Shaping and Grouping Ideas For Writing

Posted by qpen on August 5, 2009

Previously, we discussed Keeping an Idea Book and Writing In A Journal FreeWriting, Brainstorming, Mapping, and Incubation, today we will be discussing: Shaping and Grouping Ideas

Shaping Ideas

Shaping activities are related to the idea that writing is often called composing, the putting together of ideas to create a composition; one of the synonyms for essay.

To shape the ideas the you have gathered about your topic, you need to group them and sequence them.

As you shape ideas, keep in mind hat the form of an article is related to the classical notion of a story’s having a beginning, a middle, and an end.

An article always has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

The length of each paragraph is in proportion to the overall length of the article. Introduction and concluding paragraphs are generally shorter than body paragraphs, and no body paragraph should overpower the others by its length.

Grouping Ideas

When you group ideas, you make connections and find patterns. To do this, put each batch of related ideas into its own group.

As you create groups, use the concept of levels of generality to help you make decisions.

One idea is more general than another if it falls into a larger, less specific category than the other.
Remember that generality is a relative term.
Each idea exists in the context of a whole relationship of ideas.
An idea may be general in relationship to one set of ideas but specific in relation to another set.

As an example:

Bank account is more general than checking account.
Checking account is more general than business checking account or regular checking account
And those terms are more general than account 2211222 at EZ-Come-EZ-Go Bank

(Please excuse the banking terms, I worked in banking for 20 years, and you will find that I use banking terms quite a bit).

To identify groups of ideas, review the material you accumulated while gathering ideas for your writing, from the previous posts as referenced at the start of this post.

Look for general ideas. Then, group less general ideas under them.

If your notes contain only general ideas, or only very specific details, return to techniques for gathering ideas to supply what you need.

A standard tool for grouping ideas is to make a “subject tree” to see whether you have enough content to write about.

A subject tree resembles a map, it shows ideas and details in order from most general to most specific.

Next time we will be discussing: Knowing How To Outline

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