Lesson 5 Prompt: Techniques for Generating Ideas

Personally the idea mapping technique has been the most valuable technique for generating ideas. Idea mapping clearly lays out the main idea and as you add related topics it just seems to grow bigger and bigger. The information is laid out in a visually appealing format and the connections are very clear. As ideas branch off from the main topic I often find myself branching off even more ideas from the original ones. This allows me to explore the main topic in depth and generates a lot of new ideas. When I was writing my Lesson 4 assignment my thesis was “Many individuals, including myself, are guilty of watching life pass them by”. As I branched off the topic I used generated ideas such as famous quotes, personal experience, pop culture examples and real world examples just to name a few. It was easy to make connections between these main ideas and other more specific examples. In the end I used a poem, a popular short story and a personal experience as evidence. Idea mapping led me to these topics and I do not know if I would have thought of them had I not used idea mapping.