Turning an Idea in Your Head into a Story on Paper

Every story starts out from an idea, vision, or even a problem. It's how the idea is presented to the audience that turns it into a story. To help gather these ideas into a well-polished paper, certain techniques have been established to help gather ideas. These techniques include freewriting, looping, listing, and clustering. There are also other activities such as cubing and questioning that can help a writer think of the topic in new ways. Once those activities are completed, you can use outlining, letter writing, or discovery drafting to help you begin your paper.

In the book, one idea states that "Some writers do best by jumping in and writing." I follow that quote from the book more than any of the other ideas. I sometimes will put together an outline to help start off my writing, but usually I just begin writing and then go back and edit. As the book implies, there is really no right or wrong way to begin your paper, but there are many techniques to help someone who has a mental block, or just needs a way to organize their thoughts. I think the book does a good job of stating and explaining these different techniques that people might not ever think to use.