Read this description in Spanish.

Overview

The Macintosh Prewriting Stacks consist of five routines—Freewriting, Brainstorming, Planning an Argument, Summarizing, and Nutshelling—designed to help writers get started on their writing. The routines ask for ideas about a topic and then help the user organize these ideas. Though these exercises are most useful at the outset of a project, students might want to use them whenever they would like help generating material for a paper.

Each routine operates independently of the others and is meant to be used in a single 10- to 45- minute session. When a routine is completed it can be printed, or saved in a word processor (Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or MacWrite) and edited as a textfile. If writers exit a routine without completing it, they can save or print what they have done so far, but they will not be able to return to the exercise and continue from where they left off.

The Spanish-language version, La preescritura, is meant for anyone writing in Spanish, whether they are students just learning the language or native Spanish speakers. It can also be used in Spanish conversation courses. The five stacks are Escritura libre, Lluvia de ideas, Planeando un argumento, Resumiendo, and En pocas palabras. A Spanish-English glossary (hardcopy) accompanies the program.


Freewriting

Freewriting is a warm-up exercise based on Peter Elbow’s work; it’s meant to relax the mind and break down psychological barriers to beginning a writing task. It asks writers to do two things: 1) write anything that occurs to them and 2) reflect on what they have just written. In the first part students write continuously without pausing to think, read, or correct their work. What matters here is the act of writing rather than the text produced.

The second stage allows the writer to read the freewriting and decide whether to explore any ideas it raises. This idea can then give rise to another freewriting.



Brainstorming

Like Freewriting, Brainstorming asks writers to write down everything that occurs to them without censoring what may look like a silly or irrelevant possibility. Unlike Freewriting, though, a Brainstorming exercise should be at least loosely connected to the paper topic, and it should contain a list of words or phrases rather than full sentences.

Once students have made a list, they can sort through the items, discarding some and organizing the others into groups. The finished product is a rough outline for a paper.


Planning an Argument

This routine is meant as preparation for a paper on a controversial subject. It assumes that a paper is strongest when it accounts for viewpoints that disagree as well agree with the author’s. Thus, Planning an Argument asks for a thesis and for reasons that support and oppose this thesis.

After listing supporting and opposing points, the writer can sort them, decide which ones to discard, and organize the rest into a logical sequence. The exercise produces a rough outline for a persuasive paper.


Summarizing

Students might use Summarizing when they need to write a full-scale summary of an article they have read, include a description of an article in a research paper they are writing, create an annotated bibliography, or write a review of an article.

Summarizing asks for the thesis and central ideas of the article being summarized, stated in the writer’s own words. Like Brainstorming and Planning an Argument, it lets the writer sort the ideas, decide which items to discard, and organize the remaining ones. It also produces a rough outline of a summary.


Nutshelling

This exercise asks for a short summary of the writer’s proposed paper—the whole paper “in a nutshell.” It also asks the writer to identify the purpose and audience for the paper.

Nutshelling is meant to help students focus and reconsider their ideas; to encourage them to think who their readers are and what kind of information they will need; and to review what they want to accomplish by writing their paper.

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