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Invention -- Writing Strategies
As you begin to explore a topic, here are some strategies you can use:
1. Brainstorming with others. Talk to others about
your topic, taking notes of good ideas or areas you may want to examine more carefully.
Give opinions and ask questions, letting the conversation go wherever it will.
2. Brainstorming alone. Write out in list form
everything that you can think of related to your topic. Do this for five minutes. Stop,
reread your list, and do the same thing again.
3. Freewriting. Write whatever comes into your head;
don’t worry if it’s unrelated to your topic. This can be like pushing a car out
of a ditch -- it’s messy work, but it gets you on your way again.
4. Looping. This is a form of freewriting. Freewrite
for five minutes. Stop, read what you’ve written, and summarize it in one sentence.
Continue freewriting. Repeat the process by stopping, reading, and summarizing.
5. Clustering. This strategy is like brainstorming,
but because it is more visually oriented, it can help you see the relationships between
the parts of your topic. See SMH p.38 for an example.
6. Dramatize the topic in your mind using Kenneth
Burke’s pentad:
Act: What was done?
Scene: When and where was it done?
Agent: Who did it?
Agency: How did the person do the act? What means did the person take?
Purpose: Why did it happen?
7. Analyze the rhetorical situation. What is the
exigence, the real-life event that demands your response? Who is the audience and what are
they like? What are the constraints of the situation, the underlying attitudes and belief
structures that influence the writer and the audience? Who is the author? What kind of
text will be produced?
8. The Toulmin Model. What are you claiming? What
reasons can you give for your claim? What are the underlying assumptions that support
these reasons? (These assumptions may be so obvious that you can’t see them until you
really look.) Will your claim need to be qualified -- toned down-- in any way? What are
the counter arguments, the things the opposition would say to contradict your claim?
9. Journal writing. This is more of a "back
burner" invention strategy in which you record your observations about things,
respond to what you’ve read and heard lately, and keep an interior conversation going
with yourself. Creativity is something one practices.
10. Read something on the topic, take notes, and
respond to your reading using any of the previous strategies.
Invention -- Thinking Prompts, or How to Jump Start an Idea
Here are some ways to explore an idea using rhetorical patterns and critical thinking
prompts. You will not use all of these to explore an idea, but some will prove helpful in
stimulating your thinking.
1. Ask questions. What is it? What happened? When?
Where? Why? How? Who did it?
2. Narrate the event. What happened and how did it
come about? Tell about the circumstances. Give details. Tell it in the correct order,
using appropriate transitions.
3. Describe it, both objectively (the precise, literal
details) and subjectively (how it makes one feel, related to the five senses and to the
feelings.) Visualize in order to include as many details as you can.
4. Give examples. Explain or clarify the idea. Give
representative examples and typical cases.
5. Explain the process. How did this issue come about?
What steps led to it?
6. Apply it. How will this issue be used or applied in
the real world?
7. Explore the causes. Are there multiple causes? What
is the immediate cause? What are the more remote causes? Is this a link in a causal chain?
What brought this issue about?
8. Explain the effects. What does this issue produce?
How will it affect other things? Will there be a single effect or multiple effects? What
are they? Remember that ideas have consequences.
9. Compare it. What things are similar to this? How
are they similar?
10. Contrast it. What things are different from this?
How does this differ from them?
11. Associate it. What do you associate this thing
with? What else comes to mind when you think about this issue?
12. Categorize it. What category or classification
does this issue fit into? What is the basis for this category?
13. Divide it. What are the essential parts of this
issue? How are these parts separated or grouped? This strategy is like when you dissected
the frog back in tenth grade: you cut it open and look at the parts.
14. Elaborate on it. Can you provide further
information and illustration of the point?
15. Define it. Tell what the thing is and what
it is not. Can you define the issue using an analogy? What about its origins and
development?
16. Agree with it. Do you agree with this issue? In
what ways are you in agreement? Think of other reasons that could be given to support this
claim.
17. Disagree with it. Can you put yourself in the
opposition’s place and think how they must feel and in what ways they disagree? If
you can’t think of good reasons, then simply play "the Devil’s
advocate" and try to shoot holes in the position of the opposing claim.
18. Evaluate it. What do you think of the issue? Give
a value judgement as to whether it is good or bad, valuable or not, moral or immoral.
19. Trace the issue through
time. What was this issue like in the past? How does the issue stand right
now, just as it is? Will the issue change in the future? Can you think of other
possibilities and alternatives? Have you asked the question, "What if...?"
20. Probe it by relentlessly asking, "Why?"
Some of this material adapted from Nancy V. Wood, Perspectives
on Argument, 2 ed. Prentice Hall, 1998 (p.103).
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