it is different because it looks more like a list of words and phrases than a string of sentences.

Clustering/ Mapping

Clustering, also known as mapping, is like listing in that you narrow down and begin to organize your ideas.

successful prewriting strategies:

Freewriting Brainstorming Journalist Questions Listing Clustering/Mapping

freewriting

Freewriting is a technique that helps you generate content for an essay. Freewriting is writing continuously, letting thoughts unselfconsciously flow (often for about 5 to 10 minutes) without regard to spelling, grammar, style etc., and no corrections are made. Because there are no restrictions on structure/format or length, freewriting allows you the freedom to discover what you want to write about without worrying about rules or expectations.

Listing

Generating ideas on a topic through freewriting, brainstorming, and creating questions has a purposeful messiness to it.

Prewriting

The prewriting stage, when you begin generating ideas on your topic without focusing too much on organization and correctness, allows you to begin creatively and to truly explore the scope and potential of your topic. Also, breaking the writing process down into stages makes it less stressful and more manageable and gives you time to figure out exactly what you want to develop and explore in your paper.

outline

a plan or a blueprint of your writing, which puts the main point and supporting details in a logical order

drafting

gathering ideas onto paper in sentences and paragraphs

revising

this is the stage of writing that involves rewriting or "re-seeing;" emphasis is place on examining sentence structure, word choice, voice, and organization of the piece

editing

this stage involves checking for style and conventions--spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation