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<\/p>\nLet\u2019s be honest: most college students don\u2019t prewrite. Maybe they talk about their ideas with a close friend. Maybe they mull things over as they sip some coffee. Maybe they jot down a quick skeleton with their main points, but they rarely do the full-brown detailed A-B-C outline or draw a gigantic idea web or use the traditional methods of prewriting. There\u2019s a population of college students who don\u2019t even prewrite, because when you procrastinate, there\u2019s no time for that.<\/p>\n
However, time spent prewriting before your first draft can save you double that amount of time. It may even eliminate entire drafts in the revising process.\u00a0 Yet, students want to jump face-first onto the page, spit out their thoughts, and fill up the white space as they type. Maybe now that we have moved out of an age of handwritten notes and into an age of digital files, we need pre-writing tools that reflect that. After all, our word processors allow us to add and delete text with no consequences, but notebook paper rips and stains; it\u2019s just not as forgiving.<\/p>\n
Personally, I\u2019ve found that digital graphic organizers are great way to prewrite. It\u2019s a fun, colorful way to ease into your formal black-and-white paper.\u00a0 The great thing about using online organizers is that you can easily manipulate the elements, tweak the colors and fonts, change the content, or copy them for future use. \u00a0Some websites have even made genre specific essay templates, which can help you approach a specific type of paper.<\/p>\n
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Why should you use a graphic organizer?<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s some Free Online Graphic Organizers through Google Docs: <\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s some more genre specific organizers through Canva: <\/strong><\/p>\n Canva is my personal favorite when it comes to making graphic organizers. Because it\u2019s a graphic design site, the options are endless. Just be careful you don\u2019t spend too much time on the design and not enough time on writing. Here\u2019s some genre specific pre-made templates:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n General Prewriting Idea Webs<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n To modify any of these Canva templates, click \u201cEdit Design.\u201d Make a Canva account if you don\u2019t already have one, and then go to File\u2014Make a Copy. From there you can save your work as an open project or you could download it to a PDF under \u201cShare.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s be honest: most college students don\u2019t prewrite. Maybe they talk about their ideas with a close friend. Maybe they mull things over as they sip some coffee. Maybe they jot down a quick skeleton with their main points, but they rarely do the full-brown detailed A-B-C outline or draw a gigantic idea web or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,114],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-writing-tips","category-resources-for-neurodivergent-writers","tag-graphic-organizer","tag-prewriting","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.scranton.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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