Categorizing

Creating order

Categorizing often follows brainstorming. You start with notes or ideas on a page.

This is a useful skill for writing and organising your ideas.

First you should look for connections between topics. As more connections are spotted, general groups will emerge.

You should put your items into these logical groups. The topics might belong together because of some connection:

Cars, trains, aeroplanes - are all forms of TRANSPORT

Banking, taxes, currency - are all FINANCIAL matters

Suspect, detective, victim - are linked by CRIME

Your task is to detect these general groups. You then put your other topics in them - if they will fit.

Some items might not fit into any group. Put these to one side for the moment.

Either add them at a later stage, or leave them out of the final plan.

Three or four clear groups are better than a mixture of several, if some are not really appropriate.

Material that is not relevant dilutes the effect of anything alongside it.

Structure

The order of the parts might be created by:

• steps in a sequence
• increasing size of topics
• items of equal size
• chronological order
• sequence in a story
• groups of similar sort

Good structure will strengthen even the weakest ideas. Bad structure will undermine even the best ideas.