2(2), February 1985, page 1

Prewriting Invention Without Special Software

Peggy Parris

Department of English
Drake University
Des Moines, Iowa 50311

Computer invention programs for student writers began to appear several years ago with Hugh Burns' heuristic dialogues based on Burke's Pentad, Aristotle's Topoi, and the Tagmemic Invention Matrix, and new ones keep popping up like dandelions after a spring rain. However, students don't need special invention software to reinforce the heuristic instruction we give them in the classroom.

Seated in front of the terminal of a mainframe or at the keyboard of a free-standing PC, all writers need is a word processing program and the training to use it. Here are just a few of the things they can then do:

l. Macrorie's free writing, even for the tyro typist, has never been easier than on a computer. Since everything is only written in light, deferred judgment seems to come more readily. If the temptation to evaluate what's being written is too great, the contrast on the monitor can be turned down so that nothing appears on the screen at all as the writer freely writes. Later, the results can be reviewed by readjusting the contrast and/or by printing out hard copy.

2. Because writing on a computer allows for the insertion of characters at any point in a string, with the remainder moving over to accommodate them, practice in adding free modifiers, using the principle of Christensen's Generative Sentence, 1 is not only easy but fun. In addition to helping students write more concretely and specifically, the exercise can produce the beginnings of a story or an essay.

3. Structured heuristics--such as Burke's Pentad, the Young-Becker-Pike Tagmemic Matrix, and Selfe and Rodi's questions for expressive writing 2--can be entered into the computer as separate permanent files. The appropriate file can be called up by a student writer any time it is needed, worked with, and the results stored in a new file, leaving the original unaltered and ready for future use.

For example, if a writer using a PC wants to do some prewriting for a personal experience essay, the diskette containing the Pentad questions--What's happening? Who's involved? and so on--is put into the disk drive and the file loaded into the computer's memory. The writer then uses free writing to respond to each question, the remaining questions moving down to make room for answers of any length. When the subject has been thoroughly explored, the raw material generated is saved onto a diskette in a new file, to be called back up or printed out whenever, after incubation, the writer needs it.

4. In the same way, a fiction writing student can explore a character before composing a short story by calling up the file containing a set of heuristic questions--What's the character's full name? What are some observable facts about age, physical appearance, clothing, mannerisms of behavior and speech that would make it possible to pick ______ out of a crowd? and so on--which are answered, using free writing. When the fictional personality is fully developed, the profile is saved and/or printed out as the writer has need of it.

5. Similarly, regular, closed poetic forms can be set up in individual permanent files for poetry writing students, called up, written in, and filed under the resulting poem's working title. For instance, when the file SESTINA is called up, the following appears on the screen:




						1

						2

						3

						4

						5

						6



						6

						1

						5

						2

						4

						3

and so on through the remainder of the six stanzas and the envoi. The writer decides on six end words and types them in front of the numbers in their proper order. The numbers are then deleted, and with free writing and whatever comes to the poet's mind, the lines in front of the words are filled in. This very rough draft is saved in a new file for a period of incubation. The writer can call it back up when ready to work on the poem some more.


COMPUTERS and COMPOSITION 2(2), February 1985, page 2

Similar permanent files, using letters and numbers to represent rhyme schemes and repeated lines of other poetic forms--villanelle, various kinds of sonnets, and so on--can be created and used by student writers in the same way.

All this is at the prewriting stage. Using the computer, drafts can be entered, edited, saved, or printed with an ease and freedom that writers have never known before--no more retyping, no more cutting and pasting with scissors and tape, no more Liquid Paper. The computer is a wonderful tool for any writer at any stage of development at any stage of the writing process, but it can be especially helpful to the apprentice at the prewriting stage, using nothing more than a word-processing program and a little instruction and encouragement from us.


1. Francis Christensen, "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence," in Contemporary Rhetoric: A Conceptual Background with Readings, ed. W. Ross Winterowd (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), pp. 337-51.

2. I'll happily share the computer modifications of these heuristics and handouts to teach students to use them to anyone who sends a self-addressed, stamped envelope.