How to Brainstorm When Writing an Essay: Brainstorming in Writing

What is Brainstorming in Writing an Essay?

The essay brainstorming is a creative technique that involves deep thought used to solve the topic of an essay you want to write about. Essay brainstorming consists of writing down your ideas, whether they are properly formed or not, to answer or write an essay skillfully.

Brainstorming essays is not just a new occurrence. Studies show it has been a thing among writers in the 1940s. There is no specific art to brainstorming as writers are advised to write anything that comes to mind. The goal of brainstorming in essay writing is to create a pseudo structure for your work, so it would be counterproductive to cherry-pick your ideas. Don’t feel silly at the ideas you have, nor do you need to feel exceptional before you note down what you brainstorm for an essay. In fact, at the end of the brainstorming session, you will feel better and regard yourself well. Keep on having fun and writing them down.

Although most writers brainstorm essay initially, you can brainstorm for an essay at any point of writing the essay. For example, brainstorming ideas for writing an essay can conclude the essay.

Brainstorming essays is something you must have done a lot in your years as a student and this technique is widely used by professional writers from the best essay writing services. It is still something that will continue when you get a job as it is a transferrable skill. When you brainstorm for an essay now, you are preparing yourself to become a problem-solving expert. This is good as it would make you more employable than your counterparts. Apart from that, brainstorming opens up your mind and allows you to see the connection between different issues. Thus, brainstorming for an essay while being an informal act with no specific template could be what separates you from being mediocre

What are the two types of brainstorming when writing an essay

There are two ways to brainstorm for essay depending on what process you are comfortable with. These two ways to brainstorm for essay are;

The Messy Page

Here, in a brainstorming essay, all you need to do is have a brainstorming paper where you scribble down every bit of idea that passes through your mind. Your brainstorming paper will likely be unorganized and rough, but you have the advantage of speed. You will be able to get your thoughts out faster.

The Organized Paper: The Idea Diagram

The brainstorming essay process here is that you are more organized in putting your thoughts down. For you, this process is if you don’t like to have a messy arrangement of their ideas. Here, you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of speed for essay organization. In this brainstorming essay process, you use diagrams or charts to track your thoughts. The two widely used diagrams in this process of brainstorming are;

Venn Diagram

Venn diagram is not popular among students, but it has proven to be very useful when brainstorming. The process of drawing the Venn diagram is not tricky, contrary to what you might think. For instance, you are to write an essay about the usefulness of plastic and the harmful effects of plastic on the environment. When you are drawing your diagram, you can draw two circles. One circle would contain a list of the usefulness of plastic. The other would include a list of the harmful effects of plastic on the environment. The middle where the circle cut through each other would contain the neutral results of plastic.

The Spider Diagram (Spidergram as we like to call it)

The spider diagram involves noting the key topics crucial to your essay and writing them down. Using the same Plastic example above, you write the key attributes of the essay and their relevant sub-aspects. The sub-aspects will work along with the key aspects and link together, like a spider web.

 How to do brainstorming for an essay

Remember that there is no essay brainstorming template or specifically defined steps. The reason is that brainstorming is an informal creative way of gathering points. You can achieve this however you want to. The goal is to get ideas to write. Even at that, there are brainstorming steps that you don’t want to miss.

Step 1. Have a Goal

It would help if you stirred your mind for brainstorming by giving it a goal. Your goal should be to gain something about a brainstorming session. Your goal can depend on the nature of the topic given to you. Keep in mind that you are brainstorming to solve a problem. Doing this will help you not to be distracted.

Step 2. Get a Brainstorming Area

Brainstorming requires deep thought, and it is best done in a distraction-free zone. The quickness of your brainstorming and its quality depends on how you go about your brainstorming. You would have a quality brainstorming session when you have an area convenient and comfortable for learning. Choose a play that complements and motivates you then you will see how quality your brainstorming session would be.

Step 3. Read

This sounds cliché, but it works why you are trying to set your mind in the mood to brainstorm essay. When you are given the topic, you might have some ideas on the top of your mind, but nothing trumps reading about your topic. We don’t mean deep research here. Just a light reading that will cause you to ask questions and let your creative juices flow.

Step 4. Keep in Mind What You Want People to Read from your Essay

The goal of your essay is to be educative and engaging. You want people to read, learn and enjoy your essay. Keep this in mind when you are brainstorming. It will help you form your ideas.

Step 5. Topic Description

Try to describe the topic in your own words. Your little reading would have given you some ideas. Use these ideas to explain the topic and get more ideas in the process. In your description, incorporate elements of vividness using your senses. Ask yourself how the topic makes you feel, is it something your eyes can see, can you smell it, etc.

Step 6. Definition and Comparison

You are likely to come across some strange words in your initial reading. Find the meaning of the words, and you realize that you have more ideas to write down.

The words you have defined have their contrasts. Best to find their contrasts and compare with the original words. For instance, you can find the contrasts of the topic and engage in a mini comparison. This comparison will give you a new list of ideas you can write down.

Step 7. List Your Ideas

We have treated the ways with which you can list your ideas. You can do it by listing your ideas on the paper without a specific structure. The other way you can achieve listing your ideas is through an idea diagram. The essence of the two methods is to help you get your thoughts out on paper, although a list can be messier than a diagram. Remember to write down everything that comes to your mind. It is not for your to determine if the ideas are silly or brilliant. At this point, what matters most is having those ideas and writing them down.

How Does Brainstorming Help with the Essay Writing

1. It Helps With Getting Ideas

It is normal for you to be eager to write an essay that you have been given, but patience is vital. Brainstorming helps you attend to your report patiently and be more prepared as it allows you to generate ideas. It is not that you can’t begin to write your essay without brainstorming, but you will have to write the essay while trying to come up with ideas at the same time. Doing that can be mentally exhausting.

When you brainstorm and get the ideas you need, all you need to focus on is writing the essay itself. You will see that writing becomes more enjoyable this way.

2. Brainstorming Gives You a More Organized Essay

When you get your ideas out, you can begin to arrange the ideas to form a structure for your essay. At this stage, you can check the relevance of your ideas to the essay and decide the ideas you want to keep or discard. When your best ideas remain, you have a quality essay without having written it yet. Arrange these ideas based on their appropriate places of appearance in the essay. Doing this would give you a powerful writing flow as you would be dealing with events sequentially, thereby making your essay more organized.

3. Brainstorming Relieves Stress

Ideas own the essay, and brainstorming gives you actionable ideas that you can use to write your essay from the beginning to the end. There is no direct template for brainstorming. You can decide to do it once or brainstorm in bits. For instance, you can brainstorm how you want your essay to be from the beginning to the middle and write. After writing to the middle, you can have another brainstorming session that would cover the middle of the essay to the end of the essay.

Thus, when you brainstorm, you have a better time writing the essay as you won’t be at a loss of ideas and words when writing the essay. Brainstorming gives you a plan to write and a structure for your essay, so you don’t have to struggle at any point in writing your essay. The fear and stress that students and people have come to identify with writing essays wouldn’t affect you. This is because you have a plan and a rich idea map or list.

Essay Brainstorming: Examples

Brainstorming essay example using the topic ‘ The Usefulness of Plastic and the Harmful Effects of Plastic in the Environment’ would be shown below. Keep in mind that we are using the list method in this example.

Brainstorming For The Topic: ‘ The Usefulness of Plastic and the Harmful Effects of Plastic in the Environment

Describing Plastic

What is plastic

How is plastic made

The history of the use of plastic

How many plastics are produced in a year?

The Usefulness of Plastic

The recycling advantage of plastics

Role of plastic in storage

The financial advantage of using plastic.

The thriving plastic making industry

Harmful Effects of Plastic

Are plastic biodegradable?

The illegal burning of plastic and the effects of burning plastic on the environment.

The dumping of plastic into the ocean and the effect on marine life.

Cost of plastic ocean clean up

Neutral Part of the Topic

Alternatives to plastic

Any research on the creation of biodegradable plastic

Conclusion

Writing an essay does not have to give you stress, fear, and tension. You don’t have to be a special kind of brilliant before writing an essay. What you need to do to ease the tension of you writing an essay is pretty simple. You have to know how to brainstorm for an essay.

Always note that when an essay job is gotten, professional writers don’t just get to writing immediately. They seek to understand what the brief is about. Before they even begin to research, professional writers communicate a lot with their clients to better understand the brief. After they have understood what the brief is about, they begin to think about how to write the essay and the appropriate structure for it.