Visual Brainstorming

Use visuals to develop and organize your ideas. Understand and explore the value of diagramming and mapping strategies.

Visuals present a powerful and thought-provoking way to develop and organize ideas. Some neuroscientists "estimate that we get up to 80 percent of our information by visual means" (Horn 21). Images convey meaning just as words do. In fact, images are saturated with meanings that sometimes hit us at a subconscious level; images motivate us to act or feel strong emotion.

Burke’s Pentad

Use Burke's Pentad to interpret human events, stories, and movies.

In A Grammar of Motives, philosopher and critic Kenneth Burke presents a model for analyzing written and spoken language to better understand and even predict human behavior. His model, the pentad, can be used to understand or interpret human behavior and to develop ideas for stories. The pentad assumes people can have ambiguous, conflicting, and complex reasons for acting. It attempts to avoid simplistic explanations.

Conversations with Others

Use talk-and-then-write strategies to jump-start writing projects.

Dialoguing, dictating, and group brainstorming all rely on talking to generate writing. Many people get their best ideas discussing issues and ideas with people.

Lawyers, doctors, and business leaders have frequently used dictation to draft documents.