Heuristic models help writers recall information, sometimes revealing unique combinations of information in ways not conceived previously. This makes heuristics a valuable technique for helping beginning writers generate writing ideas. Observing that all culture is communication, Edward Hall has organized Primary Message Systems (PMS), a framework of ten anthropological modes that can be adapted to produce new connections latent in a subject matter. The PMS include interaction, association, subsistence, bisexuality, territoriality, temporality, learning, play, defense, and exploitation. Once writing students are familiar with the PMS definitions and questions, they can probe their imaginations to extract concrete subject matter for their compositions. When the students find that certain PMS generate more information than others, they can concentrate on these particular PMS to make hybrid questions for generating more specific information, focusing attention on particular topics, or eliciting unique approaches to traditional topics. This last point does not mean that PMS is an organizing procedure that produces fully defined topics or outlines of composition; but PMS is a prewriting activity that should help students collect a great deal of writing material. (RL)