this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Writing
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I do the same as you with Google Docs - it honestly never occurred to me to use something fancier. I did used to use a mind map software when I had grand ambitions of writing longer works, FreeMind.
While I would love to use pen and paper, my handwriting is a mess and it would get lost long before I ever moved it to a digital format.
If it works it works that's for sure.
Now I could never wrap my head around mind maps, do you have any tips or tricks for how you used it when you were using it?
I enjoy pen and paper too, but mainly for journaling because then I don't have to go back and try and figure out what I wrote!
I'm honestly not great with mind maps either, but it was a more fluid way to hold information. I actually redownloaded FreeMind and pulled up the old mindmaps - oh nostalgia.
One of them is to help keep track of character details and relations. Nodes were whether they were a main character, minor character, someone referenced in passing, and then the character name, and then a breakdown of details around them (family, special abilities). I think I also intended to include major plot points I wanted to hit as well, as I was big on planning at the time.
The second was going to take place in a made-up world, so that one has character details and also location details, so I could keep everything straight and have one document to reference to make sure I was being consistent.
Of course, neither of these ever got written, so take it how you will haha. I think the map was just more visually appealing than a list of these items, since related things can be linked easier than in a doc.
That makes sense, I think I always was worried that there was a right or wrong way to use it, and didn't experiment with it as much as I should.
If you can make a tool work for you, that's what matters in my opinion. If not, well, not every tool is for everyone and that's cool too.
I probably wouldn't have spent much time on it if I couldn't just pick up sections and move them around the screen all willy-nilly. I thought it was neat, so the program held my attention where normally mind maps aren't my thing.