Many writers, especially young individuals rush into the writing process without any plan leading to poorly written work, without depth and flow of ideas. To avoid such, it is important that one prewrites before drafting. Prewriting is the process of thinking and planning for what is to be written before drafting and doing the actual writing (Norman, 1). Consequently, prewriting is the writing’s most important step as it allows the writer to develop important concepts about the topic before officially drafting it.
Prewriting helps in generating of ideas to be discussed in the essay. This step provides the writer with a good opportunity to establish a good plan for the work because immediately exploring it could trap and pressure someone to produce quality work (Rutgers University, 1). It allows one to generate many ideas, determine their relevance to the topic and pick the best out of them. This prevent getting stuck along the way, and the number of ideas developed is determined by the time it takes to prewrite. For instance, work due in a number of weeks allows more time for prewriting hence many ideas as opposed to a timed out one.
Prewriting helps the writer to focus their work. Many essays have been criticized as lacking rhetorical unity or cohesion and prewriting can help avoid such. It aids one to contemplate on the type of audience. For example, writing for your peers call for more background information on the subject than it requires to write for a professor (Norman, 1).
Writers who employ prewriting are more efficient because it gives them the ability to narrow down and pick a topic appropriately. In turn, this helps them to come up with a comprehensive thesis statement and supportive paragraphs beforehand (Study Guides and Strategies, 1).
Works Cited
Norman, Jeffrey. How Important Is Prewriting Before an Essay? September 24, 2011. Web. April 20, 2012. < http://www.ehow.com/info_12093985_important-prewriting-before-essay.html>
Rutgers University. Prewriting. 2012. Web. April 20, 2012< http://wire.rutgers.edu/p_pre.html>
Study Guides and Strategies. Organizing and pre-writing: Seven stages of writing assignments. 1996.
