Everyone loves a good brain dump: the 5 “W”s of a effective brainstorm.
by Amanda Louise Miller, grad student
Ever since elementary school, I’ve always been “that girl” when it comes to writing papers -- no, not the girl that wrote her speech on the bus the morning it was due and won the school-wide DARE speech competition: that was my sister. (grr)
I was the girl who, for starters, never had any trouble reaching the allotted word count for an assignment, who honestly loved book reports and research papers, and who always ended up taking at least 3 or 4 drafts to get her work “just write” (get it?).

(Writing is rewriting. Just ask Sherlock Bones here.
*image from this great blog about writer's block)
Meanwhile, most of my classmates (and, let’s be honest: probably most normal people) would take out their erasable blue pens, start writing with the first sentence of whatever assignment they were given, write until they had reached the minimum amount words required, tack on a conclusion sentence, and stop. Later, they would use their red pens to fix spelling and grammatical errors, and recopy the entire paper again neatly onto another sheet of paper (and yes, I did go to school in the time of the dinosaurs, aka “pre-word-processor-prevalence,” and we were required to do just that).

(Back in my day, people wrote with these things called pens. *Image from a fun how-to-write-a-paper website)
But that “normal,” linear, start-at-the-very-beginning approach didn’t make sense to my little brain back then, and, frankly, it still doesn’t. “How can you know HOW to write your paper (or novel, or musical libretto),” I wonder(ed), “until you know everything you want to say about it?”
...Cut to my classmates counting words and adding superfluous adjectives a la Lucy in “The Book Report."
("...fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Hmm. Eighty-three to go.")
It’s probably no surprise, then, that brainstorming is a huge part of my creative process. Now, for many people, the word “brainstorming” evokes memories of unproductive group meetings or excuses one makes for procrastination. (“My article? Um... it’s in the ... brainstorming stage. Yeah, that’s it -- I’m brainstorming. What? Surfing YouTube counts as brainstorming!”)
However, when approached with a little bit of planning and wide open mind, brainstorming can be an invaluable tool in a multitude of problem-solving settings, creative or otherwise. All you need to keep in mind are the “5 W’s”: What, Why, When, hoW, and What not to do.