Generating Ideas
 
Whether you are beginning a piece of writing or already have a clear sense of purpose and topic, you need a strategy for generating ideas and maintaining inspiration. Try a few of the following methods and see if they work for you. Each method does not work equally well for every person, however, experimentation is the root of all new ideas.

Gather as many ideas and as much specific information as you can about your topic. If you try to write before your do so, you run the risk of producing a shallow draft. You must define your key ideas and then make connections within the body of information you accumulate. There are many effective ways of generating ideas and collecting information about your topic, they include:

Ideas grow from information
information (facts and details) supports ideas
Asking Questions
Journalists check the coverage of their stories by making sure that they answer the six following questions:
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?

Answering these questions is an excellent way to generate ideas.

 Although you may not have answers, these questions will help you define areas for exploration and further development.
Tip: Save key questions in a master file so that you may refer back at various stages of the writing process. Leave several spaces below each question to document the progress and answers to the questions. Over time, you will find yourself revising your master question file as you discover more about your topic.
Free writing
When you free write, you let words on the page generate more words and let one idea lead to another in free association, without concern for correctness. Spend 5-10 minutes free writing about a topic in. Don't stop writing, even if you run out of things to say about the topic; in that case, write about anything that comes to mind (free writes often include sentences along the order of "can't think of anything else. . . .thinking. . . .let me see. . . . ummm. . . .oh, yeah, I remember now. . . ."). This is a way of thinking on paper, so don't worry about how your free write sounds--you're simply trying to generate ideas.  This approach is particularly effective when you make that big jump to the computer and you cannot seem to type a thing and the clock keeps ticking, and ticking...just start writing anything!

Tip: Try free writing with the monitor screen dimmed so that you do not worry about spelling and grammar. After a few minutes, turn the screen on to see what ideas have emerged.

Brainstorming

If you already know something about your topic, you might begin collecting ideas by brainstorming.
Useful Prompts