Mind Mapping

[Kelly Sue]

Anyone here do it?

[beamish]

What is this thing you speak of?

[tomgastall]

Anyone here do it?

Yeah, but I tend to connect doodles rather than words. Things seem to come to me quicker that way.

[Karen Mahoney]

I've tried it, but not had a great deal of success. If we're talking writing aids I work better with index cards. Actual physical ones, more than Scrivener or whatever.

Are you experimenting with mind mapping, KS?

Kaz

[Terry.Tyson]

Anyone here do it?

I think you and I spoke of this some time ago when I was going through some root cause analysis courses. Though not proper mind mapping, a technique called "the 5 why's" is used by some when conducting rudimentary root cause analyses and has some foundations and parralells to some aspects of mind mapping. It is often associated and used with the Isikawa "fishbone" diagram that also has some mind mapping aspects to it.

I DO use the diagraming technique but shy away from 5 why's because results are often not repeatable and unless the facillitator is really good (or already knows the answer) can get into strange and sometimes useless (for my purposes to determine causes of errors and or loss) territory.

That being said, I've held that the basic 5 why's approach could be used in a creative endeavor to say, plot a story. 5 why's is easy to find online, but I can send you more in depth info if you were ever interested.

[nickellis]

I bought an app... Ergh. Which is far too common a story for me with these things, but I am really interested in it, especially for longer plots.

(My mum just gave me two cork boards she was getting rid of, which means I have three cork boards I could plot something ridiculous over - which, again, is putting the cart before the horse.)

The closest thing I've actually done is a sort of mind map for essays through high school and uni (college).

I would take the word count, then on an A4 (letter, sort of) page, sketch out paragraphs and an intro and conclusion - actually break the page up.

Depending on how many words I'd have to write I'd have anywhere from 3 to 8 paragraph slots. I'd then write in how many words would need to be in each, the introduction and conclusion usually got half as many words as a paragraph.

I'd then write a 'topic sentence' in each paragraph slot; the topic of the paragraph expressed as plainly as possible, in a single sentence. I'd also jot down any other notes that would work, and any references I'd need or already had.

Writing the bulk of the essay would then become a case of filling in the blanks, writing in 200 - 500 word chunks, as per the plan. ...which was a hell of a lot easier than trying to tackle 5000 words at once.

And, y'know, writing that all down now, I can't see why I couldn't use a similar approach to fiction writing.

N