Stage 2: Brainstorming and mapping out your plan

Once you have completed the pre-plan stage and have a general understanding of the topic, the next stage is to make a written plan of what you need to include in your essay. Start with a blank sheet of paper and brainstorm anything that comes to mind regarding the topic—all the ideas, issues, theories, arguments and evidence you are aware of. This is called visualisation: by writing down what you know on paper, you will start to clarify and organise the information in your head and be able to decide what you will do with it. You may alter, modify, add to or reject various aspects after further reading, but brainstorming allows you to go over the basic ideas your essay will cover. If you find you have little to go on, do some further reading and then have another go at brainstorming. There are two ways of documenting your brainstorming, one of which should suit you:

1. the linear plan
2. mind mapping.

The linear plan

The linear plan involves writing your essay plan in the order it will appear in your essay. The limitation of the linear method is that you might get stuck on which order the various sections should go in. The alternative technique, mind mapping, overcomes this limitation.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping documents your brainstorming in a creative and diagrammatic way. It suits some people better than others, as it involves an uncensored and initially unstructured flow of ideas from your mind to paper. To start your mind map, write your essay topic in a ‘bubble’ in the centre of a blank page.

Then think about what you need to include in the essay—not in any particular order, but just as it occurs to you—and write it in a bubble radiating from the central idea.

Keep adding these ‘bubbles’ until you have everything that needs to be covered in the essay somewhere on the page. Now you can study your mind map and think about the best logical sequence for your essay. Number the bubbles to put the sections in sequence.

As mentioned earlier, this technique will appeal to some people, while others will prefer a linear plan. The advantage of mind mapping is that you separate the creative activity from the editing activity, and this saves you time by allowing the creative juices to flow uninterrupted. Once you have formed an outline of what you want to say, it is time to consider your argument and begin to research the various sections.