Mind-Mapping and Outlining

I’ve debated the merits of mindmapping and outlining over the years, and personally, I’ve never struggled with finding a winner. 

While I have been able to successfully outline a story idea in the past, I find the process very difficult and formal.  It’s almost impossible for me to write up a valid outline without already having the whole story laid out in my head.  And at that point, why bother?  A quick paragraph synopsis or bullet list of plot points would suffice to make sure I don’t forget it.

But when the idea is there with not details, an outline feels too much like work to me.  Like a nice, clean empty canvas that I don’t want to touch my brush to out of fear of ruining it.  Much like the daunting empty page itself, come to think of it.  So that’s why I almost always end up falling back on my faithful companion, the mindmap.

Unlike an outline, a mindmap encourages free-association and random thinking.  Items are never forced to be in a particular order or to support other details.  I have always worked faster with a keyboard than doing anything longhand, so my mindmaps stay nice and neat, and with the help of this free software, keeping everything neatly in order at any point is simple as pie. 

Here is an example of a mindmap I’m in the midst of devising for an upcoming epic fantasy series I am developing:

Shirah Chronicles Mindmap

I expanded the map for Book One, and you can see it very clearly and simply outlines the major plot progression for the whole book on one page.  Each of the four proposed books in the series have their each similar node.  I decided to take the “three act” approach to breaking the book down into a beginning, middle and end, although obviously they aren’t going to be equal-size sections.  Although you can’t see it on the print, each of the sections has a text note attached that includes more plot details I’ve added in as they came to me.

The best part about designing this was that I basically just sat back and brainstormed for hours at a time and threw everything I could at the idea, seeing what would stick.  Then, in a few minutes, reorganized what stuck into a logical order via drag-and-drop and deleted the rest.  Very clean and neat despite being a potentially messy process.

I’m not knocking the outline, believe me, because I know it’s worked for millions of very talented writers.  And many more eschew outlines, mindmaps, or any other organizing tool as hindering their creative process.  They prefer to dive right into the blank page and simply rewrite and edit themselves into perfection. 

I say, whatever works for you, go with it. 

For me, it’s mindmaps.

So what do you think?  Is a mindmap a worthy tool, or is there something better out there I don’t know about yet?

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