Post 249: Other ways to overcome Writer's Block: Ask Exploratory Questions

Post 249: Other ways to overcome Writer's Block: Ask Exploratory Questions

For many students, the scariest and hardest part of writing a paper is coming up with a topic. Some teachers simply give students a topic list and then tell students to write about a topic they are interested in.  If you cannot think offhand a topic to write about, then ask yourself some exploratory questions to get your juices running.

1. What are your hobbies? What do you like to do?
2. When you read the news, what catches your eye? Political news? Medical news?
3. Who are you interested in writing about? Who is your role model?
4. Are you for or against the current President and his agenda?
5. What topics do you want to know?
6. What controversies do you know about?
7. What controversies were there when you were little?
8. What did your friends and family feel about this controversy? What did your school and teacher feel about this controversy?
9. What are the pathos, ethos and logos of your topic?
Pathos--appeal to emotion/ethos--appeal to credibility/logos--appeal to logic.

Or ask yourself these questions:
1. What do you want to know about the topic?
2. What did you know about the topic?
3. What have you found out about the topic from initial reading and research?
4. What do you want to research further about the topic?
5. Has reading about your topic changed your thesis? If so how?

You can also use other invention strategies such as brainstorming, (work with a group of people to come up with topics), freewriting (write down everything you know about the topic) and clustering (draw a mind map)--there are many mindmap software to choose from or do it the low tech way using pencil and paper.

What invention strategies do you use to overcome Writer's Block? Do you ask exploratory questions?