Writing Tools: Mind Mapping

One great way to help you through writer’s block is to try to mind map, or cluster. In this effort youare trying to write down a word that is important to your story, or to your writing in general. Then, you associate the various factors that touch that key word. This should aid you in writing thoroughly.

For example, let’s say I am starting a novel about a haunted house. I might start the mind mapping tool with the phrase “haunted house” in the middle of the mind map. Then, as I think of other factors that are related to the house and story, I would branch other words out from the center so they could form their own clusters (by whatever topic or attribute I deem appropriate). This helps me capture the relationships between events and other factors in the story. So, I might, for example, branch out a phrase called “familys who have lived in the house.” Then, branching out from that branch, I would have a separate branch for each family. Then, for each family, I might have a branch that talks about their individual experiences in the house, and so on. You see the value in this exercise, right?

I found a great freeware program called FreeMind that you may want to check out. It runs via Java, and is a sinch to use. Best of all – its free.

If you want to check out FreeMind, or even download it for your personal use, please visit the website:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Happy writing!

Justin