26: Mind Maps for Authors

Authors are thinking all the time about their writing about

marketing strategies about their next book, but we frequently overlook

one of the best tools we have for thinking clearly

for thinking about all the details we need to remember

and that is mind maps. So today, in episode 26

of writing pursuits, we're going to talk about mind maps

for authors. Welcome to the writing pursuits podcast where authors

like you discuss writing, craft, author life and book marketing

strategies. I'm your host, Katherine's Mckee. I own writing pursuits

and write and produce the weekly newsletter. Writing pursuits tips

for authors. In addition, I am a speculative fiction author.

Writing pursuits is for authors who drink too much coffee,

endure judgmental looks from their furry writing companions and struggle

for words. If you are a writer seeking encouragement, information

and inspiration. This podcast is for you. Let's get to

it. Hey, writing pursuits authors Welcome back to the podcast.

To those of you who are new. I want to

extend a special welcome. My name is Katherine Mckee and

I'm glad you're here. Please leave a comment of star

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pursuits. I will do my best to communicate on this

visual topic in this audio format of the podcast. However,

if you want to see what I'm talking about, then

go to www dot writing pursuits dot com forward slash

podcast forward slash 26 you will find a link for

the Youtube episode. See you there today. We're gonna talk

about what a mind map is. We're gonna discuss reasons

to use mind maps and cover some ways. Authors can

use them to their advantage. We're gonna go over the

pros and cons of paper and digital mind maps, check

out a few digital options and then end with a

few tips for using using mind maps. And the first

thing we need to do is describe what a mind

map is so that everybody is on board and you've

probably seen them, you may have even used them if

you've been a student in the last few years. I

did not grow up using mind maps but I think

they're a great idea. They very much go with brain

science and use it to our advantage. So a mind

map is simply a graphical representation of related ideas and

topics around a central topic. So the central topic for

this mind map is Mind maps usually traditionally has bubbles

like this one. Right here. Lines connecting things together, drawings

or doodles. I have embellished this mind map with art

and they are hierarchical in nature just by the way

they are drawn. So you start with a central idea.

You come up with big ideas around that and then

you break those big ideas into smaller ideas and keep

branching until you're done. So suggested direction is clockwise. That's

kind of a tradition. Start at one o'clock and work

around to 12 and there you go, that's what a

mind map is. Now, let's go over reasons to use

mind maps first. it's fun that can't be overemphasized. Who

wants to outline? It is more engaging than writing words

with numerals and letters in a strict formal list and

people love to doodle when you're using a paper format,

it's easy to doodle when you're using a digital format.

It's a little more intentional, It is more fun. It

boosts memory and recall. Humans think in imagery, not printed

words. Use that to your advantage, studying and revising my

maps, racist retention by 10-15% according to a couple of

studies. Mind mapping helps you learn new concepts by providing

context and connections and strengthening the depth of understanding my

maps break down complex ideas great for planning and if

this improves structure, work is more coherent, you're literally connecting

the dots, improves productivity, especially in a team setting, you

brainstorm faster, think efficiently, communicate effectively and when it comes

time to present your ideas, makes the presentations more dynamic,

brings concepts to life and increases credibility. And finally it's

more flexible than an outline because you're just drawing links

between ideas with the digital software, you can move stuff

around very easily. It's non linear in nature. So when

an idea occurs to you and you don't know where

to put it, you can just write it off to

the side and then plug it in later revision. Izzy's

it encourages creativity. So those are the reasons to use

mind maps and they're very powerful. Let's go over some

uses of mind maps for authors. These are just things

like brainstormed. Um there are probably hundreds more characters. So

if you're going to map out your characters, you can

talk about their goals and motivations, their wants, their needs,

their physical attributes, and anything else that you think of

related to. Your characters, settings and world building, culture, history,

technology, language names, clothing, etcetera, all the things you put

into your settings structure. If you're a plotter, this is

particularly applicable. Um you could use your three act structure

and map it out, Snowflake plotting, hero's or heroine's journey,

three story method. You could do all of those things

or none of them just depending on who you are

and what you like to do marketing plans. Sometimes these

are really dry, hard work for people to do and

I can see putting in all kinds of artwork, links

to things that you like for promotions, launches, ad campaigns,

your social media campaigns, all the things that you need

to to do in your business. But I tend to

put off so use mind maps for marketing plans. Thinking

things through. This has been a very big value for

me this week. I've gone through a lot of my

systems and the way I do things mind map them

out and had some very big moments of clarity. So

it's been very valuable exercise for me. Content planning. Yes,

well, but need, need we say more your content calendar

could go in here and lastly collaboration. So I think

it would be very fun to have a partner or

a team to collaborate with and to to map it

out on a mind map and have good discussions around

that and bring together some plans. That really makes sense

to everybody. And then people could use the mind map

as a point of reference to stay on track. Anyway,

those are some uses for mind maps for authors. Let's

compare paper versus digital mind maps, you can always do

both. Paper is readily available and so that is one

of its pros is it's there, it goes anywhere. And

also handwriting information helps with retention. So that is a

big plus. If you're a student, it enables doodling and

artistic expression only limited by your ability and really who

cares, as long as you can remember the information cons

of paper is the canvas is automatically limited to the

paper size that you're using, paper is fragile, it's easily

lost, easily torn, you can smudge it, you can get

it wet etcetera. If you put it on a corkboard,

people might think you're making a conspiracy board or a

murder map, but I'm only sort of kidding. It is

harder to make copies, edit and revise a paper. Mind

map for digital. The pros are, it's easy to create

and revise. You have an unlimited canvas. Usually you can

decorate it with art links, notes, no artistic ability required.

Digital my mats are great for presentations. They permit collaboration

and in fact they enable collaboration. That's a big plus,

templates are usually available in digital apps. The cons of

digital mind maps are that you need online access. It

is not as engaging as doodling by hand. So it's

more like work, it's not as much fun in some

ways. In some ways it because it's easier, it might

be more fun to you. You get what you pay

for and what I mean by that is in the

various applications, the pricing tends to include or exclude based

on the privacy of your mind maps. The number of

boards you get the themes that are available types of

mind maps. Like if it's speedy organic or radio. Like

we we discussed in the other topic, export formats and

how many templates are available? So those are the cons

of digital mind maps. That's how these two compare. Neither

one is necessarily better. It just depends on your situation

and what you're trying to accomplish. Okay, as I talked

about earlier, we're going to go to look at some

of the digital options. One of them is Kagle more

expensive one is AOA and this one you're looking at

is Mind meister will come back to it. So let's

switch over to Kagle. Kagle is a good beginner package.

Um it's less expensive than the others as you see

on the right here. They have some shortcut keys, all

the packages seem to have that. So that's a good

way. The good thing to learn to make your work

easier and faster. Let's go look at a o for

a minute AOA has an option, I didn't find anywhere

else. And that is a radio map which is kind

of cool for demonstration purposes. This is the speed map

view and as you can see, I have customized it

a little bit. Let's scroll out a little bit. So

this is the whole thing, it's quite large. Let's go

to the organic view. That's kind of nice. It looks

just like it says to me, it looks like arteries

or nerves diagrams or something like that. And then back

to the radio view, let's see if it fixed, it's

little memory problems. Yes, there we go. So now we

have the seven universal conflicts, it is more expensive, it

has a lot more functionality. Um you may not need

it. I found that I liked Mind Meister the best.

So we're going to switch to that. One of the

reasons I like Mind Meister is they have this little

theme button over here with several different themes, both light

and dark. This is the default is called Mind Meister

Meister theme and then they have the dark Meister theme

and as you can see I have decorated this one

up with icons and a photo for the central idea

and a hand drawn mind map and then they have

some quite beautiful themes. Here's one called a Quarrel which

is beautiful. Maybe my favorite is black board which looks

like white chalk on a blackboard. And then when you

expand, let me get rid of this. When you expand

it looks handwritten. So that's really pretty. One other thing

it has the others don't that I didn't find anywhere

else anyway is a way to display it in a

different way. So you can see it as an orc

chart and then you can expand downward or as a

line ah sorry a list which is like an outline

and you can keep going down the page like that

and then it has several ways to export your mind

map. So you can export it as a portable as

well as a pdf or as an a rich text

file or a Microsoft word PowerPoint image. You can also

print it so I find that this one meets my

needs more than meets my needs. And I have been

pulling it up multiple times this week just to doodle

around in there and figure stuff out. And it's been

a big help. So by all means go out and

test a lot of them. Most of them do have

a free trial. So give them a try and get

my mapping. Finally, let's go over a few tips for

using mind maps for creating them. The very first thing

you need to know is that you need to zero

in on a central idea once you have your central

idea, as in this case it's mind maps. Then you

can begin branching, let the ideas flow, just brainstorm green

light, everything, put it out there. If you don't know

where it connects, just leave it hovering out there on

the periphery, then move stuff around. Keep branching until you

exhaust your topic and then edit, connect maps if necessary.

If one topic leads to another that needs to be

explored, then you can link the maps together. I encourage

you to try mind maps. I think that they will

change the way you do um your thought processes and

maybe speed up your work and certainly help you write

your books. Thank you for joining us today. If you

enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment and follow the

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episode are in the show notes at writing pursuits dot

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