Tag Archive - Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping for the Novelist

Since many of you are in the throes of NaNoWriMo, here’s a reprint of a post I wrote years ago discussing how helpful mind-mapping is and how you might use it to spur your creativity and work through your plotting ideas.

And, of course, any writer can utilize these techniques to help come up with great plot and character elements for any story.

Brainstorming ideas seems to be one of the hardest stages in the writing process for many novelists. As I discussed in a previous post, this storm of ideas that flash and thunder in our brains often appears unruly and difficult to harness.

I introduced the practice of mind mapping, which is used across many disciplines—such as in classrooms for essay writing and in business meetings to problem-solve. Mind mapping can be used in just about any situation when ideas need to be reeled in and transformed into practical application. Continue Reading…

Brainstorming Tactics for Your Strategic Plan

In continuation from last week’s post reviewing the key points of strategic planning, we’re going to look at how to formulate a simple, approachable strategy to help you reach those writing goals and big dreams you have for your career.

We took a look at what a writing vision considers: what you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to do. If you haven’t laid down that vision, come up with sample statements similar to the ones in that post.

Now that you have listed all those things you hope to achieve by the end of 2019, you’ll want to come up with a clear game plan so you can reach those goals. Set up benchmarks for the various steps you need to take to get to the finish line. Once you figure out the steps, you can then decide how long it will take you to complete each step.

One great way to figure this all out is to brainstorm all your ideas. I have numerous posts on ways writers can brainstorm using mind maps, so consider using it for strategic planning as well!

Get out that big piece of tag board and your markers and start listing all the dreams and goals you have. You can then draw lines (as discussed in the previous posts) to the milestones you need to reach to get to each goal. And with each milestone, you can connect all the little tasks you have to accomplish to make that milestone. Continue Reading…

Revisiting the Four Primary Pillars of Novel Construction

Over the last five-plus months we’ve been exploring the four primary, essential components of novel building, which I label in this course “corner pillars.” I spent a bit of time on these because they truly are the foundation of your novel—and if those four pillars aren’t structurally sound, your novel will collapse. Really and truly.

If you are joining in late to this course, all you have to do is go back to the first post the first week of January and work your way through these four pillars. My advice to anyone wanting to craft a really great novel that stands up to scrutiny and the test of time is to take the time to ensure that these four key elements in your novel are thoroughly developed and don’t have any weak spots. Continue Reading…

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