Academic Writing Skills Guide: Brainstorming Techniques

Why should you brainstorm?

Brainstorming can help you capture what you already know and think about an assignment topic; although usually done at the beginning of the writing process, it can be done at any point. It can also be good to see what ideas you can come up with yourself before commencing your research. It can be a very effective means of getting whatever is in your head down on paper. This is a really valuable stage which many people miss out, but it makes your reading and planning much easier if you note down your initial thoughts about the assignment as this automatically makes you engage with the topic. 

Reduces Writing Anxiety

The goal of brainstorming is usually to overcome writing anxiety and gather ideas to start writing an assignment. This can free up some headspace when you are feeling overwhelmed and cannot decide where to go with an assignment topic. By investing time in this process, it can help you avoid getting stuck for ideas halfway through and suffering writer's block. Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can help you to put a new writing task in motion or revive a project where you feel you have got stuck part way through.

How do you start brainstorming?

Figuring out what you already know about a topic/subject is a good starting point for any assignment. Generating some initial ideas and giving your topic some thought is an important stage and you should do this before rushing into research. It also ensures that your assignment is being led from what you already know and you can then start reading and researching around the points you have identified as a starting point.

Make a note of the things you need to find out, you do not know or need further evidence for. This will be your ‘to do list’. By doing this, you will use your time more efficiently by reading and researching strategically and not wasting time making notes on areas that you do not need. You can pinpoint what you need to find out and go straight to the parts of books, chapters, articles that will be most relevant.

Why use the free writing technique?

After you have read an assignment brief, you may have lots of ideas or you may have very few. Either way, it can be beneficial to engage in some free writing activities that can help you get some initial thoughts down about your assignment topic. Free writing also helps to start the process of writing which for many students can be one of the hardest parts of doing an assignment.

Even if you do not know what to write, the act of writing itself will help generate ideas. Free writing will help you get your thinking out of your head and down on paper. The advantage of this technique is it can enable you to generate ideas when other methods fail, freeing up your internal critic and allowing yourself to write things you might not write if you were being too self-conscious. 

Why Use Mind Mapping?

Mind mapping is useful for organising and planning for an assignment as it can help you to think about your topic in a structured way. The advantage of mind mapping is that you can see a visual representation of your thinking, how things tie together and see connections you may not otherwise have considered. This may be a very useful technique for visual learners and help make it easier to move on to putting together a provisional outline for an assignment or research topic. It can help you to understand the links and relationships between ideas in a way that may not be clear from just writing notes and helps you to choose keywords to search for further information.

Mind mapping can be helpful for:

• brainstorming all the things you already know about an assignment question
• planning the early stages of an assignment by visualising all the aspects of the question
• organising your ideas and information by making it accessible on a single page
• revising and preparing for tests and exams or taking notes during a lecture

How to Do It

You can draw a mind map by hand or by using a software tool (see suggestions below). The idea is to come up with as many ideas as you can; get your ideas down in any order and then see what links and relationships you can find. Do not censor yourself and discount ideas or worry about the order at this stage, it is more important to write all of your ideas down first. Use lines, arrows, speech bubbles, branches and different colours as ways of showing the connection between the central theme/main idea and the different ideas which stem from that focus. The links and relationships are important, as the ideas you are generating may form the beginnings of your assignment structure and paragraphs.

• To really let yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper. You may find it beneficial to place your page on the side, in landscape orientation, which is easier for drawing purposes.
• Write out the main idea/topic in the middle of your page and circle it.
• Draw lines or branches from your main idea and write down related ideas at the end of each line/branch. Draw a circle or box around each one. You can write individual words, phrases or symbols, but do not write full sentences. Write down as many related ideas as you can think of.
• Think of more ideas, examples, facts, or other details relating to each main sub-topic. Write each of these near the appropriate circle, circle them as well, and draw connecting lines between the new ideas and the appropriate sub-topic.
• Try using post-its so you can move terms around as your map develops; limit yourself to one idea or thought per post-it note.
• Use UPPERCASE or bold for key terms. Use colours to highlight topics, ideas and connections if it helps to make it more visual.
• Do not stop and think too much and do not plan. Remember, it is meant to look messy. At this stage, it is not about focusing on grammar, structure or planning, but just on stirring up your thinking to bring out all that you know about the topic before you start researching the topic.
• Do not worry about the sense of what you write, you can keep or lose any of these ideas once the activity is over.
• Repeat this process until you cannot think of any more details.

Asking Questions

This can be another useful approach to get yourself started on writing an assignment. Here, you write down all the questions you have that seem relevant to your assignment, anything you feel you need to clarify. By generating a lot of questions, as well as forcing yourself to contemplate answers to those questions, you can generate ideas as well as further establish what information you need to look for when researching the assignment.

If you struggle to come up with questions yourself, try using the six journalistic questions to get ideas for your assignment. Below are some possible questions you can ask about your topic – these are generic and not relevant to all assignments but they may at least inspire you to think of questions that are relevant:

Listing

Listing, as its name suggests, is a brainstorming technique in which you just make a list of ideas. For some students, creating lists or bullet points is a more effective way of brainstorming when planning their writing.  The advantage of this technique is that it enables ideas to be generated more quickly than with clustering/mindmapping, as the ideas can be written in any order. This method can develop into just a brief outline of the main points for each theme of the writing, or a more detailed plan with sub-points and a note of the evidence to support each point (including referencing details).  Using outlines or bulleted lists will allow you to see how ideas follow on from or link to each other. Do not censor yourself or worry about whether or not something will be useful—just list as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can. At this stage, every idea is worth considering. Allow yourself to simply pour out all the thoughts that are in your head.

Take five or ten minutes to list every word or phrase you can think of related to your topic. Only jot down words and phrases rather than full sentences; no one has to understand the list except you. If you use Microsoft Word, select View and Focus – this can help minimise distractions during the listing process. When you have finished, you can look at your list and begin moving ideas around and reorganising the lists, linking any interrelated themes/subtopics you may find. As you review your list, you should find yourself revising and editing it by adding or deleting items.

Recording Your Thoughts

Try talking out loud about your topic and record yourself – if you come up with some ideas that way, it may help reduce your anxiety and make it easier for you to start writing. Listen back to the recording and note down any relevant points that you have made, or comments that you think are important. Then use these as the bare bones for your plan. It is sometimes easier to verbalise your thoughts or initial ideas about an assignment than it is to write them down.