Topic-Brainstorming Guide

Use this guide to brainstorm what you could wtite about your topic (considering its audience, purpose and document type). When you are through, you can e-mail this information to yourself. (Your instructor automatically receives your planning notes.)

For a more detailed overview of topic-brainstorming sources, see the online textbook on Brainstorm Topics for Writing Projects.

Note: All of the links below open a separate browser window so that you can copy information and paste it in the boxes below. Just remember to close those separate windows as you finish with them.

1. Project description. First of all, in the box below, describe your technical document project: include information on the topic, audience, purpose, report type:
   
2. Unfamiliar words, phrases. Your technical document project is likely to have terminology that may be unfamiliar to your least capable readers. In the box below, list those major terms that you need to define, remembering to list terms that occur in the major terms that would also need defining:
   
3. Problems–questions, solutions–answers. Often, technical documents address problems or questions and seek to write about solutions or answers. In the box below, list problems and solutions ot questions and answers (or both) that would need discussion in your technical document project:
   
4. Causes, effects, consequences. Your report topic may involvie discussion of the causes of something (why it happens), its effects (consequences), or both. In the box below, list the causes, effects, consequences related to your technical document project that you might want to discuss:
   
5. Advantages–benefits, disadvanges–limitations (downsides). In your document project, you may want to discuss related benefits, advantages,disadvantages, limitations, downsides related to your topic:
   
6. Theoretical background, explanation. Sometimes, a technical document project whose topics necessitates discussion of theory. For example, apps like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, and Canva must direct users to change saturation, hue, luninance settings. What are those? That would be theory. In the box below, list the theoretical background you'd need to explain:
   
7. Applications. Sometimes, the discussion of theory becomes overwhelming, impenetrable—in a word, theoretical. That's when it's time to use applications of theory to help readers understand. In the box below, list theoty and pplicsations related to your technical document project:
   
8. Examples. Examples are a lot like applications. Whereas the application might be explained in a full paragraph or more, an example might need only a sentence or two. In the box below, list examples related to your technical document project:
   
9. Classes, Types, Categories. In the box below, list the classes, types, or categories that you could discuss in relation to technical document project:
   
10. Importance. In the box below, list :
    
11. Comparisons, analogies. In the box below, list what your topic could be compared, or what you could use as an analogy to your topic:
    
12. Criteria, requirements. In the box below, list requirements related to your technical document project if it is a recommendation, feasibility, or evsluation report:
    
13. Conclusions, recommendations. In the box below, list the conclusions, recommendations or both you could include in your report:
    
14. Other possibilities. If anything in this list of ideas works for you, take notes in the box below:

    Warnings, cautions, and guidelines
    Economics or financial considerations
    Historical background and important names
    Future developments
    Social, political, legal, or ethical implications
    Reasons for or against
    Legal and administrative demands