Usually, we see brainstorming as a part of inventing new ideas and working on projects. However, brainstorming is useful for writing essays too! It might not be obvious because an essay is considered an individual task, but applying brainstorming doesn’t mean that you write it collectively. You gather the ideas, test them, and may even take a simple survey to check the audience’s reaction to your thesis.
Brainstorming, in general, is the process when a team gathers to generate all the craziest ideas, without restraining themselves. Anything goes. They create a pool of concepts, then they cool down (or transfer this pool to another team) and start picking points that might work. It is widely used in any job that demands creativity and works alike to free associations, allowing people to create more ideas.
You don’t need too many people to start a brainstorming session. Two or three of your classmates, your family, or friends will most probably gladly help you. But what for do you need this to write an essay, when you can just look for examples on lawaspect.com for your law paper? Let’s see the main points of how brainstorming makes a difference in the essay writing process!
1. Brainstorming will help you choose the topic
Sometimes, when the teacher doesn’t provide you with an exact topic, the choosing process may be tricky. The usual themes may look cheesy, and they were definitely already used dozens of times. Can we make them interesting? Can we bring them to life with some fresh facts, unorthodox approach, or even a complete shift of accents? Ask your friends about it!
Brainstorming is a process of generation of everything. Literally everything, no matter how silly the solutions look at the beginning. So even if somebody offers thinking about similarities between Shakespeare’s verses and, say, some rap music – it’s fine! Write it down and later, after a day, look at the topics with a fresh look and decide whether they can be developed further or should be discarded.
2. Brainstorming will help you find arguments for the argumentative essay
You may just lack enough pros and cons for your essay. Or it may be still hard for you to create an imaginary discussion in your head, generating solid but opposite positions. You may ask your friends, who have different opinions on the topic, to gather and help you brainstorming arguments from different points of view.
Bringing all ideas to a single style and format will be quite challenging because they will be proposed by people of different backgrounds, age, gender, religion, etc. But still, you’ll have a pool of arguments that you may choose from, combine and make your essay more objective and vivid by adding them.
3. Brainstorming will give you feedback
If you have a finished essay but are afraid of audience reaction, brainstorming can help you here too. You may let your brainstorming team read your essay and then try to predict the reactions of the teacher, the mainstream audience, the separate groups, those who are emotionally engaged etc. This will allow you to think about your own reaction to critics, prepare the arguments and learn about strong and weak points of your text.
Brainstorm critics may seem non-constructive, so get ready for it. Brainstorming isn’t about constructivity, it is about bringing to surface everything that comes to mind. Don’t be offended, your friends are just impersonating different people and different reactions, meaning nothing personal. Or, if you don’t feel confident enough, you may try other usages of brainstorming to improve your essay.
4. Brainstorming works as an ideas exchange
If the rest of your brainstorming team is your classmates who also are struggling with some essay questions, you may organize an idea exchange. While everyone generates ideas about everyone else’s topics, you’ll finally get plenty of variants, to begin with. Of course, you all will work on them separately later, but this is a good start for those who don’t have enough inspiration, and an opportunity to help others for the most creative team members.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter what brainstorming is conventionally used for: it is just a technique, that can be adjusted to any needs. Invent your own ways to use brainstorming to improve your essay writing, use it as one more way of socializing and just have fun while doing your tasks together!