foreign things you know to be true for me I'd say one never separate from the group in a horror movie two don't mess with Ouija boards and three duct tape is invaluable believe it or not what we have with just these three things is the potential for a poem in fact this is a method spoken word poet Sarah K uses when she leads classes and workshops that help people to tap into their own most poetic thoughts the non-profit she works with project voice treats everyone as a potential poet in her famous Ted Talk she points out to a student that while some people feel they cannot write poems almost anyone can make lists so she gives structure to the Audience by asking them to come up with three things they know to be true but if she just said think of a topic for a poem many people's minds would go blank but by starting with a specific exercise and identifying three things they know to be true maybe a poem comes from those three things and maybe not but there's something to work with and consistently build from if we're lucky there'll still be occasional wonderful moments when inspiration just shows up the minute we find out we have a new writing task to accomplish but that's rare for a lot of us and we want invention and planning strategies to turn to when we want to write with or without that inspiration hi I'm Dr Emily zarka and welcome to study hall rhetoric and composition foreign [Music] about the writing process we've talked about the importance of invention or the step of the writing process where we come up with ideas and planning which is the stage where we zoom in and organize those ideas now in this episode we're digging into some specific strategies we can use to make those steps work effectively but there are way more invention in planning strategies out there than we can possibly cover and if your own strategies for these stages look different that's great here we'll give you a few methods that have been widely successful to help you launch your writing process if you've had trouble with invention and planning or just need some fresh ways to get started but you can also find or create your own first let's focus on invention overall invention strategies are ways to deliberately prompt our idea having muscles rather than waiting for ideas to show up the goal is that by using invention strategies we'll be more confident that we will come up with ways to get started even if we start out feeling like we need some caffeine or a lightning bolt or something take free writing which was written down as common wisdom by author and editor Dorothea brand in 1932. the way we start free writing is by focusing on the task we want to accomplish we might reread an assignment sheet for a class or a request from a workplace supervisor or just focus intently on our personal goal the second step is to create a constraint or limit on how long we'll write it could be two minutes or it could be 10 or whatever works for you as you try free writing you'll figure out what time lengths work best for you depending on your style and the writing we have to do if you're new to free writing or are starting a new kind of writing task I recommend just sitting down for 15 minutes and trying to write something then you can take a break then the third step is to write without stopping seriously don't stop that means if punctuation goes out the window keep going if you stray off topic keep going once our timer dings we reread our work if we see things that are a good start we consider highlighting or underlining them if we don't see a ton that we like we start again with a new timed free right who knows what will come out when we're forced to keep writing this technique is a great example of how creating a constraint like a time limit can open our minds and unlock some of our creativity on a given topic then to build on our free writing skills we can introduce another constraint which creates a new invention technique called looping looping is a sequence of free rights where we start with one-time free write and pull the most promising or most Central or most useful idea from that free right to put at the top of the page for a new free write then we use that idea from our first freewrite to launch again into free writing then we pull an idea from the second free write and start again repeating as many times as we need for instance experiment with whether something like four free writes of six minutes each or five fast three minute free rights works better but we can also adapt free writing and looping into whatever we need like if we know that our project has multiple Focus points we can do a free write for each Focus area then pull common ideas together and do another free write on a central thread we found all invention techniques you read or hear about are really just ideas and starting places for the last invention technique we'll talk through today let's go back to Sarah K's strategy and a common invention technique list making lists are something many of us create all the time for everything from groceries to the monsters that would make the best Companions and they rely on our ability to trigger a new thought by thinking of a current thought think of how writing down a bill we need to pay on a to-do list might trigger us to think about checking our bank account and then trigger us to remember we should really get cash to pay someone back our brains often work in linked thoughts when we're using list making during the invention stage of the writing process we intentionally start with the idea a topic or question that's at the core of the writing task so if someone was working on a personal statement for college they'd start with writing the prompt or question from the college website at the top of their list then we make a list it could be key parts of that idea like all the qualities we think the application reader wants us to talk about it could also be key points that we need to make or even all the different ways to answer a question where we write all the personal qualities we think we bring to a college experience while it feels like just making a list we're actually putting our brains in a position to jump from one idea to the next like connected Stepping Stones we may even end up in a place where we didn't expect with more ideas and ways to get started than before for instance the person applying to college might start writing personality qualities like studious and outgoing and end up talking about their out of the box thinking and willingness to try new things realizing that those will make for more fun examples than a more expected focus on on past academic success free writing looping and list making are only a few of the strategies you can try some people like to speak out loud into a digital recorder about the topic and listen to what they said as a form of invention others start their Thinking by analyzing the assignment itself or by looking at the key terms of their project guidelines in a dictionary or encyclopedia and letting those core topics prompt ideas for the project whatever it is invention strategies bring us to a place where we can start giving a recognizable order and shape to our project molding it from a list diagram or freewrite into something that will eventually fit the genre or a specific kind of writing that we're working towards once we've generated the ideas now it's time to figure out how to use them invention and planning can sometimes feel similar but think about invention as the widening stage where we get as many ideas as possible and planning as the narrowing and organizing stage where we figure out how we'll address our big old pile of ideas planning is all about adding structure to how we'll use our Initial Ideas going forward maybe we're planning the order the ideas will appear or the order in which we'll complete tasks as we progress through the process sometimes there will be big picture or Mac planning that needs to be done like picking the four key arguments that we'll mention in a debate speech or identifying the three areas we need to discuss in an email other times we'll zoom in on a topic and get into the nitty-gritty details or micro planning like identifying what we want each sentence in a given paragraph to do maybe to introduce a topic cite a trusted resource elaborate on the point and transition to the next paragraph let's look at an invention slash planning technique called Mind mapping and how it works well with another planning technique called Affinity mapping these two structures can help someone progress from some of their invention ideas to getting ready to draft let's say one of Sarah K students Alma is trying to write a poem and used list making to write a bunch of answers to the prompt why being vulnerable and willing to Fall In Love sometimes ends up being painful her list leads her to use the Mind mapping strategy to connect some of those ideas in her case she ends up drawing arrows of causality showing how certain experiences of love cause hurt but also cause more possibility for meaning and connection she adds more Bubbles as she keeps thinking since even now there's some invention going on too mind mapping helps her see three main sections with ideas that come from each one noticing what ideas are Main and which ones are minor is part of the goal of this kind of planning but once the Mind map is done she wants a little more time to strategize Alma starts writing half-formed lines and Concepts on sticky notes and putting them on a wall a technique known as Affinity mapping Affinity mapping lets you group notes on a wall in lines clumps or some other way to show categories she lets her mind map guide her to create three sections of the wall she uses the extra space on the notes to elaborate on each idea to move forward in her plan and now she can move the sticky notes and test individual ideas and lines out in each of the three sections of the poem even when she sits down to type up the full poem draft she can return and move a sticky note placing it higher on the wall or other otherwise organize her thoughts visually this helps her keep the plan responsive to any new ideas that continue to come to her all while confidently beginning to draft the poem she's been brewing in the invention and planning stages mind mapping and Affinity mapping are valuable options for any writer even and especially for writing like poetry which has a totally misleading reputation for coming to people fully formed and with no need for a strategic effort or prep work you don't even need a wall or a big piece of paper you can use text boxes in a word processor or a single regular piece of paper to make these same kinds of diagrams and sticky note-like processes of course just like with invention there are tons of other planning techniques out there for instance plenty of people use outlining to great effect for invention or planning or both outlines are like lists but they have subsections and even sub subsections maybe as we're Transforming Our ideas into a plan we decide that our project will have four major sections and each section has has multiple key points to cover with bullet points or sub points under those key ideas that we want to fill in with different resources and tasks we'll need to do and just like mind mapping or Affinity mapping when we delve into using an outline we get the chance to organize and reorganize our thoughts making a guide for what we want to accomplish because the writing process is iterative or able to be done over and over planning an invention can definitely blur and overlap you can return to The Well of invention during drafting or revising if you realize you need more ideas or to widen things out you can also return to planning if you realize your initial plan only LED through a certain part of the draft and you need more organization and steps that's the weird and wonderful part of the writing process it's in an order for a reason but you can use any of the steps when it makes sense to use them in your context that's a key takeaway from any invention or planning technique to we want to make them work for for us the strategies are designed to give us steps to follow like writing things on sticky notes and moving them around but not to hold us back if we realize there's another way or order that would work better and practicing these strategies helps us build confidence that we can figure out first steps in any writing situation and gives us a better idea for when we need a lot of invention a lot of planning or both that way when we do run up against a task that's harder or different from anything we've done before we've already been building this muscle that helps us generate and organize ideas it'll be nice to have that toolkit ready to go for our biggest writing challenges so next time you have a writing task to handle try out a new invention or planning technique and let us know in the comments what strategies you use to build ideas and set yourself up for drafting success thanks for watching study hall rhetoric and composition which is part of the study hall project a partnership between ASU and crash course if you liked this video and watch to keep learning with us be sure to subscribe you can learn more about study hall and the videos produced by crash course and ASU in the links in the description see you next time