Mind Mapping My Way around the Story
Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 3:54PM After spending weeks being overwhelmed and confused with the timeline of my novel, I was reminded of a good exercise to use when you need to come up with fresh ideas or organize projects. It’s called Mind Mapping, which is essentially a diagram of words or pictures around a central theme.
To create a Mind Map, you start with a word or theme in the center of a blank piece of paper and then draw branches out from it, like rays of the sun, and every branch becomes a related word or picture around your starting word. Then each branch becomes its own “center” and you branch out from there.
You can have a lot of fun with this exercise and get very creative using different colors, images, and symbols. The idea is to move quickly around your “centers”, adding words on branches so that you generate more ideas and not discount any of them.
I tend to be a very linear thinker (start with step 1, then go on to step 2, etc.), and I find that once I get into the flow of my Mind Map, I look at my project in a whole new way and it becomes easy to fill in the gaps. I’ve changed the timeline of my novel a few times and each of my Mind Maps has inspired me to add new material, which then takes on a life of its own.
Reader Comments (2)
I think Mind Mapping is very great. I don't only use it for my writing ideas, but also subjects in school. Great writing.
Thank you. Mind Mapping has really helped me a lot for organizing my writing.
That's interesting that you use Mind Mapping for school subjects. How does that work? Do you do a Mind Map for the whole class or a specific section that you need to study?