Planning?Generating

Process Writing: Planning/Generating Ideas

Planning/generating ideas draws from long-term memory, knowledge, experiences, and beliefs all of which are selected and refined according to:

a. the writer's intended meaning, that is, the information the writer wishes to impart to his/her readers;

b. the writer's intended audience, taking into account its knowledge, experience and beliefs;

c. the image of himself/herself the writer wishes to project through the writing, (this image is often called the writer's "voice", for example, an authority on a subject wishing to inform less knowledgeable readers).

A difficulty with long-term memory is retrieving from it the needed information (the "I don't know what to say" complaint), and then adapting this information to fit the demands of the writing task. A composition is more than simply a list of ideas. The writer must arrange these ideas into a composition using forms that are conventional to English and this is what often causes problems for ESL/EFL writers.

White and Arndt divide ways of generating ideas into guided and unguided. "Guided" ways of generating ideas usually use specific questions to help writers remember ideas or create new ones. For example, the page introducing SPRE/R and Cubing shows two guided ways of generating ideas. Another example of guided ways of generating ideas is Classical Invention. "Unguided" ways of generating ideas do not use prompts, but generate ideas themselves. Brainstorming using freewriting and listing is an unguided way of generating ideas. It can be used to:

choose a topic
identify a reason or purpose for writing
find an appropriate form in which to write
develop a topic
work out a plot
develop the organization of ideas. (White and Arndt, p. 18)

All writers must address the challenges above regardless of the language in which we are writing. For ESL/EFL writers, planning is complicated by having to express knowledge, experiences, and beliefs in English.