Prewriting by Analysis

Abstract

This is standard: get a subject-limit it->formulate your thesis->begin. At best, this advice will spark the sort of canned essay Roger Sale, in his book On Writing, finds so offensive; more often will lead to the sort of arguable proposition he finds even more reprehensible. Most often, though, will lead to nothing at all. For such you've got to know what you want to say before you begin to say it advice is meaningless to the student who doesn't know, and can't discover, what is he wants to say. In Aspects of the Novel Forster alludes to the anecdote of the lady who, admonished to think before speaking, exclaimed, rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say? The increasing frequency with which this dicta has been cropping up in recently published composition texts may indicate that an approach quite different from Baker's is gaining wide acceptance. Emboldened by such an endorsement of leaping before looking, and armed with theories of as discovery, the instructor may, with an easy conscience, tell his apparently traumatized student, No matter. Just start writing. And f even such Rogerian non-directiveness proves inadequate to start the pen scratching, may be augmented by an app o riate stimulus in the form of the suggestive photograph, drawing, painting, or poster. Voila! Ejaculation at last! Th cure positive for scribal impotence. To my mind, both of these approaches are cop-outs. The first evades the hard questions of how one goes about limitg his subject and how one goes about discovering what he wants to say about it. The second approach implies that writing demands no discipline or forethought and begs the issue of the writer's responsibility to his audience and his subject. What the composition student needs is knowledge of specific prewriting strategies which he can use to explore his subject, which he can use to discover limited aspects of his subject about which he is sufficiently knowledgeable to write responsibly, which he can use to order and structure his argument. Gordon Rohman and Albert Wlecke