Prewriting

Prewriting

Even if you just write a little, prewriting gets you started. Prewriting gives you a database of nouns and verbs to use in the body of your paper. Don’t worry about grammar or word choice; you are the only one who will see your prewriting. Prewriting starts the moment you get the assignment.

Create a new document in your word processing program and dump nouns, verbs, quotes and research into it. Take off and start writing whatever comes to mind. Use the prompt; underline key verbs and nouns in the prompt and try to reduce the assignment to one short, concise sentence. Focus on nouns, verbs and phrases. Use the text. In freshman composition you’ll encounter a wide variety of texts as prompts for assignments. When you have to buy a book for a course, it’s yours, use it. Underline while you read. Then, use the words from the prompt and the text to develop your thesis statement. The main goal of prewriting is to gather research information, produce a working thesis statement and come up with nouns and verbs to use in your paper. Prewriting helps you clearly state your thesis, and helps reveal the main points that support it. As you dump information in to this document, at some point a logical way to present it will become apparent. That’s when you start putting the information in outline form.

Prewriting is a great place to practice citing research properly.  If using MLA or APA, Book mark:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Read the introduction for the citation style you'll be using, then ... just do it.  I know, it's supremely, not fun, but you have to do it.  Might as well start here.