Prewriting technique

The prewriting technique I most commonly use is mapping or making a general outline of topics and subtopics. It's pretty basic and I learned it in elementary school, but it's really helped me with my writing, otherwise my papers would be big unorganized jumbles of words and topics. When I make an outline of an essay, I start with the introduction and jot down a couple of things I'm going to touch on in that paragraph. I then go on to my next paragraph and decide what the topic of that paragraph is going to be and write down a couple of points related to that topic that I will cover. And so on and so forth. If I were to write about giraffes, this is what my outline would look like:

I. introduction
-why am I writing about giraffes?
-giraffes are cool

II. Habitat
-where do giraffes live?
-what do they eat?

III. necks
-they have long necks
-they also fight with their necks

IX. conclusion
-giraffes are cool