Unlock Essay Writing Potential: How to Brainstorm an Essay with the Help of Online Whiteboard

Brainstorming is highly recommended as the first step in the writing process. Why? Because in this way, knowing what content you want to include in your essay right from the start makes the whole writing process much easier! How to brainstorm for an essay? Don’t worry, this blog is a step-by-step guide for brainstorming an essay and explains the most effective tips to make your brainstorming bear more fruit.

Table of Contents

Preparation to Facilitate Your Brainstorm Session

How to Brainstorm an Essay - Step-by-step Guide

Tips for Brainstorming An Essay Effectively

Before you start writing, some preparation needs to be done to ensure the brainstorming session is productive and effective. First, you need to set time limits for yourself and choose someplace where you can stay concentrated. After all of these settled down, here comes the preparation part:
Understand the assignment: Before brainstorming, understand the assignment prompt. Read the essay topic or prompt carefully to ensure you fully understand what is being asked. Identify key terms, concepts, and requirements in the prompt.
Choose a topic:  choose one that interests you or that you have some knowledge about. 
Choose a useful online tool for brainstorming： After you have chosen the topic, you’ll start brainstorming for it but a useful tool is necessary for brainstorming, unlike a traditional whiteboard, an online whiteboard offers you unlimited canvas, where you can place and visualize all the ideas. 

Write Down Thoughts Unconsciously 

It is also called “free writing”. It means writing down everything related to this topic that popped into your mind.  You don't have to worry about organizing them.  Just focus on generating as many ideas as possible. Be creative and open-minded, and don't discount any ideas. Doing this can stimulate your brain and gather more information. To do this, first, place the topic in the center of the canvas, then write down everything related to this topic unconsciously. For example, if you are writing an essay about “online education”, you can write down everything that popped into your brain like “flexibility” or “reduce costs”.

For one thing, doing this can help you collaborate information and to see if you missed anything, for another it is also “cleaning” your mind, so you have more “room” for what’s going next. Stimulate brain

Draw a Mind Map 

With all the ideas you wrote down unconsciously, you can now draw a mind map to organize your thoughts. 
 Start with a blank sheet of paper or a digital canvas. Then you can write the main topic of your essay in the center of the page and circle it.

 Next, draw lines out from the center circle to create branches. To brainstorm an essay,  you need a branch for the essay's main body. Then create more branches. On each branch, write down a main idea or subtopic related to the main topic. Draw smaller lines off of the main branches to add supporting details, evidence, or examples. Connect related ideas and branches with lines or arrows to show how they are connected.

Continue adding features to your mind map until you have included all relevant ideas, structures, and information related to your essay topic. Like “introduction” “conclusion” and “reference”  and use lines or narrows to mark the connection between each part.

Research

With the list of your ideals, if time allows, you can start doing some research about each sub-topic or supporting point. Conduct research on the topic through various sources, such as books, articles, websites, or reputable online databases. Gather information that supports your understanding of the topic and helps you develop ideas for your essay.
Organize & Evaluate Ideas
Review your list of ideas and mind map, and prioritize them based on relevance, significance, and suitability for your essay. Choose the most compelling and relevant ideas that align with your essay's purpose and focus.

Give Outlines of the Essay

Create an outline for your essay based on the organized ideas and categories. This should include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Outline each section's main points and supporting evidence or examples to create a logical structure for your essay.

After all these steps, you get the outline of the essay but remember to review your brainstormed ideas, mind map, and outline, and make any necessary revisions.

After knowing how to brainstorm and outline for an essay, a high-efficiency online whiteboard can boost your productivity. Miocreate is an online whiteboard that covers everything you need in the process of brainstorming for an essay. You don’t have to worry about data loss, because MioCreate online whiteboard instantly updates important notes on multiple devices. Here are some tips for you to brainstorm an essay effectively. 

Sticky Notes
You can use sticky notes to mark the key points in your essay, just click the pattern of the sticky notes and choose one color you like, write down words on it, then you will know exactly what you want to express in the essay.

Frames 
There are also loads of frames for you to choose from, you can create a mind map with one simple click. Moreover, while brainstorming an essay, different types of diagrams can help you understand and organize the essay's main points smartly. 

Venn diagram 
Venn diagram works perfectly for brainstorming differences and similarities between two or more objectives. Start with drawing two (or more)intersecting circles, and write the similarities in the middle (where two circles intersect) and the unique parts in the left and right spaces. 

Tree diagram
The tree diagram starts with the central topic and branches out the supporting ideas or different categories. It works perfectly for classification essays. 

Conclusion:

After knowing how to brainstorm for an essay, you can start writing now! But remember to choose a smart tool to develop a strong foundation for your writing. Miocreate can be your first choice. Follow these steps to unleash your creativity and produce a well-organized and persuasive essay with Miocreate.