My favorite brainstorming activity to do when preparing to write an essay is the columns activity. I always begin my essays by finding quotes and visualizing how I can compare them between essays. I am a person who likes lists and seeing each author’s respective quotes and ideas, then making connections between them based off of what I have written down.
Great. When you identify a connection, it can help to free write about the relationship that you see between the two (or three) texts.