The third planning technique, idea listing, is my favorite because it wastes no time. It immediately brings writers to the computer where they will draft and quality control their message. The illustration shows the brainstorming phase in two steps and the organizing phase in three steps. It shows a writer planning a new policy message to all staff of a growing company.
In the brainstorming phase, the writer lists her topic in Step 1: requirement to display new employee ID badge. Step 2 of this phase is what some people would call a brain dump, when the writer lists every idea that pops into her mind about the topic without regard to its merit. You'll notice it is a disorganized mess of repetitive and irrelevant ideas. But the writer is happy with the list because she has plenty to work with in the organizing phase.
The organizing phase requires three additional steps. In Step 3, the writer cuts and pastes similar ideas into groups and gives each group a name, each of which will appear in a separate paragraph. In this case, the topics are purpose, getting, displaying, closing. In Step 4, she adds additional ideas as they occur to her. Notice Question anyone not displaying ID badge (appearing in a different font), is an addition after the brainstorming phase. In Step 5, she deletes ideas that don't fit into her plan, as in the three struck-through items at the bottom right. Now she can efficiently draft around these ideas.
Do not stress over whether this process seems overly complicated with five steps. It's really two: brainstorming and organizing, and you'll be doing both steps simultaneously and nimbly once you get used to idea listing.
