Mind map your next book

mindmappro

25 October 2021

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Writing a book? Use mind mapping to improve your technique
Characters & Settings
Plot & Storyline
Collaboration

Writing a book? Use mind mapping to improve your technique

Mind mapping has an enormous range of applications, from education to business, planning to aiding memory, strategy to innovation.

One popular use of mind mapping is to improve writing, whether that’s content marketing, fiction or non-fiction.

In this blog post, we’ll focus on the applications for writing fiction, helping you mind map your next book by:

Developing characters and settings
Crafting your plot and storyline
Collaborating with your editor

Characters & Settings

Get to know your characters

Your characters are an essential element in your story. It is your characters who effect, and are affected by, your plot. Readers will picture your characters, talk about them, care about them, love or hate them.

Getting acquainted with your characters is an essential process for writing a book. Use mind mapping to create your characters and take it as an opportunity to really meet them.

Not all stories need detailed descriptions of characters, but it’s important to know them yourself. Once you fully understand your characters, they will do the hard work for you. They will move your story forward. You simply become the messenger who channels them and gives them life.

Create a mind map for each character, starting with their name in the centre. This is a close-up of your character that will help you explore their personality and attitude, visual features, the way they move and sound and the impact they have when they enter a room.

Subvert expectations

Using a creativity technique like mind mapping helps you to think outside the box and subvert expectations. What sort of unusual quirks do your characters have? How can you make them memorable, or even, unforgettable?

Develop back stories

Preparing back stories brings depth to your characters. Why do your characters behave in the way they do? What happened in their lives before the point your reader meets them? What made them who they are?

Create a large, contextual mind map that includes all of your central characters and their back stories to explain their behaviour, attitudes and defining features. Add context with notes, images and other supporting documents or media files. This is a resource that you can tap into for reference points as you move forward with your book.

Set the scene

Mind mapping is an excellent technique for painting your setting using language and images. Bring yourself into your fictional (or non-fictional) world so you are comfortable navigating your characters through it.

Take a back-stage look at your book’s setting, with the visual placement of any important objects or reference points included as words or pictures within your mind map.

Plot & Storyline

Formulate your story arc

You can use a mind map to work through your story arc, develop your plot and let your imagination run wild!

A story arc can be viewed as a formula for storylines, and it often follows a familiar pattern that starts with an exposition to set the scene before the action starts to pick up.

Rising action is often demonstrated through a conflict or challenge for the characters to overcome. This could be a trigger that sets the plot into motion, or a quest where characters respond to the trigger. It could be an unexpected event or a critical decision a character makes.

The climax of the story happens when the plot reaches its peak, followed by falling action and a resolution where the story comes to an end.

This entire journey can be mapped out visually with a mind map. It is a storyboard, but with mind mapping software, it can become a movable feast that can easily be reworked and adapted.

Unexpected directions

The story arc may be formulaic, but a book storyline can (and should) be inventive and unpredictable.

Use a mind map to generate as many ideas as possible. Don’t review or discount them until you’re finished, then evaluate, scale these back and focus on your strongest, most original or unusual ideas.

The process of mind mapping will open up different and unexpected directions for your plot, helping you generate the twists and turns necessary to hold attention and entice your reader to keep reading.

Adapt and problem solve

Change your mind as much as you want. Mind mapping software allows you to restructure your mind map easily. If you decide that a plot point should take place later in your story, you don’t need to redo any planning. Simply drag-and-drop the idea across the screen. Nothing is set in stone until your pages are bound and printed.

If something is not working out, start a new mind map to delve into the issue and apply some critical thinking. Add solutions (be wacky, be wild!) as ideas grow out of the mind map. You’ll find a way to overcome the challenge.

Chapters

Finally, take a top-down view of your chapter structure with a mind map. This means that, if you get lost in the plot, you can refresh yourself with the visual storyline and redirect where needed.

Collaboration

Work together with your editor or collaborators using Mind Map Pro. The software allows you to brainstorm in real-time, and when you are using different devices to connect to a shared mind map, you can see each other’s updates happen live. Use the chat tool to discuss your work and export your mind map to Microsoft Word to continue working offline.

Add tasks to your mind map, like character development and drafting a chapter. Set time estimates to improve your focus and productivity. Move tasks along a task board as you make progress towards your goals.

What’s next? Look through our Help Site for information about getting started with Mind Map Pro and sign up for free.

Mind Mapping Frequently
Asked
Questions

What are the benefits of mind maps?

Although mind maps can be used for many purposes, the most common use case is for presentations. Mind maps are easy to create, which means it doesn't take much time to create one. Mind mapping is also a great tool for brainstorming because it makes complex ideas easier to understand. It also improves your presenting because it helps you think about how you want to present your ideas on the screen and in text form simultaneously. It also boosts your creativity because it helps you think outside of the box when creating or presenting content and helps you see new ways of thinking that can be implemented into future projects or presentations

Mind Mapping Frequently Asked Questions

This is a question commonly asked by students and teachers. To help you out, here are some tips on how to create a good mind map.

1. Choose the right topic: It is important to find the right topic before creating your mind map because it will be difficult if you start with an incorrect topic. You should also make sure that your idea is not too broad because it may not fit into your mind map properly.
2. Do not try to cover too much ground in one go: You should create sub-headings in order to divide your ideas into smaller chunks and make it easier for the reader to digest what they are reading about.
3. Make sure that you have a good structure: A well-structured mind map will help readers understand what you want them to know

Are Mind Maps Are Better Than Text Notes?

Mind maps are seeing a surge in popularity with students and professionals alike. This is because traditional note taking can be difficult to interpret by others, whereas a mind map provides a visual representation of the interconnected ideas making it easy to understand.

There are many benefits of mind maps over text notes, including:

- Mind maps help you remember more because they're more visual
- Mind maps make it easier to find related ideas because they're organized by theme or color
- They're better for collaborative brainstorming sessions because you can see all the different points of view in one place

How do I turn my mind map into an academic essay?

Writing an essay is a daunting task for many students, especially those who are not used to writing. It can be difficult to know what topics are appropriate for your paper and how they should be structured.
The best way to approach this is by brainstorming ideas and then turning them into an outline. The following steps will help you turn your mind map into a fully structured essay:
- Brainstorm the main topic of your paper and subtopics that you want to cover. All sub-topics will stem from the main idea in the center of the mind map.
- Brainstorm various possible thesis statements that could support the main topic of your paper, as well as examples of supporting evidence from the brainstormed topics.
- Create an outline with all the main points covered in each section of your paper.

How to Use Mind Maps in Your Business and Marketing Strategy?

Mind maps are a great way for businesses to see the big picture and understand how all the different parts of the strategy fit together. Let's use the example of a business selling window treatments to see how we might present this information in a mind map. The window treatment business has three different strategies: advertising, selling materials, and selling services. The company might want to present these strategies as separate ways of making money in the mind map so that it can see what each strategy is doing for the business. The company might also want to place a chart with revenue for each strategy on the left of the mind map and then show how these revenue streams connect on the right.The idea is that by looking at the whole picture, you can see how all of your different strategies are connected and what they're doing for your business. There are many more mind map examples for business, including; Brainstorm Marketing Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Target Market Analysis, Market Research, Competitor Analysis, SWOT etc.

How Do You Integrate Mind Map Pro into Your Content Creation Process?

The best way to integrate Mind Map Pro into your content creation process is by using them as the main tool for exploring ideas and taking notes. This allows you to better organize and study your notes later on, which can then be used for content creation. You can also use Mind Maps as an outline for content creation, and as a general guide for how you want your content to flow and look like.

Mind maps are often used in the world of academia and business to help think through a subject. However, they can also be used as a general guide for how you want your content to flow and look like. They're an easy way to get started on an article or blog post, as well as a great way to map out what you want your audience to know about an issue or topic.

Who Invented The Mind Mapping Technique?

Tony Buzan is a British author and psychologist who is best known for his mind mapping technique. He used it to help people organize thoughts, ideas, and memories. Tony Buzan was born in London on the 8th of October in 1925 and studied at Oxford University. He later became a lecturer at the University of Surrey before returning to Oxford as an assistant lecturer in psychology.

In 1967, he published his book "The Mind Mapping Book", which helped popularize the mind mapping technique. He also wrote many other books on various topics such as "The New Mind Map Book", "The Active Mind", "How To Think Better" and "Think Better".