The Writing Teacher's Companion by Fletcher Ralph;

Author:Fletcher, Ralph;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic, Incorporated
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ralph on Writing scholastic.com/WritingCompanionResources

I write for two hours every morning,

but it’s what I do the other

22 hours that allows

me to do that writing.

—DON MURRAY

22

Prewriting

I’ll admit it: I have a slightly hostile attitude toward prewriting. But before we get to that, let me extol its virtues, or at least acknowledge them. This initial writing stage has also been called brainstorming or rehearsing. It’s the activity we undertake leading up to the actual writing itself: making a list, scribbling a phrase or idea as a mental placeholder, sketching images, doodling, trying out a sample chapter for a memoir. J.K. Rowling famously jotted her initial thoughts about Harry Potter on a napkin while sitting in a diner.

Prewriting certainly is an important part of what writers do. As we’ve already seen, I’m a huge proponent of the writer’s notebook, which is in itself a powerful tool for prewriting. Okay, Ralph, so why the attitude?

Because I believe writing teachers overemphasize prewriting, and give it too much weight. It’s commonplace for a teacher to impose a single prewriting strategy, format, or worksheet that all students are required to use. Before they start writing, the students must fill out a graphic organizer, web, story map, or outline. Many kids find this requirement tedious. At any rate, it does not reflect best practice or common sense. Kids have a certain amount of “juice” to work on a particular piece of writing—if they spend it all on the prewrite, what will they have left for the writing itself?

A rigid adherence to any one prewriting strategy distorts the creative process. People who rely heavily on prewriting believe that writers are people who first plan out the writing and then execute the plan. But what about discovering what you have to say in the act of writing? A few years ago, Neil Gaiman was the featured speaker at a Young Authors conference. After completing his talk, he took a few questions from the audience.

“Mr. Gaiman, do you plan out your books first?” one girl wanted to know. “Because our teacher says if you don’t plan first then you’re just winging it.”

Gaiman smiled cheerfully. “Well then, I guess I’m winging it!”

I was winging it, more or less, when I began writing this book. It’s true that I had a sketchy idea of what I wanted to include, what tone I wanted to use, but not much more than that.

“I can’t give you a Table of Contents until I write the chapters,” I told my editor. I had to write in order to find out what I had to say. Most writers will tell you something similar, that they are guided by an I’m-figuring-it-out-as-I-go approach, feeling their way down a dark tunnel.

How then should we teach prewriting in the writing classroom? Should we teach it at all? Certainly, yes. Use the mini-lesson to share a variety of prewriting strategies. One day you might show how making a list can help clarify your thinking. Don’t talk theoretically about this idea—model it, using a large chart, showing students how you have found it useful.

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