Have you ever felt completely out of ideas? Perhaps sometimes you have plenty of time to write, but you are not feeling inspired. What can you do when inspiration does not come? This workshop is aimed at students like you, who need to generate ideas for writing and to structure such ideas. Two techniques will be covered:

• brainstorming: a creativity technique first popularized in 1953 by Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive, in a book called “Applied Imagination”. This technique helps individuals who are trying to come up with new ideas to think out of the box. This is especially helpful as a step in pre-writing.
• mind mapping: a technique which originates from Tony Buzan’s book “Use Your Head”, in which he describes what he calls a “mind map”. To put it simply, what is involved here is simply any central idea which provides the main focus of the activity. This is written in the middle of a blank page, and a circle is drawn around the word. Then related ideas are jotted down around the word which denotes the central concept, with lines drawn between them and the circle containing the main idea. Ideas connected with these related ideas are then added where appropriate, so that in the end a whole structure of related ideas can be seen on a single page.

By the end of the workshop, you should be able:

1. to understand how brainstorming can help you generate new ideas;
2. to use the technique ‘mind mapping’ to structure your ideas;
3. to generate ideas by loosening the control of your brain over its own ideas for a short period of time and allowing it to run wild; and
4. to recognize common text structures which determine how ideas are organized, for example, problem and solution, classification, pros and cons, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, etc.

Duration	2 hours
Maximum Number of Participants	30 participants
Eligibility	All undergraduate and postgraduate students of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology are welcome. Registration is required.
Fee	Free admission
Enquiry	If you have any questions, please contact us at: E-mail: lcwrite@ust.hk Telephone:(852) 2358-7851 Office: Room 3018 (Lifts 2 & 3)

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