Tips for writing and crafting your story into being the best it can be. Everything from the very basic structure of a story through to understanding deep point of view, perhaps you can find something here that is useful for your journey as a writer!
What is mind mapping and why is it beneficial? Mind mapping is a visual way to outline information. That's why I like it. I'm a visual person and it's less like work and more like arts and crafts time... There's some very real science behind colors and images helping your brain to retain information, and the way a mind map is organized allows ideas to flow freely and without constraint.
There are many ways you can mind map, but to start, all you need is paper and colored pens.
Begin with a central idea in the middle and branch ideas out from there. I found this online, and it's a pretty good image explaining the fine details.
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When I first started mind mapping, I used paper and pen, but as I began taking writing more seriously, I've found a software that makes it fun and easy. It's called Scapple, and if you've heard of Scrivener, it's by the same company. If you haven't heard of Scrivener, it's my opinion that it's perhaps the greatest tool a writer can have. I love hand writing mind maps on papers with pens, but you'll see why I've moved to an electronic method when I explain how it ties into Scrivener and how it makes writing my book so much easier.
Scapple, it looks like this:
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Pretty underwhelming. You can double click anywhere to "make a note" and from there, you can change the bubble colors and customize their appearance. This comes in really handy if you're writing from multiple POV so you can keep different scenes in different colors for different points of view.
The most effective way that I've found to do it is like this. As with everything else we've talked about, nothing is set in stone. Do what works for you, personally. For me, I begin by making a line up, that details my story arc.
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From here, I plan out individual scenes. If you want you can make a bubble that details what has to happen in chapter one, etc, but I work better with smaller chunks and I know from experience this will be the most valuable to me when I'm editing because edits really can come down to singular, tiny details.
I connect each scene to what part of the story arc it belongs in. For the scene, I add the following information: Chapter and Scene #, the POV in the scene, the location, and the details of the scene.
If my exposition has four scenes, it will have four connecting bubbles. I've blanked this out because it's my next book, but eventually, you end up with something like this but on a much larger scale:
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Here is why I'm such a huge Scapple fan. I mentioned Scrivener earlier, and if I could tell aspiring writers to invest in anything, that would be it. It's writing software that can do just about anything. You can store character profiles, research, images, entire websites, setting details, anything and everything in one place. It's a terrifying software to learn because there are countless different ways you can work with it, but once you're comfortable with it, you'll never be the same , I promise.
If you're already a Scrivener user (like me), the most beautiful thing about Scapple is that you can export your outline and import it directly into the writing software, so you end up with something like this:
This first view is your corkboard, and imagine the little index cards filled with all the details you placed in your bubbles.
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When you open the editor view (the large white space where you'll write the actual story), you can see on the right, is the index card with your scene, so as you write your story, the details you need are literally right there. It saves tons of time and makes the writing process almost seamless.
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There are all kinds of mind mapping tools and software but because I aim to use it for outlining my stories, I love that Scapple works hand in hand with Scrivener.
Literature and latte (the company that makes these two softwares) offers a free trial of both, so If you head over to , you can download it and see how it works for you.
Next week we will discuss first chapters and how to make them sparkle and shine, and catch attention!
