3.7 Brainstorming
Free associate topics without evaluating them.
The scaffolding method described in Chapter 2 helps writing, in part, by separating creation from evaluation (Elbow, 1981). However, Chapter 3’s scaffolds may bring creation and evaluation into conflict. The scaffolds provide questions to answer. Unfortunately, by using questions the scaffolds permit evaluation to prematurely creep back into the writing process. You might unconsciously strive to generate ‘correct’ or ‘best’ answers to a scaffold’s prompts, evaluating your topics as you generate them.
How might you avoid premature evaluation when you first create topics? You could use a less structured method for topic creation, such as brainstorming, which I briefly introduced in Section 2.6. Advertising executive Alex Osborn developed brainstorming, a technique made famous by his book Applied imagination (Osborn, 1953). Osborn designed brainstorming to help groups generate as many ideas as possible by delaying evaluation. While immensely popular in the mid-20th century, brainstorming became less popular when experimental results raised questions about brainstorming’s success (Bouchard, 1971; Taylor et al., 1958). Osborne promoted brainstorming with anecdotal data (Osborn, 1948, 1953); let me follow suit by stating I find brainstorming very effective for creating initial topics for my Chapter 2 scaffold.
Groups use brainstorming to generate as many ideas as possible. To succeed, Osborn (1953) required a brainstorming group to follow four basic rules:
- Criticism is banned.
- Quantity is wanted.
- Freewheeling is welcomed (to generate wild ideas)
- Ideas already generated can be combined to create new ideas.
The rules for brainstorming – particularly banning criticism, and desiring many ideas – make it analogous to freewriting (Elbow, 1981). Brainstorming’s aims to creatively generate many ideas by delaying criticism, an aim well suited to Step 1 of the Chapter 2 scaffold. To start a scaffold, you try to generate many potential broad topics, in any order, without evaluating them (e.g., without framing them as sentences). Brainstorming produces many broad topics if you repeatedly generate answers to one basic question:
- What could I tell my audience about my research project?
Repeatedly asking and answering the question above, while following brainstorming’s basic rules, should produce many broad topics to initiate a scaffold. Importantly, evaluating the generated topics occurs later– in Step 2 (Section 2.7).
Using brainstorming to generate topics helps inhibit other forms of criticism or evaluation. For instance, brainstorming need not pay attention to topic order, because you produce topics as they come to mind. If you focus on what topic importance, or on the best topic order, your evaluation occurs prematurely.
Brainstorming permits several individuals to work together to generate initial topics. A writing group can brainstorm topics together, writing each topic down on its own index card and immediately putting the new card on display for the whole group. Obviously, an individual can also use brainstorming to generate topics.
You should also consider brainstorming’s emphasis on banning criticism when using other Chapter 3 scaffolds. For instance, the Table 3-1 IMRaD questions become more effective if you use each as a brainstorming cue; don’t try to produce the best answer to each question.
