Prewriting Strategies

1. Brainstorming (list randomly, then group/organize)

2. Freewriting (write without stopping or editing for fixed length of time)

3. Morning Pages (Julia Cameron, 3 pages handwritten each morning, uncensored)

4. Looping (choose idea from freewriting and freewrite again on that)

5. Dialogue Freewriting (imagined discussion between 2 or more people)

6. Nutshelling (gist of project in 2-3 sentences)

7. Clustering/Mind Mapping (web-like diagram of circles/ideas)

8. Spider Map (concept, main ideas, details branching out)

9. Journalists’ Questions (who, what, where, when, why, how)

10. Analogy Freewriting (choose one random concrete and one abstract item)

11. Analogy Development ( _______ is like _______ because __________.)

12. Image Streaming (describe as from another place and time)

13. Five Senses (brainstorm for each sense)

14. Chain of Events (initiating event up to concluding event)

15. Cycle of Events (show how events interact to reproduce a set of results)

16. Continuum (choose something to scale and show end points or extremes)

17. Family Tree (for characters, identify and show relationships)

18. Fish Bone (result, causes and details branching out)

19. Storyboarding (chart major events in the story)

20. Short Story Analysis Outline Form

            A. Character            

            B. Setting

            C. Theme

            D. Time Management

            E. Tension