During the prewriting stage, you should
a. establish who your audience will be.
b. correct any misleading facts or evidence.
c. ensure that you are using the best word choices.
d. make sure your content is appropriate for the audience.

The first thing you should do during the pre-writing stage is A. establish who your audience will be. This matters greatly because if you write a college-level paper for a group of 6th graders they might not be able to understand it and would not learn anything from it. Same thing would happen if you wrote a 2nd grade paper in a college level class. You would get a low score. This also matters because you don't want to put anything inappropriate in your writing that shouldn't be heard by a younger age group.