A few weeks ago, I wrote about how to outline your nonfiction book. Today, I want to go deeper into the idea of mind-mapping, because it’s legit one of my favorite parts of the writing process.
I guess I just love sticky notes. :)
(Rainbow is my favorite color, despite the fact that I mostly just wear gray and black like some kind of hipster crow.)
For me, mind-mapping it’s all about getting all of the ideas that I’ve been collecting in my head out where I can see them. At this stage in the process, most of those ideashave been just kind of flying under the radar, unexamined and unbothered.
The goal of mind-mapping is to bring them to light.
You’d be surprised at what you know when you start actually writing it down.
I see this with my clients all the time. When we get to the outlining phase of the Story Map Intensive process, a lot of them balk because it seems like such a huge prospect.
But as we start talking, the pieces start to click into place.
“Oh, and another thing,” they say over and over. “Oh, I just thought of this. And this. And this.”
By the end of the 90-minute call, we normally have a pretty solid outline that we can start talking through for the drafting interview process.
When I work with clients, I act a bit like the sticky notes: jotting down notes, moving things around as they talk, checking in to make sure that we’re on the right path.
When I work on books by myself, I use an additional physical layer of sticky notes to get outside my own head.
So here’s how you can do it for yourself.
Further reading: Make it Book-Shaped
We’re Not Outlining Yet
I want to be clear about something I see writers trip up on all the time.
Mind-mapping is not outlining. We’re not trying to nail down the perfect table of contents right now. We’re not deciding what goes in Chapter 7. We’re just seeing how the pieces fit together—which ideas feel comfortable next to which other ideas, and what the rough shape of this thing wants to be.
We are in vibes mode.
And because we’re in vibes mode, there’s no right way to do this. There’s only the way that works for you.
(I know, I know. I say that about every stage of the writing process.)
Step 1: Pick Your Tools
Here are a couple methods:
If you’re visual and tactile, get yourself a stack of sticky notes, a Sharpie, and a blank wall. (A whiteboard works too, but sticky notes have the magical advantage of being movable—you can shuffle them around.)
If you’re digital-first, try Scapple or MindMeister. Scapple (affiliate link) is my personal favorite, and the one I use all the time. It mimics that free-form whiteboard feeling better than just about anything else I’ve used, it’s a one-time payment instead of yet another subscription, and your work saves directly to your computer so you can work offline.
Pick whichever one makes you want to actually do the thing. That’s the only criterion that matters here.
Step 2: Dump Out Your Brain
Start jotting down everything that you can think of on sticky notes.
(Everything related to your book, I mean.)
If you want to get wild, use a couple different colors for:
- Chapters
- Themes
- Stories
- Examples
- Frameworks
- Concepts
- Etc
Personally, I like to roughly group the sticky notes as I write them down and arrange them in a vague timeline. But you could also just brainstorm them into a pile in front of you and then play with the arrangement later.
Whichever you choose, don’t get too caught up in completing the task right now.
Just work on emptying your brain until you feel like you hit a stopping point.Then come back tomorrow, or—better yet—a few days later. Take a look at what you’ve got and see what else has rattled loose.
Step 3: Organize Your Notes
Pick out your big ideas or chapter themes and start to arrange them in an order that makes sense.
As you go, pay attention to how the themes want to flow into each other. Some books have an obvious order baked in. If you’re writing about your signature framework, there’s probably a clear sequence of steps, plus stuff that needs to be explained before the framework and stuff that comes after. If you’re writing a how-to book, certain steps need to come before others. If you’re writing a prescriptive memoir, the story will have a timeline.
(Though, of course, you don’t need to write memoir in chronological order. Sometimes it can be more impactful to use a different structure.)
Then, start moving the sticky notes with stories, examples, frameworks, and research into clusters around the bigger themes or chapters they belong to.
Step 4: Balance the Structure
Here’s where mind-mapping really becomes valuable.
When everything’s spread out in front of you, you can see at a glance whether one section needs more development. Maybe one chapters has fifteen sticky notes while another has two.
If that’s happening, play with the material. Break the overloaded section into multiple. Combine lighter sections, or spend some time developing more material for them. Move stuff around.
This is also a great moment to walk away.
This is one of the reasons why I prefer sticky notes on a wall. Every time I walk past that wall in my office, my subconscious chews on it a little more. Even if I don’t explicitly stop and think about it, it keeps those ideas tumbling around in my mind until things click that weren’t clicking before.
You don’t have to nail this in one sitting.
In fact, You’ll probably come up with a deeper, richer, more uniquely human book if you don’t.
Step 5: Turn It Into a Bullet Outline
When the map feels roughly right, it’s time to turn it into something a little more linear.
Open a doc and write down the chapters in order. Add sub-bullets for the stories, examples, and key concepts that go in each one.
This will be your working map from which to write your book.
Now, go forth and mind-map!
Further reading: A Simple Nonfiction Book Writing System