Brainstorming is a way of gathering ideas about a topic. Think of a storm; thousands of drops of rain, all coming down together. Now, imagine thousands of ideas raining down onto your paper. When you brainstorm, write down every idea that comes to you. Don't worry now about whether the ideas are good or silly, useful or not. You can decide that later. Right now, you are gathering as many ideas as you can. You will learn three types of brainstorming in this unit such as making a list, freewriting, and mapping.